Fired Delray Cancer Patient Wins $8.1 Million from Michael’s
By Norm on September 2nd, 2010Posted In: Blog
A fan sent me a link to this story covered on The Sun Sentinel’s website:
A federal jury on Wednesday awarded a 47-year-old Delray Beachwoman $8.1 million in a lawsuit in which she claimed Michaels Stores, Inc. violated federal employment law for repeatedly criticizing her work performance, then firing her while she was suffering from cancer and undergoing chemotherapy .
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She claimed in the lawsuit that she was pressured to return to work early during a six-week medical leave because she was expected to fix the high-volume store’s failing operations. Within days after her mastectomy, according to the lawsuit, District Manager Skip Sand began calling Jorud asking her when she was coming back to work. She returned to work on Sept. 15 because she feared for her job.
Sand also visited the store two to three times a week after Jorud came back to criticize her performance, the suit states, adding that she asked for help from the corporate office, but was told to try not to take medical leave again.
Sand, who was named in the lawsuit, also criticized Jorud for bringing in her fiance and his son on Oct. 13 to help her while she was weak from chemo and had to shift old inventory to help make room for a pending delivery of new inventory. She was fired three days later, a day before her next scheduled chemotherapy treatment.
“They accused her of theft,” McPherson said. “And [Sand] harassed her because she missed so much work. He claimed he saw her theft on video and claimed she violated company policies that didn’t even exist.”
Jorud later disproved the theft charge, which the district manager later admitted was false, McPherson said.
The saddest thing about this story is that none of it surprises me at all, nor do I imagine it surprises most retail employees. It’s pretty typical of the attitude most retailers have towards their store-level employees. Good for her, for standing up for her rights.
You can read the rest of the story HERE.
Tell me about it, 15 years at a hardware store and my dad has a fall on Christmas Eve and breaks his arm. I have to take time off to help him and management fires me for being “disrespectful” to them.
I told them “NO” when they wanted me to come in on a Ice Storm day and leave my dad home alone with a broken arm on a day we were likely to lose power.
No, this story does not surprise me in the slightest. I had to fight home office to be able to use 3 vacation days to stay home with my son after he was born and not yet old enough for day care. It was “too close to Christmas” to allow me to use the days, I ended up doing a bunch of pointless half shifts and using vacation pay to cover the rest.
I also was written up after severely cutting my finger on a deli slicer, when I was cleaning it the way I was shown (which was the wrong way). When I told them it was how I was trained, their response was “that’s not how he was trained.”
Retail is a cancer…but one that can’t be cut out. glassdoor.com is a wonderful scouting resource for the shopper and the prospective employee too. Don’t shop/work for horrible people/companies….if you can help it.
This story reminds me of “Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich…she spent time in Key West FL, Portland ME, and Minneapolis MN working low wage jobs (waitressing, housekeeping, retail…and at Sprawl-Mart, no less) and seeing if she could actually live. The results are depressing, as are the stories of many people she meets along the way…people who work while sick or injured because otherwise they would be fired/wouldn’t make rent/couldn’t buy food. The way retail establishments treat their employees is deplorable.
I’ve read that book too, Ashley. Retail employers don’t give a damn about whether there employees can make it on minimum wage; they only care if don’t show up for work because your child has the chicken pox. Or if your bed ridden in the hospital and STILL have to fine your own replacement for your shift. Or if you’re pregnant and actually think you can get maternal leave and actually think you’ll get your job back (let alone if they just fire you because you got knocked up and you’re stupid enough to tell