Target Employee commits suicide after wrongly accused of theft; Target forces "Walk Of Shame"

Target Employee With Aspergers Commits Suicide After Walk Of Shame

The mother of a former cashier at Target in Pasadena is suing the retailer, alleging that her son committed suicide after being humiliated by management.

In the lawsuit, Virginia Gentles claims her son, 22-year-old Graham Gentles, was driven to suicide after he was accused of stealing, handcuffed and "paraded" through the store in front of coworkers and customers.

"He said that it was the worst day of his life because he didn't understand what was going on," said Virginia Gentles. "They humiliated him. Umm, that was their purpose."

Graham Gentles jumped to his death from the roof of the Courtyard Marriott in Monrovia on July 18, three days after he was allegedly required by Target management to take part in what the lawsuit calls a "walk of shame."

The lawsuit alleges false imprisonment, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

According to the complaint, Graham Gentles was met by police and Target security personnel at the front of the store as he arrived for work on July 15.

Graham Gentles was taken to the police station, but he was released the same day and never charged.

The suit says Gentles, who had Asperger's Syndrome, "experienced severe emotional distress" following the arrest.

The complaint alleges that an argument between Graham Gentles and a coworker at a bar outside of work hours may have prompted the incident. The suit says it's believed that allegations made by the coworker led to store management calling for Gentles' arrest and "walk of shame."

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This practice needs to stop. There's another way to go about this without humiliating someone who may be innocent. From what I hear, Wal-Mart does this as well. Let's face it, you don't know someone is going to react to such a thing.

a reply to: Anyafaj

I used to work in loss prevention, and when I'd inform the person I saw shoplift they were under arrest I'd do it discreetly and give them the option of either casually walking with me to my office..or try to get away and force me to chase them thereby humiliating them (back then you could chase the suspect, but since people began to get stabbed etc. that practice stopped).

This obviously didn't work with everyone, and with that thought in mind, a lot of people steal. I've arrested people of all ages, races etc..having worked in a major city you see it all.

All retailers interview and process shoplifters and employees who are caught stealing in an office. That means everybody gets walked to the office. And then gets walked out of the store. That's not going to change, because there's not really any way to catch a shoplifter without anybody else seeing it. The best they can do is not create a scene, and go directly to and from the office.

That being said, I'm floored that they jammed this guy up with no apparent cause. Usually retailers don't pull an employee without any kind of investigation beforehand. But I will wait and see what comes out of this as time goes on. With target not having any comment, there's really only one side of the story to go on.

I guess I might as well cross Target off my list of places to shop; along with Walmart and Sams. Pay their employees poorly and treat em like s***! When the corporate model only cares about profit; somethings seriously wrong.

It's going viral on social media. The blow back on Target will cost them millions. Ironic

a reply to: Shamrock6

Think it is more how they did it, made it such a public thing.

You are right though they do walk them to and out, well I have seen them not get walked out all the way, just the LP guy watch them leave

originally posted by: olaru12
I guess I might as well cross Target off my list of places to shop; along with Walmart and Sams. Pay their employees poorly and treat em like s***! When the corporate model only cares about profit; somethings seriously wrong.

It's going viral on social media. The blow back on Target will cost them millions. Ironic

Even though this incident of suicide probably has nothing to do with this... Target is presently being, "Walked out of Canada" for their stupidity and bad business practices. What is interesting however is even though Target failed miserably and is closing 100 plus stores and letting 17,000 plus employees go, the executives are sharing mega-bonuses. Go figure eh?

Cheers - Dave

target is not in a good place right now, with the whole fiasco in Canada and pulling out, now this is going viral. O boy.

originally posted by: olaru12
I guess I might as well cross Target off my list of places to shop; along with Walmart and Sams. Pay their employees poorly and treat em like s***! When the corporate model only cares about profit; somethings seriously wrong.

It's going viral on social media. The blow back on Target will cost them millions. Ironic

On top of their already having to close stores in Canada and all of their credit card security breaches.


Get it together Target!

I like Target, it's cleaner and better organized than Wal Mart, which stinks to high heaven and the peeps freak me out.

a reply to: olaru12

Canada just kicked their lame asses out of the country by refusing to shop there. Billions and Billions lost and management still doesn't know what happened. Hahahahhhaa!

walk of shame eh? Sorry woudnt a did any walking. they a had to drag me. No i assert my rights and as such i will not comply. Its a shame no investigation just take someones word for it. I worked for LOWES and we knew better than to do this crap. Thats how people get killed.

Oddly enough, most girls I've met would rather shop at Target than WalMart- the aisles are wider, the lighting comes off as brighter (lower ceilings) and I guess the color red is more attractive to them.


My first job was at Target- working warehouse. Minimum wage, they had me working two jobs with different names so I could get more than 40 hours in. Mandatory bonus hours during holidays, no time and a half. I went by 'Archie' for my bonus hours- The best part was Archie had a real imprinted name tag, where mine was a sticker.
I probably worked at a half dozen other retail based jobs between there and starting an actual career- As far as I can tell, not a single one of those retail shops is run by a local manager with any sense of morality.


