This is an article from the New London Day, I think we should all go shopping at "Home Depot" and not pay for anything.

Waterford - By all accounts, 24-year-old Randy Heon of Norwich was a model employee at Home Depot, until the day this summer when a shoplifter carted off a bunch of chainsaws and he tried to interfere.

Soon after, the home-supply company fired him.

”I was thinking I was helping the company,” said Heon, who had been with Home Depot for six years, starting in high school.

Heon said he was behind the desk in the garden center at the Route 85 Home Depot when an associate yelled, “Help, shoplifter!” and he ran over and grabbed at the cart the suspect was using to load up his car. But Julie Cleary, another witness and a store employee, said she saw Heon trying to pry an item out of the shoplifter's hands.

”Afterward, the loss-prevention guy at the building said, 'Good job,' “ Heon said. “Customers said I had done a good job, too.”

Yet Heon's termination papers clearly cite his run-in with the shoplifter as a violation of company policy and the reason for his firing.

”On June 30, 2008, Randy Heon was involved in an incident in which he pursued a shoplifter attempting to remove unpaid merchandise from the store,” reads the undated documents. “As a result of the (major) violation ... Randy Heon's employment is being terminated effective immediately.”

A manager at the local Home Depot would not comment on the incident, referring questions to the home office, which didn't respond to a message.

Heon, a former associate of the month at the Lisbon Home Depot store and a manager in Waterford, said he was shocked at the firing, which occurred about a month after the incident. Heon said he was fired only after the shoplifter was caught and police and store managers reviewed a security videotape that showed Heon chasing after the suspect.

A district loss-prevention specialist, according to Heon, insisted that Heon be fired on the spot.

”He was told that he should have simply waved and told the man to 'Have a nice day,' “ said Heon's 30-year-old girlfriend, Jessica Glenn, in an e-mail. “Can this really be legal?”

Not only is it legal, experts said, but Home Depot has fired several employees in other locales for similar incidents. In Midwest City, Okla., for instance, four Home Depot employees lost their jobs last year in a single incident when they helped police catch shoplifters.

”Employers decide what happens in the workplace,” said Jacques Parenteau, a New London attorney who specializes in employment law.

Parenteau said workplace rules that restrict an employee from interfering with a shoplifter are meant to protect employers from potential lawsuits filed by workers who are hurt in such incidents. They also protect against ambiguous situations in which employees may act like “cowboys” and wrongly accuse customers of stealing, he said.

David Cadden, a professor of management at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, added that companies could potentially be sued by shoplifters if they were injured in the course of being apprehended.

Cadden said large companies began instituting shoplifting policies about 15 years ago when they decided they had more to lose from lawsuits than from pilfering.

”It happens when an organization is terrified of the potential for lawsuits and they are willing to accept a certain degree of loss,” he said.

Cadden said he doesn't personally agree with such policies because of their effects on morale as well as their one-size-fits-all mentality. But he understands that companies must be consistent in their application of the rules or they could face lawsuits from fired workers.

Heon said he has considered filing suit, and may yet do so. But Parenteau said such suits are long shots because, assuming the worker finds another job within a few months, it is hard to prove much in the way of economic loss that won't be eaten up by court costs.

Heon admits that he was aware of the company policy against pursuing a shoplifter. But he said he never touched the suspect and only pursued the car long enough to get a description and the plate number.

The firing left Heon without health insurance at around the same time he found out that his girlfriend is pregnant. Heon has since added to his hours at Mohegan Sun, where his work includes being a bouncer at the Ultra 88 nightclub, but he would rather have his job back at Home Depot.

”I should have been given a warning,” Heon said. “I don't think it was a bad thing to try to stop someone. What would have been the right thing to do - let him get away with the stuff?”