Kroger review: fired unjustly 22

You are wrong. I am trying to fight. My attorney said I was "constructively terminated". That is when a company makes it difficult for you to stay at your job and after putting up with abuse for a period of time you finally quit. Their tactics include all forms of harassment, physical assault, not allowing medical leave, demotion instead of accommodating for a disability (even when they cause it). The union is ignored when they try to step in and I have an email which was sent to the Union telling them they will not fix it (this was after the third step in the grievance process). The Union V.P. told me this had never happened before but that they would not pursue it further. I have since learned that it does happen. This is the Union's way of saying, "Yes you worked hard, you've paid dues for 14 years but we are not going to uphold the contract or the Federal Law for you." The Human Resource person in my case posted on "Linked In" that one of her job accomplishments was in Union Avoidance. I thought the harassment would stop once I quit, but, after being followed constantly I took a picture of one of the men which had followed me constantly for 2 days and almost caused a wreck when I made a U-turn after I passed the Walmart store where I bank. My husband thought the physical and mental harassment had made me paranoid. And he is right, it has. However, this particular man does indeed work as a manager for Kroger Stores. My schedule is very predictable. I picked up my daughter, as usual, at 9:30pm at Catos and the man's large black truck was parked behind me in a parking lot which was almost empty as only Subway in this shopping area was still open. When we left the parking lot the truck followed us to Sprouts. I was trying to not be paranoid, maybe he needed to pick up something at Sprouts. He parked beside us, again in an almost empty parking lot as Sprouts closes at 10pm. He got out of the truck and followed me into the store talking loudly on his phone. He said he had just left Kroger and noticed she was picking up her daughter and then she went to Sprouts (but maybe he was not talking about me). The store is very small and I went to the back and picked up milk and turned to get the eggs and he was standing there watching me. The only thing in his hand was a phone however he was now talking in a normal voice and I could not here what was being said. There were only 1 or 2 other customers in the store and the cashier noticed the man because he was obviously following me, he wasn't trying to hide it, he was intimidating. She asked if I would like her to call a manager to walk me out. I said no but if she wouldn't mind I would like to take a picture of him. I went to the side aisle she saw him step into when I stepped up to the register. He was standing there, still talking on his phone, and facing the aisle but close enough to see the register. I took his picture in case any thing happened as I had seen on a public service commercial about staying safe for people not wanting to carry a weapon or gun. I found out later that he was a manager at Kroger when I was shopping one day at the frozen dinners on sale and he walked up to me and said, "Can I help you?" He had a Kroger name badge on. I said "No" then picked up what I wanted and left. I didn't want him to think he could intimidate me but it was difficult. You see I've lived in the same place for about 8 years. I live upstairs. This past winter it got cold enough to freeze, a rare thing in Texas. I leave the apartment at 9pm to pick up my daughter almost every night. It had rained a little earlier but the stairs were dry when I took her to work. I take our dog out, usually at 7 or 8 before I leave to pick up my daughter. It was dark but the stairs were fine (I keep salt for the stairs each winter in case of ice although it is rare that I have to use it. The landing was dry, the first two step were also dry. The next 3 steps were solid ice as were the rails attached to the steps. I tried to grab the rail as I fell but my hand slipped. I fell down the remaining 13 steps and stopped on the landing at the bottom which did not have ice on it either. My husband said it looked as if someone had poured cold water over the railing from the walkway. There was no ice on the opposite railing. I can't prove that one of the people from Krogers, such as the one in the black truck did this, but after intentionally being struck with a 30 pound box of candy and the motorized lift I don't doubt it. I would never suggest not fighting. But make sure you are ready for the fight. They are the 4th largest employer in the United States. They are not just grocery stores and sadly, they have the money to buy and sell most people. The Reverend Jessie Jackson, a leading civil rights activist, called for a boycott of Krogers Stores because of the closings this summer which hurt so many predominately black and elderly neighborhoods and then cancelled it. Leaving the people of these neighborhoods in what is now being called a "food desert". Did you have the Reverend's back? A Civil Rights Leader does not have the power to help any of us unless we stand with them. Kroger has now employed a huge law firm out of Houston, Texas which was founded by an amazing man, A. Martin Wickliff, Jr. And yes, this is the son of Aloysius Martin, Sr. If you are too young to know the name, Google him. The man was one of the leaders in the Civil Rights movement, working with politicians, students, and activists to make a better place to