Screaming Penguin

The story begins with an accusation against myself and another employee of the Geek Squad. Best Buy participates in a recycling program. Customers can bring in their old unwanted computers and other miscellaneous electronics for recycling. The accusation was that myself and the other employee were removing parts from these recycled units and taking them home for personal benefit. One day, I was asked by one of my managers to come to the back office for a few moments. In the back office, I was told “You have been accused of theft from recycled computers. Other employees have stated they saw you removing components and taking them home.” I was outraged and confused by the situation seeing it as an attack on my character since I am not a thief or a liar. I wrote in my statement that I had not removed any components and taken them home for my personal benefit. I did admit that I would take the units apart, simply to learn the mechanics of how it operated, them put them back together. I would practice seating processors and even re-solder blown components to try and get the unit working again. Seeing as the Geek Squad precincts (the in-store techs) are not allowed to do these things on customer computers, I figured it would be a great way to “learn by doing” without having any collateral damages. Any customer computer that has an issue related to the motherboard or any other repair that required a little more than do-it-yourself has to be sent to the service center for those repairs. I thought a while about why others would make an accusation about me stealing things. I then remembered a time a few months ago when Geek Squad did its annual cleaning. Any parts, cables, and items that had no home behind the precinct where set to be thrown away. Some of these items included optical drives, floppy drives, SATA cables, IDE cables, heat sink fans, casing buttons, etc. Myself and a few other employees were given permission from our supervisor who received permission from a manager to have any of these items if we wanted them. A internal CD-ROM drive grabbed my attention, since I need an optical laser for my senior design project. Other employees also took items from the same pool of items I had gotten my CD-ROM drive from. Back to my statement, I wrote down that I had taken the CD-ROM drive with permission from my supervisor. I was very descriptive in my statement saying “a CD-ROM drive from a Gateway computer.” As anyone with a clue knows, each manufacturer has specific components they use in their products. I knew the drive was from a Gateway computer. I had also remembered that prior to this happening, we had two store used Gateway desktops that were broken, scrapped for parts, then thrown away. I figured the CD-ROM drive was from one of those units. I told the manager who had me writing the statement this event. Her exact words were “You need to put that in your statement. I can't help you if you don't help me.” I put this information in my statement to help clarify the statements against me. Maybe someone saw me take the CD drive and assumed I was stealing. I had no clue this statement would ultimately be the basis of my termination. Two weeks later, I get called into the office. The manager reads off: “..in a statement prepared by you on ...you admitted to removing a CD drive from a Gateway desktop computer and taking it home. You stated you were given permission to remove the item from the store but there is no credible evidence to confirm this. This conduct is a violation of Best Buy's Inappropriate Conduct policy ans consequently, grounds for termination. Your employment with Best Buy is terminated effective immediately.” I was flabbergasted. I tried to help the investigation, which I understood the need for and did not get flustered over, and I get fired over it. Where's the justice in this? No credible evidence? I immediately went to my supervisor who I consider a friend and asked him about it. No credible evidence meant someone above me denied the approval. My supervisor informed me that in his statement he originally wrote down he had approval from said manager for certain items, which he listed. When he handed it in to the manager, who happened to be the manager that approved the removal of the items, the manager told him this is not what the investigation asked for. He was instructed to rewrite his statement by which he wrote, “I did not approve of removal of any parts from recycled computers.” True, the investigation at the time was about the removal of recycled components, but the pool of items that multiple employees drew from were scrap parts, none of which came from recycled units. There is slight hope. Best Buy has a policy called a peer review. In a peer review, five employees (which go from part-timers up to assistant managers) sit in a meeting with you and discuss the results of the termination and decide if the decision was justifiable. If they deem it unnecessary, you can get your job back. If they agree with the termination, the termination is final. The day after I got terminated, I filed for a peer review. I waited a month to hear about my peer review. I went into the peer review and was greeted by 5 employees. They asked me multiple questions to which I replied the corresponding truth. The review took about 30 minutes. After I left, they separately interviewed the terminating manager, the general manager, and my supervisor, who conveniently drove to the peer review together. When I got home, I waited 3 hours and finally got the call. My termination stands. Reason being, the peer review had no evidence that I was given permission to remove the item from the store. What do I think happened? I think poop rolls downhill. I believe the manager was in the wrong and is trying to cover his own backside by denial. It goes from the manager denying, to the supervisor, and down to the good old part-timer of five years (yes, FIVE years) me. Its gone past the fact of my job, it the principle behind the matter now. I am a lot of things, but a liar and a thief are not one of them. This is an attack on my character and for that, I am am highly upset. The entire situation I feel was handled improperly and as a result, the company has lost an important asset to their company. Screw Best Buy.