I was a 27 at the time for our local Walmart in the backroom. So one day we were backed up but required to get pallets down from our top steel, which requires machines to grab. Our machines were down so our managers told us to grab ladders and cut the plastic off the pallets and grab the items. I immediately refused cause not only was it dangerous it was against policy. So my boss told me “Well I guess you're going to be out of a job” over the walkie. Everyone told me to just do it and I refused, I had enough of just bending and breaking rules for a company.
So the following weeks the manager started writing me up for “uncompleted tasks” which I confronted her about and others. I brought the attention to the store manager which was greeted with “We will look into it”
Before she could fire me I got into fireman rookie school which soon became a fireman for 5 years and worked an Amazon dsp job during my move to eventually working a dream job for a major video game company, but it always made me wonder if I could've went for legal action.
So without a copy of a recording of her saying that, could I have pursued legal action for bringing the situation to my store manager for not doing anything to a manager that was trying to get me fired for not breaking the rules? I always felt I couldn't do anything cause I didn't have recordings and I know my co-workers wouldn't testify because they were afraid of losing their jobs.