LEAGUE CITY, TX (March 10) A man who helped lead his store in rebuilding Galveston County in the wake of Hurricane Ike plans to file a grievance against The Home Depot because the big-box retail giant won't pay him the bonus he feels he deserves.
Dave Mundy, 50, of Texas City, took over as the lumber and building materials department supervisor at Home Depot Store 1853 in League City, Texas, only days before Hurricane Ike struck the Houston area.in the months following the storm, the massive amounts of sales in Mundy's departments helped the store achieve a $9 million profit above planned sales for the fourth quarter of FY resulting in a double-bonus for department supervisors for the period ending Jan. 31.
Mundy won't be getting that bonus, however — because he quit in frustration Feb. 18. The money which would have been his, by his estimate something in the vicinity of $4,000, will instead be shared by senior management within the company the same senior management responsible for the staffing formula which led to Mundy walking out.
All I want is what I earned, said Mundy, a veteran of eight years in the retail industry who also spent more than 20 years in the newspaper business. What's fair is fair.
Mundy claims that on Feb. 18, he was trying to cover the extremely busy lumber and building materials departments by himself because the staffing formula for his store did not call for additional associates in those departments. A customer needed a load of fence pickets forklifted into his vehicle, and when Mundy called on his walkie-talkie for a spotter required by Home Depot policy as a safety measure he got no response elsewhere in the store. After calling several times over 15 minutes, Mundy got on the forklift and took care of the customer who was so grateful, he even slipped a $2 tip into Mundy's shirt pocket despite his objections.
He was then informed by the store manager that because he had violated safety policy, his license to operate the forklift would be lifted and he would face disciplinary action. Feeling that reaction was unfair because of the lack of available help, Mundy went to the associate break room, said good-bye to other associates with whom he'd developed a close rapport over the months following the storm, and walked out of the store.
My departments were still doing nearly 200 percent of comp sales when I left, Mundy said, but much of the time I and my associates were forced to try and cover both of those departments solo. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place I could anger and lose my customer and risk losing my job, or I could risk my job by violating a safety rule. I took care of my customer.
To make matters worse, Mundy received a phone call from store management the next day asking him to come back to the store to discuss the situation to enable the company to officially terminate him for cause.
I was asked to come back in and the store manager and one of his assistants asked me if I wanted to quit or did I want to stay on, Mundy said. I read them a statement I'd prepared, that I really didn't want to leave and would like the chance to remain in a different capacity, but at no time during that interview was I on the payroll nor did I indicate that I considered myself still a Home Depot associate. They told me that the decision to terminate' had been made at the district level before we ever sat down to meet. They lured me back in to cover their legal bases.
Mundy was told by District 185 Human Resources Manager Noel Alvarez on March 9 that Home Depot policy is very strict on this, and that the bonus is only for people who are still employed at Home Depot.
So in other words, Mundy said, the senior management has an incentive to frustrate hard-working people like me into quitting because they get our bonus.
Mundy says he has attempted to follow The Home Depot chain of command to appeal, but when I got to the region they sent me right back to Noel.
He now plans to file a grievance with the Texas Workforce Commission in an attempt to recover the money.
In this political climate, it hardly seems fair for a company like The Home Depot to deny me something that I worked very hard to earn while making vast amounts of money for the company, even as it pays out a severance package worth millions of dollars to a former CEO who nearly ran this company into the ground, Mundy said. All I'm asking is that The Home Depot do the right thing. I earned that money.
Dave
Texas City, Texas
U.S.A.
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