...and apparently vital to ignore when it becomes inconvenient to those in power.

Kindness is not a corporate value. We will be told to focus on the case of the restaurant employee, and to rally or boycott until he gets his job back, and we will somehow forget, once again, to ask why the fuck there are people who have to beg for food, and what the corporation in question might have to do with such inequality.

The "unidentified man" who triggered the incident doesn't even get a name.

If so, I suspect they use it as a publicity point among veterans. So when they fire a veteran, that should also make it into the news.

... or anger.

"Veteran goes on a rampage..."

they then turned around and then posted an ad on facebook encouraging people to support veterans by going to their website and entering an online auction for the chance to win "great prizes." It's relevant because they already had a veteran in their employ, but fired the man for showing kindness. I don't care about their stupid policy regarding not giving away free food. It was a freaking corn muffin and some condiments. If Cracker Barrel is so financially destitute that it cannot afford to occasionally let a hungry person have a few packets of ketchup and a corn muffin, then they have a very poor business model and perhaps shouldn't be in business.

"When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor HAD no food...

They Called Me A Communist"

The fact that a person is a veteran is never irrelevant.

Now, as for your relevancy...............?

In this case, he is just a guy working at a restaurant.

Frankly, I don't appreciate how it is trotted out for convenience when the media wants to invoke a particular emotion, relative to the incident.

Pity, Anger, etc.. etc.. etc...

So says this veteran...

... with anything when I get fired for stealing company property? or when I get a promotion? or go to the store and get a case of beer?

Nada.. zip.. zero...

99% of the time it is trotted out to emotionally manipulate and it seems to have worked.

That is some yellow ribbon rah rah if I ever heard it.

Whenever a veteran is convicted of a crime, I like to know about it.

If a drug dealer is a veteran, it is important to know that.

Veterans who don't pay their chid support -- it needs to be reported that that kind of person is a veteran.

A person's veteran status is never irrelevant.

Same reason I don't automatically respect/worship someone because they volunteered for the military. It does not mean that are necessarily good people.

if positive information on the chain and its management--or individual restaurant, come to light.

I have a feeling the Kochs and other ugly RW bag men have their tentacles in a lot of these chains.

It is unclear whether he bought it for the man. If he did not, I can understand there is an issue, small though it may be. I imagine they have encountered this before, with staff giving away food to friends and family. They came up with a zero tolerance rule which is harsh, but most zero tolerance rules are. Where would one draw the line? At corn muffins? Free ice cream? Ribeye steaks for your mother? What if he started handing out quarters or dollar bills from the cash register?

Then write a policy about workers being able to treat family, friends, and strangers and have the cost charged to them. I'm sure young wait staff Re harangued all the time by friends who want a freebie. This would allow them to accommodate them.

for free or for a nominal charge? So what if friends or family harass the worker for freebies, they're assholes to put the worker in that position in the first place knowing full well that if the worker accommodates them they'll likely lose their job and of course they should be refused. Workers need to tell these asshole friends and family are putting them in such an awkward no-win situation that those people should know already - they aren't special just because their friend or family member works there.

If a worker wants to buy an item for someone else they should be doing it at the regular price of the item. And no worker should be giving away items for people they think are needy or just because they feel like it. Those items are the property of the business, not the worker, and the worker KNOWS that all customers need to be charged the regular price of any item in order to have it. Give one person a freebie, and anyone else will expect to get them as well.

Yes, sometimes there are special circumstances where a business may want to give away something for free like for an injured or crying child or if a customer was treated poorly, but that's a decision for the manager to make, not the employee.

It doesn't make any difference that this Cracker Barrel employee was a senior or a veteran, and they should be commended for hiring such an elderly person in the first place since most businesses wouldn't touch anyone over 50 with a ten foot pole as a new hire. He's still an employee like any other and still has to follow the same rules and regulations as any other. He knows that he is not to give away products that are for sale without authorization from the management and should have been fired for giving away products at his personal whim a number of times (that he was caught doing it) just as any other employee would be and should be. Workers should never be treated as superior or inferior in the workplace because of their age, veteran status, gender, race, weight, sexual orientation, financial status, whether or not they have acne, the color of their eyes, or anything else.

