Walmart Ignores Widow's Letter Asking Why It Took Employees 9 Hours To Find Her Husband's Body In A Bathroom Stall
Karen Turner wants to know why Walmart employees told her that their bathroom stalls were unoccupied, even though they contained the body of Karen's husband, 41-year-old airline mechanic Steven Turner. Karen needlessly spent hours searching for her husband, who went missing after dropping off his car that morning for an oil change. Walmart has yet to respond to a letter Karen sent in September. No condolences, no explanation. Nothing but silence.
Steve Turner was an airline mechanic. The day that he went to the Wal-Mart he was scheduled to work a shift beginning at about noon. He got to the store shortly before 8 a.m. and called Karen to ask if there was anything that she wanted him to pick up while he was there.The Arizona Republic contacted Walmart for comment, but like Karen, received no response."We said that we loved each other and that was it," she said. "Then, when I didn't hear from him by noon, I knew something was wrong. He was never late."
Karen went to the store and asked employees to help her search for her husband. One of the first places they checked was the bathroom. She said that a custodian had the door blocked for cleaning and told her the room was empty. She would learn later that her husband had died in one of the stalls of an aortic dissection, a weakened blood vessel that ruptured. It's the same condition that killed actor John Ritter.
"Steve showed no signs of anything being wrong," she said. "I was told that he probably died suddenly at 8:30 that morning."
Karen called the police. She roamed the store for hours. But it wasn't until 5 p.m., when another janitor mentioned that a customer seemed to be spending the afternoon in the bathroom that she rushed in and found Steve's body.
Attorney Douglas Belknap later wrote a letter for her to Wal-Mart officials. It reads in part:
"I do not 'represent' Karen in the usual sense and I do not intend to file a lawsuit. Karen simply wants to make sure that someone at Wal-Mart's corporate level understand the excruciating mental anguish she suffered as a result of almost unbelievable set of circumstances that she hopes Wal-Mart will prevent from recurring."
Karen's son is 5. She was hoping to show him correspondence from Wal-Mart when he's older as a way of explaining what happened. It's still possible a note of some kind will arrive.Wal-Mart has no answers to widow's letter [The Arizona Republic]
(Photo: chasingfun)
Attention, Walmart shoppers! This ad is for you! Woo hoo!
Post a comment
Comments:
Wow, that's horrible. Spending your last remaining minutes in a Wal-Mart...my condolences go out to Karen & her family.
I always thought the people at Walmart were heartless bastards but... damn!
I wonder if Dante's girlfriend was in there too?
A-holes!
so the "this bathroom is cleaned and inspected every hour" signs they have on the door are bullshit then huh?
Wal-Mart's not at fault here, but damn, at least send your condolences for a woman finder her husband dead inside your store. It's no different then sending condolences to a friend's family if your friend dies.
@doctor_cos: According to her attorney, the first custodian said the bathroom he was found in was empty. The second was like "damn, some guy's been in there for a long time."
The "At Least Take It Seriously" tag, although funny, doesn't really work in a sad situation like this.
The signs don't say what kind of an inspection is given. But Wal-Mart probably won't comment especially in writing because of the real possibility of making any statement leading to their legal culpability in some capacity. Their lawyers will be right in their with the reigns tight in their teeth.
I will never believe any stor that they have checked the restrooms when you are looking for something again. In 1999 I had my purse stolen while I was sitting down having coffee at a Starbucks. Asked the Starbucks to check the men's restroom as I had already checked the women's. They swore they did. 10 days later, when they finally checked the restroom, they called me to tell me they had found my purse in the men's room trash. By then I had canceled my cards, had to get new id, etc. Which was so much fun because I was moving to a new state and there was a national holiday in the intervening days. Starbucks' excuse? Well, that bathroom was out of order, so we didn' think it needed to be checked. Right, because perfectly working plumbing would obviously preclude a thief from ditching a handbag in the trash. Geniuses.
Don't trust people who make 5 bucks an hour to ever do anything for you. Really.