live. His son started the largest minority-owned law firm in Texas. He was awarded the first-ever Trailblazer Outside Counsel of the Year Award for his decades of work which promoted diversity. Now...he is the lead attorney on my case against Kroger. He sent a much younger attorney to take my deposition for the trial. I was told it could not last longer than 7 hours. He asked all kinds of questions, most which had nothing to do with the incident or the suit. It took almost an hour to get there through rush hour traffic and started at 9:30 am. Whether they asked for a break or they did, they always stopped the timer. I went straight home after the deposition. I was 7:30. I did not look at the clock when I left but I knew I had been at the The reason I'm suing...A Kroger manager refused to allow me 2 weeks off for my arm to heal after an incident at the store where I was working. I didn't cause the accident. One could say the store manager did because we only had two working manual straddle jacks and I was in the middle of pulling a pallet of candy to the floor when an angry vendor struck me with a box of candy. The store manager didn't want to lose his bonus so he refused to turn in the accident. He had a loud argument with our co-manager who told him he had to because "It is the right thing to do." The co-manager was soon transferred. The Human Resource Manager told the Store Manager and the Co-Manager to "Step Out of It". She said that she would handle it from there on. My manager laughed when I gave him the doctor's note stating that due to the fact I cannot have steroids, I would need time off to heal. The doctor told me and my Store Manager (in a phone call he made to the store manager when he would not approve my time off) that my arm should be fine as long as I did not use it for a few weeks and allowed it to heal naturally. I was then called at home by the Case worker at the Division office and told that I had to go back to work immediately and do everything the Store Manager asked or I would be fired and that if I was fired I would lose my health insurance benefits. I have Stage 4, Inflammatory Breast Cancer. Losing the job was not as important as losing the health care. Because I did what they said (the Case worker and my Store Manager) I now have lymphedema and will have to manage it for the rest of my life. The case is sound. I was later "invited" to a meeting that the Union gave for members concerning our medical coverage. I soon learned that almost everyone in the room had used the Kroger insurance to cover Cancer medical costs. They had people from Kroger there as well as some doctors and the President of the Union gave a speech on why the medical copays were being increased from $50 to $500 for an emergency room visit. They let us know that because of us the other associates would hardly be able to take their children to the doctors because our illnesses had used up a large amount of the money in the account. They also had a doctor let us know that we could have avoided using as much as we did if we had all been doing self exams and having yearly mammograms. We, therefore were the reason they had to agree with Kroger to increase the emergency room co-pays for all associates to $500 from the previous $50. This makes an associate who gets cancer very unpopular and even less likely to go to the doctor and confirm the suspicion they might have cancer. If you leave it long enough it can and probably will kill you and for a self-insured company like Kroger, that takes care of the problem without using the insurance funds. Don't forget that when they offer you a job they use that same insurance as an incentive. "Our pay may not be the best, but our insurance plan makes up for it." Until you have to use it. No one chooses cancer and 1 in three people in the United States gets it. Thankfully, my form of cancer is rare. Only 1 in 1.7 million are diagnosed with IBC each year. In 2012, there was only 1 clinic in the U.S. for IBC. It is at MD Anderson in Houston, Texas. At this clinic an IBC patient in 2012 had a 15% chance of making it through the treatment. Of that 15% that made it through the treatment only 35% made it 2 years. They said if we made it 2 years without the cancer coming back then there was a 50% chance we would make the 5 year goal. They get close to 100 new IBC patients each year. My year I was told they had less than 100. I'm pretty good with percentages so I made a chart. On one side I had the "made its" on the other the "didn't make it". That meant June of 2013 I would be part of the 15 that made it or the 85 that didn't. In June of 2014 I checked the box with 4 patients still battling and June 2017 I threw the chart away. I had used the words patients and battling, made it and didn't make it because I couldn't think about it as people with families, hopes and dreams living or dying. For that matter I called it the big C instead of CANCER and IBC because Inflammatory Breast Cancer has the word Cancer in it. I don't know the names of the almost 98 diagnosed that year that "didn't make it" I was encouraged to stay off the internet and not read the blogs of others with IBC because as uplifting and helpful the blogs of people going through what I went through are, they all ended the same way. The brother or sister or son or daughter or in possibly the saddest one I read, the husband of the patient wrote the last entry stating that due to the death of their loved one there would be no more entries. But, at the moment it is September of 2018 and I AM ALIVE!

