We worked at a pretty downhill company, but a decently known one that’s separated into specific branches across the US. It’s a retail chain.
Co-worker, who is 30 years old, told me he has no friends, lives with his dad, and is a religious fundamentalist that has said some questionable things in the past apparently, shows up to work with a gun a few days ago. He was caught (after he had already clocked in and went to the back), and was fired on the spot.
This worker had worked there on and off for 10 years. He knew very well about firearms policies. He had also told me he was going to quit very soon. There’s so much more context, but all roads lead to a pretty terrible end.
We had to hear about this from an 18 year old co-worker, who had caught on to the situation himself from listening in. Management was just going to say nothing to us, there is no security, there is nothing stopping this person from coming back- especially now that he was fired too. Manager even asked me and my s/o if we could cover for a few hours on Sunday (his next shift), without even giving a hint as to why.
Imo this is super fucked up, negligence, and the lives of all others who may not know could be at risk. Most of our staff were 16/17 year olds too.
We’ve let all of them know, and are urging them to not stay if they aren’t comfortable. It’s horrifying thinking about how we were never supposed to know this.
I don’t really know what else to say here, just wanted to rant. No transparency regarding that is disgusting to me. For $9 an hour too.