If this man wants to give things away to people he believes are needy than he can do it with his OWN stuff, not with items that don't belong to him, and the products sold by the company he works for DON'T belong to him, and he knows this... several times over.

Would be nice if Cracker Barrel were more humane, but it's hard to see the merit in giving away someone else's property.

Just reading your rationalizations for corporate greed makes me nauseous!!!! This story should haven't made headlines of any sort. Listen to yourselves think. No sympathy, no empathy, nothing!!!! American corporate masters have trained people very well. Awwww, he gave away a muffin, he should be incarcerated, right? I'm really ashamed of the people on here excusing and rationalizing greed and evil meanness based on the profit motive and rules and regulations that push this motive. Where is the empathy??? I picture the roman coliseum, the victor, standing over the 'criminal' caught for the games, with the sword at ready to plunge through the vanquished persons heart, I see a lot of thumbs down here. We ARE a barbarous people in a barbarous nation driven by people trained to accept the corporate line of profit trumps all. I am ashamed to read some of the responses here. Ashamed at the lack of feeling for a fellow human.

We see it all over this place and in society.

When you own a business and find that an employee is giving away your products that are for sale and that the sale of those products depends on the survival of the business and how much the employees get paid or how many employees you have or if you can afford to meet payroll at all let's see how you feel about it. I guarantee you won't be thinking that your elderly veteran employee giving away your products that are for sale will be just fine by you nor would you find it to be the least bit fair to the other employees that don't give away your products for sale on their personal whim.

Corporate greed, my butt. It's business 101, and if it was YOUR business you would have fired the guy the first time he did it not after he was already caught at it five times before and reprimanded and reminded he can't do that and expect to continue being paid by you and representing your company.

You're only boo-hooing this man's being fired because of his age and veteran status, not because of what he did. If he was a teenager from a wealthy Repub family you wouldn't have hired him in the first place letting your personal feelings dictate your reasons for hiring or firing someone rather than their work quality which is blatant discrimination that we also chastise businesses for.

no response necessary. You're still without a sympathetic bone in your body. That's the only thing I'm sure of. Go be a good capitalist and leave people alone with a conscience to really care about others. Your eye smilie is typical of your ............picture the roman coliseum.....I referred to in my earlier post.....you'll get the picture.

Jeez. Dock the guy's pay.

The punishment should fit the "crime". It is really disappointing that Democrats can support such extreme corporatist behavior. Even worse, try to justify it.

It doesn't matter what it was, and he'd done this same thing (that he was caught at it) FIVE times before and each time he was counseled and told he couldn't give the store's products away to whomever he liked on a whim because it is against the rules - rules he agreed to abide by when he was hired.

The store gave him MANY chances to stop this insubordination and he continued to do it. If he felt that this man he gave the muffin to was needy then he could have talked to the manager and request that some food be given to him. He wasn't and KNEW he wasn't in the position to make that decision himself.

If this employee was a teenager giving away freebies to his buddies no one here would question the teenager being fired and fired the FIRST time, not the FIFTH time.

Since when is it acceptable for employees to give away the products the company they work for sells willy nilly and after they were caught at it many times previously and not to do it anymore? Since when is it acceptable for an employee to do whatever the hell they want to that is against the rules they agreed to abide by when they got hired?

What's "sick" is giving special exception to this particular employee above all others for knowingly defrauding the company he worked for even after many times being forgiven for it and told he couldn't do it anymore just because of his age, what the product was he gave away THIS time, and the employee's IMPRESSION of the customer he gave it to. The employee didn't KNOW the man he gave away the COMPANY'S product for sale to was needy, he just thought he "looked" that way.

The products for sale by the company belong to the company, not to the employees. If there is a situation where any employee believes that some customer for whatever reason should be given something for sale for free than they know they aren't allowed to make that decision themselves but can still ask their manager if it is ok, and it very well may be that the manager would decide it was ok because sometimes that does happen as managers of restaurants know that occasionally giving something for free to a customer is good PR.

This outrage over an employee being fired for repeatedly giving away products for sale by the company on his own whim after many times being counseled and told he couldn't do that before is what is outrageous. And every bit of the outrage is because of corporate greediness which has nothing to do with it, the employee's age, his financial status, and his personal status putting him above all the other employees which is unfair to them. The very idea that employees should be able to do whatever the hell they want and just give away the company's products for sale to random customers for free on their own whim is lunatic.

