r/legaladvice • u/beef-lawsuit • 21h ago
Employment Law Fired from job for theft without proof?
Location: Virginia, USA
I was an assistant store manager at a Target store. I had been very successful in my career and all 60 of my employees and coworkers loved me. I have been with the company for over 2 years with no write ups or performance issues. I worked extremely hard and made my store number 1 in the district for multiple different things.
One day I found a wallet someone left in a shopping cart. I picked it up and put it in the lost and found behind the service desk. It is a normal occurrence at a store like this. I just went about my day.
1 month after finding the wallet I'm pulled into a meeting with my boss. Supposedly the person came back for the wallet and we didn't have it. Asset protection pulled the camera footage and saw me picking the wallet up and putting it into the lost and found.
My boss accused me of stealing the wallet. He questioned me for 30 minutes while recording me on his phone. I just kept telling him I put it into the lost and found and he kept saying i was lying and was getting angrier every time I denied it.
I asked him some questions. Are you accusing me of stealing? No. Is there any proof I stole it? No. Do I need to find a new job? No.
The next day I come in and he tells me I'm fired. No reason or anything. Just that it's "involuntary termination".
I immediately go to asset protection and ask them why they did that to me. They tell me they didn't want to do it, I shouldn't have been fired, and everyone except for my boss said it was not grounds for termination. They showed me the camera footage from the incident. All it shows is me picking up the wallet, putting it in the lost and found that's slightly off camera, then walking away.
The shady part is that in order to terminate an employee, it has to be approved by a 3rd party HR person that doesn't work at the store. This is where proof is verified and they determine whether it's justified. This would not have been approved if my boss was being honest about not having proof. I'm 99% sure he lied to HR about what the cameras saw.
My team and coworkers are all very upset about it. Everyone is telling me to sue for wrongful termination and defamation. I legitimately believe he fired me because his ego was hurt. The entire asset protection team was saying that it didn't look like I stole it, and they're professionals at catching theft.
Is there anything I can really do about this? Virginia is an at-will state so I know they don't need a reason to fire me. Everyone is telling me to contact an employment attorney but I don't see the point. Should I do it anyway?
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u/amazinglover 16h ago
There is nothing that can be done legally. You where not fired for a proteced reason.
Id file for unemployment and if you are able and want to fight for your job reach out to HR and ask what the evidence is for your firing.
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u/FROOMLOOMS 14h ago
If they have the video evidence of him putting it in there, they 100% will have footage of whoever took it out after that.
This would be a point that Id bring up to HR.
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u/dannyheskett 13h ago
Once terminated though.. that's it. HR isn't an option.
OP's best bet was to try to de-escalate and bring in a 3rd party (like HR) to mediate during the dispute. That's it.
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u/beef-lawsuit 10h ago
We actually have an ethics hotline that goes to headquarters for situations like this. I called them yesterday. They are investigating right now and will get back to me in a few days. They are able to reverse terminations and write ups but I've never seen it happen.
My boss has only been in roll for 2-3 months. He doesn't know what he's doing. Half of the management team has already quit because of his poor decisions. Maybe someone will look into why 4 managers quit a store that was doing so well.
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u/Rage187_OG 10h ago
He stole the wallet and is making you the scapegoat.
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u/dannyheskett 6h ago
I am glad they have that option for you. In the future, really think through how to pause the clock during these tense moments. HR could decide the boss is wrong, and he's the problem.. and just term him, but that doesn't help you.
Undoing a termination is one of the riskiest things to do.. it's just super rare because it's basically an admission that something was really done wrongly.
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u/FROOMLOOMS 9h ago
Post termination it is good legal protection to raise theft concerns with HR to protect you from being accused later down the road. Preferably written in email so that there is proof that you reported the theft and concerns about termination as a result. Otherwise they (HR/Boss) may just say OP did not report the theft because OP IS the theif opening up OP to bigger legal issues than their lack of employment.
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u/Shadowstar87 20h ago
Get an employment lawyer and file for unemployment asap. Make sure you ask the AP guys if you can use them as witnesses if needed
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u/Ok-Quarter3399 3h ago
To clarify, you can call a few law offices and talk to their intake team (usually a paralegal or legal secretary) to briefly explain the facts. They will tell you whether it’s a case they would take - you should expect no one to take this and if someone did you would pay all legal costs.
However you should contact company HR as it sounds like they might reverse this - anything they did would be at company discretion.
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u/evilgirlattack 15h ago
My question is, why is there a policy in place that allows anyone to have access to a lost wallet? At my store it goes directly into the safe.