There is no length Wal-Mart won't go to, to ensure that you are convinced they truly are heartless. Poor woman, I hope she gets the apologies she deserves...unfortunately, the apologies would probably come with a $300 gift card to Wal-Mart. I would never want to be part of that place if something like that happened to me.
@theysaidwhat: I think it's more appropriate to say don't expect someone who's making $5 and hour to give a shit in your situation, as opposed to "don't trust them."
She has a lawyer, and wants them to admit they did something wrong? Sorry, I wouldn't say anything either.
@doctor_cos: They said the body was probably there since 8:30am, and she didn't start looking til noon. They found the body at 5pm, so the body could have been there almost eight hours by that point.
@causticitty: Yeah but Wal-Mart didn't take 9 hours to find her husband's body, they took 5 because she didn't alert them to the situation until noon.
I wonder...why go to Wal-Mart first? I suspect she tried to call him, and called his workplace to see if he had shown up, but why suspect he was at Wal-Mart all along?
@gokor: Walmart employees make some of the highest wages around.
I made over 11.00 an hour as a teen, with shift differential and Sunday time and a half. I made over $35,000 a year on average. Just as a teenager pre-college. =)
They still suck though. But employees are probably better paid than most commenters. =)
I'm not for or against Wal-Mart on this, but why do they need to apologize? They didn't do anything wrong. Sure, they could've checked the bathroom stall, but at noon, he was likely already dead. What could Wal-Mart have done in that case anyways?
wal-mart employees make some of the highest wages around??? that's funny. my buddy has been with wal-mart for 4 years and still doesn't make 10 an hour. he's run several departments in his store, in a somewhat upscale part of town, and has been one of the highest product sellers in his store.
@Fry: I'd imagine that they could have saved her 5 hours of searching and frantic worry, if their staff had displayed even a modicum of common sense.
Surely Wal-Mart's PR dept. heard about this via the newspaper article. Why not issue a statement on the matter? That's one of the first rules of the business.
@Custom Reality: $35000 a year at $11.00 is about 61 hours per week (okay, 57 since you make time and a half on Sundays). That's also assuming you didn't go to school so you could have a (more than-)full-time job, and your particular Wal-Mart didn't care about work-week labour laws. Try again.
@UpsetPanda:
Probably because his car was still there, he was there getting the oil changed. So that would be the logical place to look for him. I am surprised no one called the police.
After all the car was still there and he was missing, you would think that it was suspicious, I think I would have called them long before 5pm rolled around.
Still it is a terrible thing that happened and it really wasn't Walmarts fault for his death, as there wasn't anything anyone could have done even if he died in the checkout line.
But you would think that the employees would have conducted a better search knowing he had been missing for such a long time.
How hard would it have been for them to check under the stall to see if there was anyone in them?
I think the janitor should apologize if nothing else. Since he is the one who couldn't be bothered to check properly.
@Custom Reality: I was replying to someone who was talking about her own experience and replying to that. Plus, it was a generality, don't expect someone who you could give two shits about, to return anything other than the same treatment.
Never ask someone to check the restrooms for you. Just walk in yourself.
The picture is from the Baton Rouge Wal-Mart off of Siegen Lane. It's kind of scary when you drive up to it
Why doesn't she want to sue? Who's been giving lawsuits a bad name? You're supposed to make corporations say their sorry with their money!
Abominable. At minimum she deserves a hand-written note of apology from the manager and a promise of new emergency training procedures from corporate for their delay in realizing that there was a dead body in their bathroom. Acknowledging the sad situation is not admitting liability, so they're safe in the legal sense. _Not_ acknowledging the tragedy is tantamount to saying that they don't care that her dead husband sat in a bathroom for hours while she panicked and a store employee (the first janitor) lied to her.
And the widow wishes to show her son a letter from Wal-Mart explaining what happened? What? Why would you want a letter from Wal-Mart explaining your father died of an aortic dissection in their men's room? How about a letter from your doctor? Or maybe the kid wants to read about how his Dad was dead on the john for more hours than necessary because a female Wal-Mart employee miscommunicated with a janitor.... either way: weird. Sorry the guy died, but she is just trying to make a villain out of Wal-Mart because she needs someone to blame.
