You may have heard of the controversial firing of Portland, Oregon, Home Depot employee Dillon Reagan that happened a little over a year ago. What played out that crazy day back in May, 2017, was like a scene out of a movie.
Reagan was finishing up his shift at the storeโs tool rental center when he heard his coworker yell for help. Apparently, there was a violent domestic dispute taking place in the parking lot. Soon after things got very chaotic, KGW.com reports.
โAt the time, the only thing I was thinking about was the childโs safety,โ said Regan who worked at the Home Depot for four years. โI stepped outside and sure enough, thereโs this lady whose frantic and crying, โSomebody help me, please! Heโs stealing my kid, heโs kidnapping my child!โ
Reagan and his coworker temporarily excused themselves from their shift to call the police, and at the dispatcherโs urging, they continued to pursue the man on foot for about three blocks until the police responded to the scene. After giving their statements to the officers, Reagan said they both returned to the store about 10 minutes later.
When he got back to the store, Reagan was subsequently scolded by his supervising manager, who said he did the wrong thing and that he should have just gone back to work. It seems that by leaving the storeโs premises during his shift, he had violated the companyโs safety policy.
This was Reaganโs second offense in less than a month, as just a few weeks prior he had been written up for arguing with a coworker.
On June 19, he was fired from the company in a meeting where they once again reminded him of his actions on May 12, although if given the chance he said he would do the same thing all over again.
โIt was still the right thing to do,โ said Reagan. โI was kind of in a catch-22 situation, Iโm damned if I do, damned if I donโt. โ
There were a large number of twists and turns between the store and where the police finally apprehended the suspect, and if Reagan hadnโt followed the man, the officers would never have known where to look for him.
KGW News reached out to Home Depot about the situation. In a short statement, Home Depot responded:
โThis was a very complex situation, so weโre taking another look at the decision. We always want to be certain that weโre treating any associate fairly.โ
Luckily for Reagan, in the most recent update the company decided to reverse their decision, but not before he had been out of work already for some time. Their updated statement is as follows:
โWe took a second look at this and have let Mr. Reagan know that weโve decided to reverse our decision, based on the circumstances. We always do our diligence to make sure associates are treated fairly, which weโve done in this case.โ
Although they also promised Reagan he would receive back pay for the hours he had missed after he had been laid off, Reagan still was very uneasy about the situation. When asked if he would take them up on their offer, he initially said no.
However, after some further deliberation he decided that he would indeed go back to work.
โGoing back to work at Home Depot may not be ideal and I am still hesitant and wary about being back, but I think itโs the best choice, right now.โ
The main reasons according to Reagan were that he enjoyed working with the other employees in his department, and also that he liked helping customers with projects.
See the video below for the full story from KGW.
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