Alabama woman takes nearly a whole bowl of Halloween candy on camera, then Sakana Sushi fires her for lying: ‘We take this matter seriously’
Her employer says the candy was not the final straw, because she told them she had apologized and the homeowner says she did not.
A restaurant in Hoover, Alabama, says it fired a worker over a Halloween candy bucket, and the reason it gives is not the grabbing itself. According to AL.com, a Facebook video filmed on Halloween shows two adult women emptying a bucket a homeowner left out for costumed kids. One of them wears a Sakana Sushi Bar & Grill shirt.
Little remains in the bucket by the end of the clip. The person who posted it wrote that “Greedy adults stole almost the entire bowl of candy.” The post tagged the restaurant and asked if either woman worked there. Sakana replied on Facebook that it had seen the clip and was investigating. “We take this matter seriously,” the restaurant stated, adding that it does not condone behavior that takes from children or hurts the community.
The business added that it would act if anyone connected to it turned out to be involved. It then acknowledged that the woman in the shirt worked for the restaurant but was not on shift when the video was filmed.
The apology became the problem
A spokesperson first stated that the worker gave back the candy and offered an apology to the homeowner on Sunday morning. Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, so that would have been the morning after the video was filmed. The homeowner disputed that, stating the apology came from her companion rather than the employee. Once the restaurant checked, it ended her employment.
A spokesperson called the dishonesty unacceptable, stating “Lying to us after knowing how important everything is,” and adding that the woman had been told she could not keep working there. Employers have ended jobs over small items before, as with a Starbucks cake pop firing. Here the worker was off duty, which raises the question of what an employer may do about conduct away from the job. A filmed moment that spreads online can also end a job, as with an Ulta worker fired over video after a store clip circulated.
Alabama is an at-will employment state, according to an Alabama State Bar article. The author states an employer “can terminate an employee for any reason, for no reason, or for a bad reason.” The article adds that illegal reasons are excluded, and that written contracts, union agreements or clear handbook language can narrow that freedom.
The National Retail Federation projects Halloween spending at $13.5 billion this year, up from $13.1 billion last year, with $4.1 billion of it going to candy. The group states that 74% of consumers plan to celebrate, up from 73% last year, 96% plan to buy sweets and 61% intend to hand out candy at their door.
The homeowner and the restaurant still give different accounts of who apologized.
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