The meeting, sanctioned by Kroger, with Kroger and Union and Doctors all present, to let us know we could have avoided spending the money set aside for our health care. The same company that used the insurance as an incentive for you to accept the job. They insinuated that we should have known we had cancer and caught it earlier. They even had the nerve to say that one particular associate used over $240, 000.00 for one procedure. So I stood up, because I am alive and I can still stand up. I let them know that the procedure was actually closer to $248, 000.00 and that IBC is an aggressive cancer which spreads rapidly and that most doctors, including mine, did not recognize it for what it was. They often treat it as a rash, my mammogram and biopsy came up as Stage 1 which is what most people have normally inside of them. Thankfully, I have a sister who called a friend to get me in immediately at MD Anderson to check it out. My Stage 1 turned to Stage 3 within the first week and spread to the thorax to become Stage 4 the third week. I asked how the doctor thought I could have prevented it and since this form of cancer is expensive to treat and attacks both male and female should I have chosen not to have treatment or should I have given up half way after going through hell to "make it".

Texas did not strike with California in 2004 or 2005. We should have. We thought that it wouldn't happen here. We worked for a better company than Ralph's. Wake up, America. It's the same company. The same company that after Kroger lost the suit for their treatment of minorities in the North, had the top Southwest Division Manager, Bill Breetz write an apology letter to those minorities. If you haven't read it, you should. It was like a last ditch effort to put down the people who the courts said were right. Listen when leaders such as Reverend Jesse Jackson

My attorney wants me to accept a settlement offer instead of taking it to court. I am so tired that there are times when I think that is what I should do. But, if I do that, then I help no one...They told me that most people with my form of cancer need to understand that when the doctor says that some people make it, They are not talking about me and that when They say not everyone loses their hair, that's not me and if They say not every one gets so sick with the treatment that they'd pay someone to kill them if they could just reach the phone, I'm not that one either. They said, You have IBC and you will lose your hair and you will get sick and there will be times when you will think death is a better option, but They were wrong about my survival, at least for now. I AM ALIVE... for now. And, God willing, I will make a difference in how this company treats people, those with disabilities caused by illness, birth or accidents because when They say some people can help others who cannot help themselves, They are talking about me. My disability is not cancer it is lymphedema which was caused by Kroger management. I wouldn't have it if I didn't have the operations needed to remove my lymph nodes in my left arm. I also would not have it if the manager had listened to my doctor and the case worker not threatened me with losing my health insurance benefits. But now that I do have it, I expect this company to do the right thing. And I recognize that with all of my evidence instead of doing the right thing, they have done everything they can to make me disappear. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for someone who is treated badly and doesn't have the medical proof on there side.
For now I can stand up. If I accept a settlement and do not let others know what the company knowingly put me through then I have helped no one but my attorney. And to be honest going up against the 500+ lawyer firm they recently hired is probably not something a 2 attorney firm wants so I doubt this is doing anything for him but causing stress. He even told me that winning a federal case in Ft. Worth, Texas is impossible. He believes the judge will throw out the evidence because he said in Ft. Worth the judges side with the businesses, he doubts a jury will be allowed to listen to the recordings of the Human Resource Manager stating that I am being demoted due to cancer complications and that Krogers is not willing to make any accommodations for the disability which I now have. By the way, the only accommodation I needed was someone to unload the truck onto about 4 carts. 15 minutes twice a week. 3 times a week if they put me in a big store. I was hired because of my management ability and placed in the district store for 4 years and in their Confirmation store until I requested to be moved to a smaller store. At no time was I required to unload the truck although I did it sometimes. They wrote a new list of job specifications after my lymphedema was diagnosed and I had started seeing a special therapist trained in reducing the swelling without surgery which included my inability to lift the totes from the truck although it did not impair my speed and ability to stock. I know I may not win. My attorney does not want to take it to court in Ft. Worth against Kroger because while he thinks I have a good case, once the judge throws out the evidence it will be he said, she said and he does not believe a Federal judge will allow a jury to hear any of it. He may be right. But if I don't stand up against them, who will. My doctors assure me that my IBC will win because it always does. So the power they have over most who go up against them doesn't mean much to me. They can't kill me, the cancer has already done that. Even if I win, I'll never live long enough to see any of the money, I doubt the courts can make them pay for years if ever due to appeals. Hopefully, a fund can be set up which Kroger cannot touch so that Kroger associates can file a class action for the mistreatment of the disabled at Krogers. And it is my dream that the government look into cases where associates are demoted due to disability. Texas is a Right To Work State not a Right To Abuse The Worker State.

Go to legal aid