VIDEO: 65-Year-Old Store Clerk Fired for Denying Food Stamp Cigarette Purchase, She Shares Her Story on Fox and Friends
Yet another person has made headlines for taking a stand ... and this one even lost her job because of it. One convenience store cashier was fired after refusing to allow customers to buy products like Red Bull and cigarettes on their government food stamp cards.
Jackie Whiton, the cashier, shared her story on today’s Fox and Friends. She said, “What happened was, I asked for an ID, and he handed me an EBT [Electronic Benefits Transfer] card. I was unaware of these cash cards, and that they’re allowed to buy beer, cigarettes or whatever, and I told him that he couldn’t buy them and he said he could.”
She continued, “The gentleman behind him and the woman behind him, I mentioned the young man, I said, ‘Do you think the three of us as taxpayers should be paying for your cigarettes?’ and he thought we should.”
The customer ended up leaving the store, but the next day Whiton said a woman came in claiming to be the customer’s foster mother and told her she was wrong and that she should’ve sold him the cigarettes on his cash card. She went on to say, “She complained about me to the home office in South Paris, Maine and they called me and said that I had to sell to these people.”
When she was told that she had to sell to these people, she said, “I told them I had to bow out gracefully because I wanted no part of it, and that I would be giving my notice. The next morning my manager at the store, about nine o’clock in the morning, came out and said, ‘How much notice are you giving them?’ and I said a week or two weeks, whatever it takes.”
She said her boss told her with tears in her eyes, “The home office just called, and you’re all done today.”
Whiton said she’s had overwhelming support after this happened and plans to send a petition to the governor to dissolve these cash cards.
Hear her story from today’s Fox and Friends:
