People are not pleased with grocery store giant Meijer this week. Why? UpNorthLive.com reports that their Gaylord, Michigan location let go of one of its employees after he helped Ken Kuzon, a store customer, put out a fire in the store’s parking lot because he left his post.
David Bowers, who had been a store greeter, told WPBN NBC News, via UpNorthLive.com, “When [Kuzon] came in and said his dashboard was on fire, I grabbed the fire extinguisher and I followed him outside and sure enough his dashboard was on fire.”
He was able to put out the fire, but after doing so, was called into the store director’s office where he was suspended. Bowers told WPBN, “The one supervisor there told me that my heart was in the right place, but my brain was not.” It was only a few days later that the store fired him. Again, this is after he helped put out a customer’s car fire, a car fire blazing in the store’s parking lot.
Meijer, in a statement to MLive.com , wrote:
"Please be assured that this was not a random decision. We have well-established safety procedures for emergency situations and we train all team members on those procedures. These procedures help ensure the safety of everyone – both customers and team members, and our team members know there are consequences when they don’t follow them. In this particular case, we feel we have to respect the privacy of the team member and therefore cannot get into the details which led us to this point.”