What you just wrote, and the self-assured tone in which you wrote it, makes me sadder, and sicker at heart, and angrier at my country for its morally perverted messaging than you will ever comprehend.

I don't think this exchange is going anywhere. You have a good night.

was disregarded, five times. I would have let him give a muffin away a hundred times. I would have kept an eye on him and if this 79 year old had tried to take a side of beef out the fucking freezer then we would have had a talk about his errant ways. All this BS in this thread, from the protect petty profits at all cost advocates, is disturbing to say the least. Yes of course if he was 39 and stealing the shop he would have to be let go. But this BS about a 79 year old taking muffins for a hungry person and that escalating into a major felony is BS. You're without sympathy because of your greed infected minds and conscience. Period. All of you on here wanting people to starve, may you end up in a hunger games scenario yourselves. May you one day have to wait for the garbage to be thrown out behind restaurants before you get a 'meal'. It's a real shame this is the status of a LOT of americans in this day and age, yet it is. Your mentality? I got mine, damn the rest. SHAME!!! This is one of the most brutal society's on this planet, covered, with the help of RW media, in a thin veneer of civility that is cracking and the world is watching. Truly disgusting advocates of let them starve, "let them eat cake" crumbs off the floor like a dog. Anyone? SHAME!!!

Insubordination is indeed, a most apt descriptor for feeding the hungry and the homeless.

One can only imagine the financial ruin this mighty corporate giant will be brought to if this consistent, hedonistic practice of giving away $20.00 worth of muffins per year to hungry people continues.

It's only fair that we prioritize the imaginary and magical thinking of economics over that of an actual and an absolute hunger felt by the least among us. Lunacy indeed when we are reduced to holding the real closer to our hearts than the imaginary.

What a horrible, desperate world that would be. Will no one rid us of these troublesome priests...?

Why not give away free meals? Appliances in stores? Money? There was a time when people who took things that didn't belong to them were called thieves. The worker certainly took a product from the place of employment and was told numerous times to knock it off. If he is so concerned about hunger, why not open his own restaurant and give away as much food as he pleases.

It's sick, the mentality that is now accepted as normal in this country. It is beyond sick. It is despicable.

Worst thing to do at work is direct insubordination.

Especially since there are always ways to within the system to work around the system.

Last edited Mon Jun 30, 2014, 04:14 AM - Edit history (1)

... thread. You and I are not supposed to think, we are just supposed to react.

Cracker Barrel is in business to sell food. Sometimes places will sell day-old bread products for half off. If there was an issue of dumping wrapped bread products, he could talk to the manager about having them picked up by the local shelter instead. If this former employee felt so moved he could even purchase food items to give away on his own time.

But it's wrong to steal his employer's products, and he was warned not once but 4 earlier times. Sounds to me like his manager was pretty soft-hearted to him.

Now he has all the time in the world to go volunteer to serve meals at the homeless shelter or wherever. And if he needed that job to eke out his own income, perhaps he will be able to find a job someplace where the lines are clearer between what is his to give away and what is not.

to this 79 year old vet. NOTHING. Law and rules strangle humanity need to show sympathy in a capitalistic nightmare such as this. Sometimes I wonder when this country's corporate masters are going to just start rounding up the hungry and homeless and just get rid of them somehow. That's the way your response and the corporate response seems to me. Fuck the hungry and those sympathetic to them.

Poor Cracker Barrel will go broke if all its employees give away muffins

we go to cracker barrel when we travel. I think we can find
somewhere else to eat. lots of other choices.

the guy will want to marry his dog! It's the thin end of the wedge.

a hungry person is a hungry person. A 79 year old showing sympathy doesn't pass your rationalization for corporate profit test. Even a small restaurant should show sympathy. How many corn muffins are thrown out by THIS crackerbarrel each day, I wonder. Just let the hungry person wait on the garbage to be thrown out, like a dog,right? I disagree with you most vigorously. Let him starve, right? Fuck a sympathetic 79 year old, right?

Restaurants aren't supposed to re-serve those so they probably throw away DOZENS every day.

This isn't really stealing from the company. They toss 20 or 30 or 50 times this many 7 days a week.

Bottom line for Dems is compassion.