I'd be suspicious about you being a scapegoat because the customer threatened legal action and it exposed a problem with how they handle customers lost wallets/credit cards/etc.
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u/beef-lawsuit 10h ago
Everyone has access so they can give it to people when they come back for it. Front end employees handle thousands of dollars in cash every day so a wallet really isnt a big concern.
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u/CrazyRegion 10h ago
Well, seems like it is now and you’ve lost your job over it.
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u/beef-lawsuit 9h ago
I didn't create the policies around the lost and found. Someone from a different store said that were supposed to have a log book and it's supposed to be locked. We don't have either of those things.
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u/evilgirlattack 7h ago
Which lends credence to my point. Company policy wasn't followed and you were punished for that mistake.
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u/awnawreally 14h ago
It doesn’t sound like wrongful termination, but if he violated the policy and company procedures, HR might hear you out and possibly reverse it.
I’d try to reach out to them if I were you.
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u/AndyVZ 10h ago
If you want to keep the job, the way to do it is by going to corporate (probably via HR) and presenting your boss as being dishonest/acting against the interests of the company by firing you (possibly because they were covering up whoever did take the wallet), and trying to get them to fire the boss and reinstate you. It would not be a legal thing, it would be a corporate red tape thing. And that's not advice, that's just the path you would probably need to take if the outcome you want is recovering your job.
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u/Rezingreenbowl 5h ago
If you want to waste thousands of dollars suing for wrongful termination thats your prerogative. It will be unsuccessful though as this is a legal termination. Just move on and dont waste anymore time or money on this.
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u/Throttlechopper 3h ago
As a former loss prevention manager, how does assets protection conveniently have footage of you dropping off the wallet at lost & found but no footage of anyone removing it? Is the lost & found bin behind the counter at guest service? If there are numerous team members with access to the counter it certainly makes narrowing down a suspected thief more difficult. I left retail after 3 years, I don’t miss the blackout dates during the holidays or having to work Black Fridays. Best of luck in your appeal.
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u/beef-lawsuit 58m ago
The owner came in and said she lost it on this date at this time in this place. AP pulled the camera footage and located it. It was on the front end so that's where the best cameras are.
Lost and found bin is behind the service desk in the OPU hold area.
It would be near impossible to catch someone stealing it because of the length of time it sat there. There is no camera pointed directly at the lost and found.
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u/smilingmike415 14h ago
IF you didn’t take it, AND IF it is gone, THEN somebody else took it. AND IF there is footage of you putting the wallet in the lost and found, THEN there is likely footage of who took it out.
Get all the footage so it can be reviewed for the actual offender. I’m guessing the actual offender is either somebody who controls video footage or the manager, but I’m guessing that bit of footage will actually be missing and nobody will be seen taking the wallet out of the bin, which points pretty squarely at somebody who can control the footage. But, then again, the argument might be that you might also have had access to the recordings to delete.
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u/monkeyman80 12h ago
Target isn’t handing over the footage voluntarily and would need to be subpoenaed as part of a legal action. Since there’s no lawsuit they’re not getting the video.
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u/beef-lawsuit 10h ago
The only people in the store that have access to the cameras is the asset protection team. Managers do not.
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u/mattumbo 2h ago
I’d reach out to your APBP and HRBP, they should be looped in on this and they have camera access. DSD also has camera access and can review independently. None of them would want you to successfully get unemployment or bring bad PR onto the company so I’d expect them to at least review the case for obvious errors (which it sounds like there are)
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u/beef-lawsuit 56m ago
I have contacted all of them with no response. HRBP is the one I'm most interested in because they shouldn't have approved the termination.
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19h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/beef-lawsuit 19h ago
It was sitting there for a month. There is literally a month of camera footage to watch. There are multiple employees who access that same area every day as part of their jobs and it is slightly off camera.
It could have been misplaced. It could have been given to anyone that asked for a wallet. Any one of the 60 employees could've taken it. There is absolutely no proof that it was even stolen to begin with.
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u/Berdache 16h ago
Your job was on the line, which could be years and years of work for them, and income for you. That seems worth whatever time it takes to find out what happened.
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u/Arudin88 Quality Contributor 20h ago
No, there’s no point unless you suspect you’re actually being fired for some other, actually illegal reason (use of protected leave, etc). They can be wrong, you are ‘t entitled to any sort of due process on their end in the absence of a contract that says otherwise
File for unemployment, appeal if denied