Here’s a heart warming” story for the holidays as reported by WWL-TV in New Orleans:
Last September, Louisiana Army National Guard Spc. Sherman Crandle volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan for a year.
When the call came, he had been working customer services at Best Buy in Covington for five days, but he says he was told a job would be waiting for him when he returned.
Crandle said that was not the case when he stepped back on American soil two months ago.
“In those 10 days, I called Best Buy checking if I still had my job,” said Crandle, “At one point, they told me no. The only way you was gonna get your job back was if we needed you.”
U.S. law states that returning service members are to be re-employed in the job that they would have attained had they not been absent for military service. A challenge with that resulted in Best Buy re-hiring Crandle, but even that, he said, hasn’t been easy.
“Throughout the rehiring process it took me about a month and a half to get my job back,” he said.
When asked what has happened since the return, he said, “I’ve worked a total like six days so far out of the last three weeks.”
We first started contacting Best Buy last Friday for this story, starting with the corporate headquarters. We heard nothing through Monday, so we called and stopped by the local store in Covington. And still, we have had no response for this story.
I don’t know about you but I’d rather leap into a vat of boiling peanut oil than shop on Black Friday. If you’re insane enough to do so, you might want to skip Best Buy. I’m sure they pay pious lip service to veterans when it suits their needs, but when it really counted in this instance, they initially broke the law and then did the bare minimum to comply with it.
Some holiday spirit.
I don’t need an excuse to avoid Best Buy, but I don’t mind having one either.
And I don’t think I’ve ever done a Black Friday…though I think I got more or less the same sensation a few years ago — after one of the Mardi Gras parades the crush of people pressing against the police barricade was…insane, and not at all in a good way.
That’s dickery indeed, however I notice that they sponsored the annual banquet of CAIR in 2012–which is something positive (Just Google CAIR and see how many references to terrorist organization you get). My guess is that this is a local store problem with a dickhead manager.
When I joined the military, I was given a notice that my employer was required to hire me back when I got out of the service. I thought at the time that it was kind of funny, if I came back after 4 years, they would have to give me my job back. Twenty-one years later, I went back to get the job and the factory had closed 🙁
Actually, the law says 5 years, and I wouldn’t want that job back, unless I couldn’t find anything else. I never understood the requirement, for someone on active duty, but I totally agree it should be the case for guard and reserve members who are deployed.