Not sure if it's fair to blame the corporation- they encourage results, and the kinds of degenerate assholes that simply don't care about what's nice tend to float to the top of the retail crowd.

I think Target should reevaluate their protocols for these incidents. That being said, Aspies can drive themselves crazy over things most people would normally be steamed about for a few days or so. Dwelling, obsessing, unable to handle the emotion that feels like the weight of the world on your shoulders. It's no walk in the park, it's really a shame this had to happen to make Targets "Walk of Shame" tactic go viral.

I used to do loss prevention.

There were very rare occasions (I'm talking a lot of money involved, tens of thousands) when we would have police pick people up when they got to work, but the majority of the time an employee would be called back to the office discreetly and then interviewed by two of us. One sitting behind the person (super uncomfortable), the other facing directly.

Typically we could get the employee to confess VERY quickly, write and sign a statement, fire them, escort them out of the building (not in cuffs unless police were involved) and trespass them. Then legal would handle the rest. We actually went through a fair amount of training, got flown around and took classes that were usually for police etc. This was back when loss prevention was fun. When police were involved it was pretty much the cops showing up and arresting the person at their next scheduled shift, then taking them since we already had mounds of documentation and were almost certainly working with LE at that point. They would generally conduct those interviews.

We always took someone that we apprehended (non employee) the most discrete way possible to our office (or in some cases holding area). Exactly for this reason. Someone could come out and claim that we were parading someone around in cuffs to show off/humiliate them. I worked in three districts, and only one of the stores had an LP office in the front. There is no way around having some people see a person usually. It's not a parade, and if any employees said anything they would be in deep crap.

This is sad, but I'm doubting that the guy was intentionally paraded. I'm also sort of doubting that he was arrested and taken to an office. Asset/loss prevention hand people off to LE, not the other way around.

"The walk of shame is a Target policy to purposely cause shame, embarrassment and emotional distress to any Target employee who is suspected of stealing from Target,'' the suit states. "The policy consists of employees being arrested and paraded in handcuffs through the Target store in full view of co-workers and customers.''

That whole thing is complete BS. There is no way that's policy. Legal wouldn't stand for it. Loss prevention has gotten a whole lot more strict in the last 5 years, and even when I was doing it more than 5 years ago that would have been a huge no no.

I'm doubting a lot of this story. There is no way you interview an employee without legal and a higher up allowing it. Hearsay is NOT enough. I'm betting there is a lot more that the families lawyer is not saying.

originally posted by: Yeahkeepwatchingme
I think Target should reevaluate their protocols for these incidents. That being said, Aspies can drive themselves crazy over things most people would normally be steamed about for a few days or so. Dwelling, obsessing, unable to handle the emotion that feels like the weight of the world on your shoulders. It's no walk in the park, it's really a shame this had to happen to make Targets "Walk of Shame" tactic go viral.

As the mother of an autistic child, my daughter has obsessed over the weather for the last 13 years now. I honestly don't know how long an Aspie will obsess over something. Heck, my daughter obsessed over a great-grandfather passing away for 4 years. And she didn't even know the guy! They will grab hold of something whether it is major or minor and obsess over it to the point of even driving you up the wall. I've totally been there. I really hope this incident causes these big stores to stop this practice, but somehow I doubt it.

a reply to: Domo1

I agree with you. I worked for a time at Target and knew the asset protection people at our store enough to recognize when they were onto someone. I never saw them "parade" anyone
.

I have also worked in a job where I dealt with several different types of autism, and it is possible that this kid thought he was paraded and humiliated because that's how he perceives the world.

Is anybody ever going to be an adult and say, "STOP! Grow the F up. Get over it. So you were walked out of the store in handcuffs. Big deal. Smile. Laugh. Who cares?"

Instead, we enable and encourage this victim mentality?

The dude decided to jump off a building.

That was his choice. Now his mother has to blame Target.

Target didn't make the dude walk up on the roof and jump off. That was his choice.

a reply to: Anyafaj

interesting...

I used to work at Target some time back and I have never heard of nor seen the "walk of shame" they are referring to. On the other end I have taken shoplifting calls where security confronts the individual at the front door and moves them into a security office to wait for police to arrive. Some times those offices are located on the sides of or the back part of the stores. Regardless of where its at the person is going to be noticed by everyone since there is no real private way to get there.

I am curious about the specific details on what he was accused of and if anyone actually observed it.

I dunno... something is just not sounding right.

a reply to: Anyafaj

Man I used to work retail back in the day and I would have never done that. I never accused any one of stealing unless I knew exactly where the object was on their person.

They were given two options.. Give it back or I call the cops. 100% of the time they gave it back. And I never made a scene, never got mad, I remained polite and calm, which allowed me to react and make the right choices in how to deal with the theft.

There is no need for this. I'm glad that POS company is high tailing it out of Canada. We don't need garbage like that here. Now if we can only get rid of walmart,Canada would be a better place lol

a reply to: snypwsd

I guess Canadian thieves are more polite and submissive than American thieves.

I have yet to meet anybody in loss prevention that has "100%" of thieves willingly hand over what they just stole.

a reply to: Anyafaj

This is another case of really incredibly stupid people in control.