I hope this is the correct place for such discussion.
Context: this happened in January 2021. Not looking for legal advice, but looking for opinions. It's also not very serious, just curious as to what others think. This is not an exciting or dramatic story.
I never thought much about it, but it's been irking me lately. This was my very first job. I was hired as a seasonal employee very late into the holiday season. My stay was just a few weeks, and would have been a few weeks longer had it not been cut short.
For my 15 minute break, I would usually buy a ramen bowl and make it in the back room. But one shift, I didn't want to to that anymore because it wasted too much time. 3 min to cook, then wait forever to cool down, then to eat as fast as I can. So this time, I just grabbed a back of chips.
I was made aware upon training, and throughout the weeks from both the managers and other employees, that a specific manager would buy snacks so we could eat for free on break. Simple stuff like chips, cookies, and candy were acceptable. So I grabbed a bag of chips, and grabbed a pop. I had to pay for the pop, so I stood in line. The line was taking too long and wasting minutes of my break, so I put the pop back in the cooler and just took my chips to the backroom. Once again, I was told multiple times that simple snacks were free for employees so there was no problem. Everyone, including the cashiers, saw me take the chips, got to the backroom, and eat them and was never stopped or asked “what are you doing, did you pay for that?”
The next day, I came in and the manager stopped me. She told me that she caught me stealing on camera and that I was being terminated. This was very confusing. I calmly expressed that I thought the snacks were free because that's what I was told. She said, no, only free snacks are the ones I put in that plastic bucket. I said ok, if I mistakenly took a snack that wasn't free, I'll pay for it now. She said no, you are not allowed to pay for it. I questioned her because that did not make sense, if I took something without paying, I'm supposed to pay for it, so why couldn't I give the money owed? I told her several times that I was under the impression that it was fine to grab a snack and that it must have been a simple misunderstanding.
To clarify, I was never told about a specific “snack bucket”, only that small snacks for employees were free in general except for drinks.
She said there were NO exceptions. I told her I didn't have a ride home and started crying. She said that I could reapply when the holiday season was over in a few weeks, but the damage was already done. Why would I come back after being fired for a super small mistake that could have been corrected?
Was it my fault for not understanding? Or is it their fault for never clarifying to me what was free and what was not, and not allowing me to correct a tiny mistake (pay $2)?