He's Out at Home

August 2nd, 2006
By Suzanne Kapner
NY Post

Another former Home Depot employee has filed a complaint against the company that alleges he was wrongfully terminated for failing to improperly charge vendors for damaged or defective merchandise.

Roger A. Fredrickson, 65, who ran the indoor garden department at a Home Depot store in Pell City, Ala., from April 19 through June 20, is the third former staffer to bring a complaint against the giant home improvement retailer over the matter of return-to-vendor charges. The other two ex-employees are Michael Davis and Ellen Sharp, who both worked in an Aspen Hill, Md. store. Mark Schwartz of Bryn Mawr, Pa., represents all three complainants.

The accusations have caught the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is conducting an informal investigation into the situation.

Home Depot said that it had not received a copy of Fredrickson's complaint, and therefore could not comment on it.

The retailer did confirm, however, that Fredrickson was terminated in June for "a violation of the company's code of conduct."

According to the complaint - copies of which were mailed this week to the U.S. Department of Labor in Birmingham, Ala., and the SEC - Fredrickson lost his job after he accidentally struck a manufacturer's rep "very gently in the groin" while telling a story.

Fredrickson, a retired telecommunications engineer, ran into trouble at Home Depot about six weeks after he was hired.

He allegedly used hooks to hang clipboards in his department and tried to enter them into the computer to show they had been marked down for "store use," meaning that a debit would accrue to the store.

Instead, according to the complaint, Brandi Hefner, head of the service department, said the hooks should be entered as "damaged goods," meaning that the vendor would cover the cost and the store would receive a credit.

Fredrickson refused to enter the hooks as "damaged goods," because, according to the complaint, he believed that claiming credit for goods used by the store would be "fraudulent."

Vendors are only supposed to cover the cost of items that are returned to the store by customers, because of damages or defects, according to half a dozen current and former Home Depot employees.

In the complaint, Fredrickson asserts that he was retaliated against by store management, who assigned him tasks that were too physically demanding for his age, including hauling shipping crates in 100-degree heat and unloading trucks without the assistance of a forklift.