Sometimes heroes don’t wear capes but instead wear massively overpriced yoga pants.
Two employees of a Lululemon in Georgia have been dismissed by the company for actually trying to do something about thieves who were robbing the store blind.
Surveillance footage captured a scene where three individuals forcefully enter the Lululemon store in Peachtree Corners, Atlanta.
In a swift manner, the thieves seized a significant amount of merchandise before hastily making their escape through the store’s exit.
“No, no, no, you can march back out,” former assistant manager Jennifer Ferguson can be heard saying.
“Chill, b-tch, shut your a** up,” one of the robbers yelled back.
The robbers momentarily stood at the entrance to the store before entering again to grab more merchandise.
The looters allegedly struck that same store nearly a dozen times before. But then, that’s what tends to happen when retailers adopt a “zero-tolerance policy” for chasing or physically engaging with thieves.
That said, the two women followed the alleged robbers out of the store but they didn’t try to stop them.
But they did call the Gwinnett Police Department, whose officers tracked down the alleged thieves and arrested them on felony charges.
The retailer then fired the employees. They broke company policy of allowing anyone who wants to come in and rob the place blind.
“We are not supposed to get in the way,” Ferguson said. “You kind of clear path for whatever they’re going to do.”
Employees aren’t even allowed to report the crimes.
“After it’s over, you scan a QR code. And that’s that,” she said. “We’ve been told not to put it in any notes, because that might scare other people. We’re not supposed to call the police, not really supposed to talk about it.”
A regional manager questioned Ferguson and five-year employee Rachel Rogers on why they decided to call the police. They were then summarily fired and not given a dime’s worth of severance pay.
“I am more than proud to announce that my wife went into ‘fight’ mode,” Ferguson’s husband Jason wrote on Facebook. “She protected herself and the other employees and the store by yelling at them to get out. She defended her space and her people.”
According to Jason, the women were told it would “look bad for Lululemon to be the company calling the police.”
Allowing thieves to get away with it is a better policy for Lululemon, apparently.