From the article--

What a stupid idea they have made up. This idea that everybody is supposed retire and to need it somehow. I don't doubt people need to crank it down and retire, but some of us find it helpful for ourselves to be able help others. At 55 i hope to be able to work till at least 85

since the early eighties. If this man received the true compensation he was promised by his government back when he worked a full time job in his youth and paid in hefty SS deductions, he wouldn't need to be working at the local chew and choke. Unfortunately, these days his lifelong deductions are referred to as "entitlements", as in, "These people think they are entitled to government assistance."

As for giving away stuff, I do understand the restaurant's policy but in most restaurants I've worked, there is a lot of waste and food thrown out, much more than an occasional give away. Some managers look the other way; some are consumed with their awesome managerial powers. Looks like the old guy ran into the latter.

problem with most of these stories is the word VET is thrown in to gin up outrage.

There was an Oreo cookie analogy about our military spending. The US has something like 40 Oreo cookies in military spending to the rest of the world's less than 10 cookies combined, IIRC, & yet we have homeless people?

Looks like I never will again.

I have to wonder, is this a corporate problem or an individual problem? I suspect it is both. Cracker Barrel should plaster the media with shock and outrage. It should say how wrong that manager was, that they are concerned about the plight of the homeless. They should say the manager has been "re-educated on compassion and corporate generosity". Who am I kidding, they might say some of it, but probably gave the manager a better job.

One bad employee gave give any business or organization a bad name. More and more I realize, they are probably receiving their employer's support. It is a sad world we live in today.

Corp home and discussing their stupid 'zero tolerance' policies.

The exact address, phone numbers are public information.

He was caught five times....he got many many second chances

That's almost a full 50 cent box of muffin mix!





Corp number (800) 333-9566

I'll find the rest of the information I need myself Mr.Niceguy1

That u cant just do what u want.. I feel sorry for him, but after the 4th chance I would have stopped.

exemplified.

Feeding someone Cracker Barrel food should be a crime. Attempted poisoning.

the portions are too huge for me. This gives me an idea. Maybe I should ask for a doggie bag when I first place my order? Before I start eating, I can portion what I know I will not be eating into that doggie bag.

Can I give away my food as a PAYING CUSTOMER? Yes, when we travel I have seen homeless people hanging around near the dumpsters of these chain restaurants.

I live in Florida, and certainly would like to know where this Cracker Barrel is. Better to give away my food than throw it in the garbage if there is somebody around who is hungry.

Out and written off instead of donated to people in need, it's sickening. I can understand having a policy for people who give whole dinners, etc to friendsfamily but a muffin and a few packs of condiments to someone who OBVIOUSLY couldn't afford to eat there???

Bad call on CB's part.

I'll wager so. Uppity, too, probably. Comin' in the front door, asking for a handout.

/sarcasm

Accomplished the task though. Lots and lots of people read it. You have to hand it to rawstory.com, they sure know how to pack 'em in.

... based on race, gender and sexual orientation. Why any Democrat would eat there is beyond me.

5 muffins is what, maybe $1 or $2 at most ? Homeless guy gets fed, CB's profit margin is intact (not that I care about that) and employee gets to be generous, everyone's happy.

Once.

Didn't know they were racist back then.

The food was crappy.

They're also homophobic bigots.

Thre's a reason they are called CRACKER Barrel.

Everyone -- go send one corn muffin to Cracker Barrel. These big corporations have no idea how clearly we see them. Forgot to look up address for you but there will be addresses on the net. Or drop a muffin off at your local store.

Crummy deal. We can bring this idiocy to the corporate attention very easily.

Smile.

EVP in Madison, Wisconsin, for those who want to know. The policy there is that it is up to the employees to decide if they want to give a cup of coffee to someone in need. Of course, the owner is a liberal who cares about human beings.

... as he had been counseled for it before.

That is called "Theft".


It is no different than shoplifting, sorry. If the employee was going to be generous, why didn't he be generous with his own belongings, instead of someone else's?


So many here need to realize that it is no different from me stealing food out of their refrigerator.

I didn't pay for it, it does not belong to me, you did not give me permission to take it, in fact you told me not to do so several times before but I stole it from you anyway.


The employee that stole food from his employer rationalized it as "Oh, it's just a muffin! They'll never miss it" like so many are doing in this thread.


Same rationale used by many shoplifters.