My name is Whitney xxxxxx, I am 18 years old. I started working as a cashier and beauty advisor at Walgreens in Wood River, IL in December. I worked there in the beginning only a few hours a week. As time lengthened, I began working over 20 hours a week, mostly night shifts. One Sunday morning I was working my regular day shift when a manager said that the main supervisor wanted to speak with me. I immediately went to the office to speak with her, not knowing what she wanted to discuss with me. Little did I know, the guy from loss prevention had been planning on coming that exact morning to speak with me, because our main manager is never there on sundays. So basically she came in that day to talk to me specifically.
When I walked in he said that he wanted me to tell him what was going on. I had no idea what he was talking about and I told him so. He told me that on the previous wednesday during the day, I had made a total void for 47 dollars and some odd cents. He then told me that they had proof that I took the money on camera and had the manager void out the transaction. I told him I did no such thing ever. He told me that if I cooperated, there would be no criminial charges against me. They did not show me the cameras. I then told him I did not take the money, but I would pay the amount they were accusing me of. I only did this because of the accusations and talk about them having me arrested. He kept telling me that I had better admit to what I had done or I would go to jail and then be prosecuted by their law company. If I cooperated then everything would be fine and I could possibly keep my job. I then lied and said I had taken it. I was trying to keep my job and I did not want any trouble with the police, since I had never been in trouble with the law before. He told me I would have to write a statement telling them why I had taken it. I proceded to write the statement saying I took it to "pay a ticket", the easiest thing I could think of, which is not true because I have not had any tickets. He made it sound like if I did this I could keep my job. Right after I paid them the 47 dollars, the manager fired me on the spot saying Walgreens has a no tolerance policy for theft. So basically the whole time they knew they were going to fire me, but not after they got the money in their pocket. A week after the incident I recieved a bill from their law firm saying that if i paid 300 dollars, all charges would go away. If i did not pay this money then they were going to prosecute me and charge me more fines. I ended up paying them a total of around 350.00, for something I did not do. I was trying to be a nice person and tryed to resolve the situation, feeling partially responsible for my drawer, even though I had never stolen anything in my life. Basically I see that I am not the only person they have conned into paying them for a theft they did not commit. They use strong threats to scare teenagers by involving the police, they lie to you and tell you that if you admit to it you can keep your job, then they fire you and try to get more money out of you. Walgreens is a joke! They treat their employees like dirt.
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