Hamza Fahmy
·4 min read
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – A lawsuit alleges that a former top-performing Safeway security employee was fired after giving sandwiches to police officers working a late-night shoplifting sting at a San Francisco location. His lawyer alleges Safeway purposefully did so to cut costs. Oscar Santos, 33, now requests $20 million in punitive damages.
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Santos’ former formal title was “loss prevention manager,” which, in his terms, battles theft by holding shoplifters accountable through recovering stolen merchandise. A big part of his and his supervisor’s job was working with law enforcement, which, he says, involved eight officers deployed in and out of the Mission and 30th Street store to detain shoplifting suspects.
“As a thank you for their service, we would take care of their lunch and provide deli sandwiches and chicken from the deli,” Santos told KRON4. More specifically, he said he gave away the fried chicken and deli sandwiches because they would “go bad the next day anyways, so there was no loss to the store whatsoever.” He said his supervisor was aware of the ritual.
Five years into his full-time employment with Safeway, Santos’ boss passed away and was replaced with someone from Southern California, which Santos said he did not get along with. “I think the new manager just didn’t like me…Me and him just didn’t get along,” he said, claiming his boss often tried finding “useless agreements.”
In late 2023, Santos received a formal anonymous complaint of him illegally taking away the Safeway sandwiches outside store property. “I tell [Safeway] yeah, that’s for SFPD. We’ve been doing that this entire time,” Santos said, claiming he also told the new manager at the time he was giving out the sandwiches.
They said the sandwich inventory was never correctly documented through the inventory log. “The only concern raised was that the documentation for these transactions was not completed properly — a responsibility that falls under the store director, who oversees inventory,” he said.
Two weeks later, Santos was fired without warning after Safeway accused him of “violating company policy.” KRON4 obtained a copy of the termination letter (see below).
Termination-letter-from-Kevin-Lovell.jpgDownload
“Hey, next time you need to document it instead of the manager, go back to work. That’s what the conversation should have been. Same thing with the handcuffs… Next thing you know, I get a letter in the mail saying that I’m terminated,” Santos said.
Santos then filed for unemployment. When the Department of Labor reached out to Safeway to find out the reasoning behind Santos’ termination, he said Safeway “simply did not respond.” He said his termination letter from Safeway only included him “violating company policy.” Santos said he is still confused to this day as to why he was fired.
In the six years that I worked directly for Safeway, I’ve never got any type of disciplinary action, written warning, no, nothing negative… ask around, go to any Safeway store, ask, show them a picture of me. They’ll tell you nothing but positive things about me… And on the contrary, I’ve received several awards and recognitions from both Safeway and law enforcement agencies…Safeway used my alleged failure to correctly document a donation as grounds for termination, despite the fact that this does not constitute just cause
Oscar Santos, former Loss Prevention Manager at Safeway
“That’s like saying that people shouldn’t give coffee and donuts to cops on the beat. They should be so happy that those cops came to their safe way to deal with shoplifting. But instead, they fire the most effective guy in the state of California stopping shoplifting,” Santos’ attorney, Neil Eisenberg, told KRON4.
Attorney Eisenberg claims this was “not the first of ridiculous reasons” a Safeway employee had been abruptly fired and that he believes “shoplifting is a money-making proposition for Safeway.”
This is his third Safeway client alleging wrongful termination. Eisenberg claims large corporations such as Safeway are actually incentivized to lay off their best-performing employees because they no longer have to pay higher salaries or accommodate the employees’ benefits.
The lawsuit filed on June 30 accused the supermarket chain of wrongful termination and is seeking $20 million in punitive damages.
KRON4 has reached out to both Safeway and Albertson’s regarding the lawsuit and has heard nothing back as of the publishing of this report.
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