A former Bay Area Home Depot employee sued the retail giant for age discrimination and wrongful termination after she was let go just days after ringing up $5,000 worth of fraudulent transactions.
Carleen Acevedo, 72, worked as a cashier for seven years at the San Ramon Home Depot before being let go in July 2023, ABC News 7 reported. According to her termination letter, Acevedo created “a security or loss prevention risk” for the store after ringing up four fraudulent transactions, which resulted in a more than $5,000 in loss for Home Depot.
The termination came four days after the cashier reportedly worked alone in the store’s Garden Center when a man approached her register with a card with written instructions on the back telling her to process the transaction as a cash sale. After processing a purchase totaling just over $1,300, Acevedo recalls the same man returning 30 minutes later demanding her to ring up three additional separate transactions as cash totaling more than $4,000.
“I just got a funny feeling about it, and the card was suspicious. It was very suspicious, but I went ahead and ran it,” Acevedo said. “And then I knew he was targeting me because I was alone.”
She claims to have tried calling her supervisor, the head cashier, but they didn’t respond. Acevedo says she was “scared” by the customer’s behavior during the exchange and feared for her life.
“He was demanding. He wanted the transaction done as fast as possible,” she recalled. “He got upset when I made the phone call to my manager.”
She kept duplicate copies of the receipts that she took to her manager. However, four days after the encounter, she was fired. The incident came three months after a Home Depot Loss Prevention Officer at a nearby location was shot and killed while trying to stop a theft attempt, a story Acevedo was familiar with.
Acevedo was reportedly a star employee at the store who won multiple awards for exceptional service, including Cashier of the Year in 2021. She recalls Home Depot offering annual computer-based training on what to do in the event of a shoplifting or active shooter.
“I was instructed not to do a thing. Do not approach, do not touch, do not try to dissuade, to interfere, just let them go,” she said.
Hence, her response to completing the fraud transaction, her lawsuit, states.
“She was doing everything she could. She asked for backup. She’s making copies of the receipt. You know she can’t risk her life for merchandise, and employees are explicitly taught not to risk their life for merchandise,” Acevedo’s attorney, Chambord Benton-Hayes, stated.
Elsewhere, the suit cites the timing of Acevedo’s termination, which came six months after she complained about the pay disparity between her and a teenage new hire making $21 an hour and her $20.17. After complaining, she received a $2 raise, but believes management was looking for a reason to terminate her after calling out what she cites as age discrimination.
Eventually, Acevedo was able to bounce back from the “devasting” experience and find new part-time work. But not without it taking a huge toll on her overall wellbeing.
“I lost so much. I lost my health care. My health declined as a result of that. I had difficulty finding work, and paying my rent was put into question,” she said.
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