By now we should all know the story of Maurice Rucker, the 60-year-old Home Depot employee who was fired from his job at an Albany, N.Y., store after he responded to the racist verbal abuse a customer lobbed his way.
“If Trump wasn’t president, you wouldn’t even have a job,” the customer allegedly yelled at him. “You’re from the ghetto, what do you know?”
All of this because Rucker asked him to put his dog on a leash.
Rucker, who had been recently named “Cashier of the Month” and had been working for 10 years was unceremoniously dumped because he didn’t follow “proper protocol to defuse the situation,” and because he snapped back, “You’re lucky I’m at work, because if I wasn’t, this wouldn’t be happening, or you wouldn’t be talking to me like this.”
However, after a brutal dragging on social media, also helmed by our own Suge Knight aka Deputy Managing Editor Yesha Callahan Trash Depot the home improvement retail giant miraculously saw the light and offered Rucker his job back.
Rucker, however, was unimpressed, telling the Washington Post that he has no intentions of going back to his old job.
“[Home Depot’s decision] has nothing to do with me,” Rucker told the news site. “It has to do with the media reaction to them firing me ... The fact they can fire me after 10 years for reacting to someone who is racist is insane.”
Rucker said based on his past experiences at the store, and the fact that he felt underappreciated and underpaid (after working there for 10 years, Rucker was only making just about $13 an hour) he no longer had any interest.
“I felt like there wasn’t a whole lot of love for me there,” he said.
In other words, Rucker hit ‘em with the old “I’m good luv, enjoy.”
Rucker told the Post that before he was fired, he had been written up twice by his supervisors. One was for alleged poor customer service at a previous store, which was done in absentia, according to Rucker. He actually did not know of his first write-up until he was written up a second time after he threw fertilizer into the wrong trash can.
“I went to work every day thinking I could be fired. Every task I did, I wondered if I could get fired for this,” Rucker said. “There was a passive bias toward me at that particular store.”
In the meantime, Rucker has been driving for Lyft to buffer his loss of income. And the rest of his community is rallying around him as well. Albany County Executive Daniel P. McCoy called him last week to discuss employment with the county government.
“What happened to Mr. Rucker was nothing short of an injustice,” McCoy said through a spokesperson, according to the Post. “No one deserves to be treated with such hostility, and I was concerned with the way the situation was handled. [His] former colleagues and customers have all attested to his professionalism at work, and I look forward to meeting with him.”
A GoFundMe that was started in Rucker’s honor has also already raised more than $3,000, with 122 supporters donating to help him.