#employee

A Dollar General employee, Linda Atkins, who has type 2 diabetes asked her manager if she could keep orange juice at her cash register for emergencies, but was told policy didn’t allow it. In late 2011 and early 2012, while working alone, she had low-blood-sugar episodes and drank a $1.69 bottle of orange juice from the store cooler to treat them. After each episode, she paid for the juice and told her manager what happened. Dollar General later fired her under its “grazing” policy, which prohibits consuming merchandise before paying. A federal jury found Dollar General liable and awarded Atkins $27,565 in back pay plus $250,000 in compensatory damages, for a total of $277,565. It showed that medical emergencies can’t be ignored just because of a store rule.