An 84-year-old Texas woman said she’s upset after being fired from a local Walmart store. She says the move came after she found a $1 bill — and didn’t return it promptly.
Frankie Ruffino says she began working at a Walmart Supercenter in Brenham in 2008 as a door greeter. However, when her health declined she became a telephone operator for the same location.
“I gave it my all, that’s all I can say, I never came late,” said Ruffino to CBS affiliate, KHOU. “I wanted to work real bad.”
According to KHOU, Ruffino had a spotless record and never had an issue with the company before.
But on Oct. 10, when Ruffino was working her usual night shift, she found a dollar bill in one of the aisles. Ruffino told CBS affiliate, KBTX, she put the bill in her walker with plans on giving the money back the next day.
READ MORE: Sears Canada: Here’s how many jobs each province will lose
“I get off at 10 and I lock everything up. I go to the front, and there was a dollar bill laying there on the floor, right in the middle of the aisle, not in the register,” said Ruffino to KBTX. “It was late and I still had to drive home 14 miles so I didn’t think it was going to be a problem.”
However, the next day her managers called her into a meeting regarding the money.
After the meeting, Ruffino finished her shift. But it was when she returned the next day that she was given the news that she was being let go because of her “integrity.”
“If they had said to me, ‘Ms. Frankie, you have got to where you don’t get around good anymore, and you’re on oxygen, and you’re old and we just don’t really have a place for you anymore,’ I would rather they tell me that then to tell me that I don’t have any integrity,” Ruffino told KHOU. “I needed the job to take care of myself.”
Ruffino went on to say she uses her paychecks to buy her medication and oxygen tanks.
READ MORE: Michigan woman pulls loaded gun in Walmart during fight over school supplies
Global News reached out to Walmart for comment and was told by Charles Crowson, a Walmart spokesperson, that the company does “not discuss personnel matters with the media.”
When asked if Ruffino was recently fired over a $1 bill, Crowson said Walmart is a private company that doesn’t discuss matters about an associate with media outlets.
“I really loved my job,” Ruffino said to KBTX.
Comments