The ideas that a man can get fired from Walmart for cleaning the parking lot sounds ridiculous right? Wrong! This really happened. Walmart, the store that runs America, fired a black man for picking up cans in a parking lot and turning them in for money. Lets not act like Walmart pays their employees a great wage. Less time I checked, they were barely giving their employees benefits.

Smith picked up the garbage for more than two months until Nov. 6, when he was fired for redeeming $5.10 worth of empty cans and bottles he found discarded on two occasions.
He was called into the security office and interrogated by a manager and two security staff members.”I didn’t know you couldn’t take empties left behind. They were garbage,” Smith said. “I didn’t even get a chance to explain myself. They told me to turn in my badge.”

Surveillance cameras caught Smith redeeming the empty bottles and cans at the store, tantamount to theft of Walmart property, according to the manager. Smith said he was never informed about that rule. Smith was fired three hours after the normal end of his shift. He had agreed to work extra time that Friday when the store was short of employees. The manager asked Smith to repay the $5.10, but he didn’t have any cash on him. He took a one-hour bus ride from Albany and paid the money back to the manager on Sunday.

“I did the right thing and stayed out of trouble. I worked hard and did a good job. I ended up getting a raw deal,” said Smith, who is on parole after being released from prison in May. He served a 15-year sentence for a 2002 armed robbery of a KeyBank on Route 9 in Latham. The father of two said he robbed the bank to pay for a heroin and cocaine habit.

“We can’t comment on human resource matters,” said Aaron Mullins, a spokesman at Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. He said Smith was fired after an internal investigation and human resource review, but declined to elaborate. Smith was fired from his $9-an-hour job a few weeks before his 90-day probationary period was up, denying him a 10 percent employee discount and other benefits. Smith, who is African-American, contacted prisoner advocate Alice Green at the Center for Law and Justice in Albany. She took up Smith’s cause after hearing his account that alleged racial discrimination. During his interrogation, the manager told Smith that a store cashier, who is white, was caught on camera stealing $20 from a cash register and stuffing it into her bra. The cashier paid the money back and was not terminated because she has five kids.