For once we really hate it having to declare the termination of our custom with a particular store, but we have no choice. Most of the time, the business in case is one we’d never do business with in the first place or it’s some business that we really didn’t give a flying Fluke about in the first place, but we’ve gotten many a good spare part from the AutoZone.
No longer, after reading this story:
When former AutoZone employee Devin McClean grabbed his gun from his car and chased an armed robber out of his store, he didn’t think his quick thinking would get him fired.
Ah, just like the Pizza Hut story from years ago when a delivery guy committed the mortal offense of using his legally owned and carried handgun to keep himself from being mugged, brutalized and/or murdered because of Zero Tolerance™ (of letting your employees defend themselves). But no, that’s not quite it. This is worse, if such a thing can be imagined.
As it turns out, McClean’s Yorktown, Va., store was being robbed by the so-called “fake-beard bandit” (probably the worst nickname in the history of crime), a criminal who had already knocked over about 30 businesses in the Virginia Peninsula area.
As the gunman forced the manager to unlock the store’s safe, McClean, a 23-year-old Air Force veteran, slipped out the back to retrieve his Glock 40 from his truck.
Freeze, right there. McClean observes his manager having a gun shoved into his face by an ObamaPhone voter and, instead of cowering under a desk, praying for the BlightBringer to come save him, decides that maybe it’s not OK for his boss to have his head blown off and the store’s funds stolen. So he goes to grab his legally owned weapon to turn the table on the goblin.
“I waited for him to go up toward the front, I ran out of the restroom, ran out to my truck where I keep my own personal weapon, grabbed my weapon, came back into the store and confronted the guy,” McClean recalls.
“When I yelled ‘freeze’ and I said ‘Stop! Drop the weapon,’ he threw his hands up with his gun still in his hand he started running,” the former AutoZone employee adds. “I felt like it was my responsibility to step in.”
The gunman wisely chose to flee.
“I watched him run down the street,” McClean told Fox News. “I came back inside and made sure my manager was okay and he called the police.”
Great! He saved the company’s funds but, more importantly, saved his manager from a sudden death of lead poisoning caused by the twitchy trigger finger of a thug. Good guy! Give the man a medal!
Or, if you’re AutoZone, fire the guy for doing what’s right.
But although the store’s manager was grateful for his employee’s bravery, McClean was fired two days later — right before Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving, brave employee who risked his own life to stop a felony in progress when you could have just had a smoke in the parking lot while your boss got robbed and/or murdered! We thank you for your service!
Other than to reiterate the company’s zero tolerance policy on weapons inside stores, AutoZone representatives refuse to comment on McClean’s firing.
Obviously their zero tolerance policy only extends to their employees, not to their “customers” waving them around and threatening to blow the faces off their employees.
Are you pissed off at GoblinZone now? Wait, it gets better:
And being laid off couldn’t have come at a worse time for McClean: He’s about to be a father.
“We’re having a little boy,” he said. “I remember when the guy came in with that gun. My initial thought was I want to make it home to my family. I want to have the opportunity to meet my son and for my son to meet his dad. And for someone to come in and shove a gun in your face?”
The former AutoZone employee explains that his decision to go back into the store and rescue his co-workers was informed by lessons he learned in the U.S. Air Force.
“Never leave a man behind,” he said. “I’m not going to leave my brother in a room with a guy with a gun — that’s threatening his life.”
Oh, and your kid? Yeah, you’re now “funemployed”, courtesy of the AutoZone. Merry Christmas too! And a Happy New Year!
Fuck you, AutoZone, I won’t ever buy as much as a screw from you from this day going forward.
Merry Christmas.
Thatisall.