Getting the sack is the done thing for misusing a staff discount card.
A Co-op worker who gave discounts to pensioners and a war veteran to ‘do something nice’ has been sacked by supermarket bosses.
John Burley, 64, said he is ‘gutted’ after the grocery retailer fired him for ‘deliberate abuse’ of his staff discount card.
It emerged that Mr Burley had been giving out his employee discount to elderly customers when they shopped in the store – one of whom was a veteran.
Well, duh! What did he expect?
He had been working at a Co-op store close to his home in Eastleigh, Hampshire, since May but is now concerned he will be unable to find a new job.
Given that he has been dismissed for fraud, entirely possible.
He claimed he was never told it was against company policy and would have ‘stopped straight away’ had he been given a verbal warning.
Pull the other one. I had a staff discount card when I worked for Sainsburys. They made the terms and conditions perfectly clear. I very much doubt that the Co-Op are any different. Besides, common sense should tell you.
He said: ‘I am gutted, especially with it being so close to Christmas.
What’s that got to do with the price of fish?
‘I just want to know why no one came to me and said that what I was doing was wrong,’ he said.
They did. They then followed the disciplinary procedure and dismissed you, as is proper for fraudulent use of a staff discount card. Think yourself fortunate they didn’t involve the police and press criminal charges.
‘I was brought up properly, I don’t steal or lie.’
But you did. Misuse of a discount card is theft. You were giving away someone else’s money. It wasn’t yours to give. That’s theft.
A spokesperson for Southern Co-Op said: ‘After a thorough investigation, we reluctantly had to dismiss an employee for deliberate abuse of his staff discount card.
‘The policy around the use of colleague discount is communicated clearly at the point of signing up to the scheme.
‘We expect colleagues to respect the rules and our policy clearly states that a serious breach of the rules can be taken as an act of gross misconduct which can lead to dismissal.’
“To do something nice.”
It is so easy to be virtuous with other people’s money isn’t it?
If only he’d given the discount to some of the protected groups he’d still be working there because co-op would’ve deemed it morally righteous wrong use of the card.
To pull that off, he would need to be one of the protected groups.
He could have bought the stuff himself and then given it to said pensioners.
They could then have lent him the discounted amount and not asked for it back.
For Cliff’s sake, all that was required was a modicum of wit.