What a horrid way to go.
Wow crosses, so subtle, wonder if they are taking this one seriously too.
@fhic: and that sums up the whole ordeal right there. They ain't sayin' nuthin' without a lawyers blessing.
@D3Anon: I read about this somewhere else - these crosses were actually constructed in a random field BEHIND walmart before it was built. The impression, however, is the crosses are there on purpose.
I don't understand why anyone in automotive didn't wonder why the customer didn't come and get their car after a few hours. Why didn't Wal-mart check their security cameras? obviously this lady had narrowed it down that her husband was at Wal-mart or something because she probably saw his car there when she got to Wal-mart.
Wal-mart is not at fault but they could at least show some sympathy. What janitor cleans the restroom while someone is in there anyway, most places will check to see if anyone is in there and wait for them to leave. The janitor should have then let someone know that a customer was in there and to make sure he's ok.
I don't work at Wal-mart but I do work retail. I've heard of our employees finding people (homeless) sleeping in the stalls, etc....
@mgyqmb:
It's not a random field. A megachurch from north Baton Rouge is building their south campus across the expressway from Wal-Mart.
@Topcat: As a high schooler I worked more than 40 hrs a week on average. My state labor laws say as long as you are 16, you can work as much as you want.
that and your math is off, in addition to time and a half on Sundays, he would also be getting time and a half on any time over 40 hrs per week (or over 8 hours per day depending on the state) so while it is still unlikely (mostly because stores typically don't let that much OT happen) it is easily doable. Hell I go to school (college) and work 2 full time jobs currently, and still have time to hang out with friends. Maybe you just suck at managing time?
in addition to that, he said precollege teen, not high schooler. I graduated when I was 17 and had i not started school right away, I would have 2 years and 3 months as a teen but precollege.
@xtc46: Still not buying it.
$11/hr @ 40 hrs/week = 22,800.
That leaves 12,200 to get to 35,000 via overtime. Assuming a 1.5 overtime rate you would need 14 hours of overtime per week every week.
Considering that Wal-Mart has lost some very large lawsuits regarding stiffing employees for overtime I find it improbable that someone was getting that sort of OT.
Next time push the dead guy past the security thingies- only way you get attention is to hear the "we're sorry, you have activated the wal-mart security system" message. Then the the door greeters swarm with their walkers and smiley face vests and grab at your bags looking for receipt errors.
"ma'am we found your husband- he set off our security system and has been detained- he is cooperating and being very peaceful about the whole thing...."
@jrdnjstn78: I've never worked in automotive, but it's not too uncommon for someone to drop their car off first thing in the morning, then pick it up later in the afternoon.
Ugh. I think the next step *IS* a lawsuit, or pressuring the AG to investigate what role Walmart had in the death.
If this happened in a COSTCO, at least she could have ordered the coffin right on the spot... Oooohhh, am I going to heck for that one...
@D3Anon: That's a picture of the Wal-Mart on Essen Lane in Baton Rouge - there's a giant mega-church about a half-mile behind it. The photographer stacked the subjects nicely through a long lens.
If you ever drive between Lafayette and New Orleans on I-10, you'll see this monstrosity.
@CaliforniaCajun: I hate to be picky, but was Dante going out w/Caitlen? Well,besides on a date. I do wonder if he asked an employee for a roll of the good kind of toilet paper.
Looking at this logically, one must realize firstly that Wal-Mart is not guilty for the death of a customer. Standard TLE (Tire Lube Express) policy for vehicle tendering is to park the vehicle in the store's rear lot until the customer is ready to pick it up.
In such a case of missing persons as that described above, it is out of accordance with standard store respect of privacy to search restrooms without concrete reason. That "concrete reason" is unfortunately much more plain in hindsight than it would have been for those associates on the salesfloor at the time.
Flipping the coin, what if a live man had been spending some time in a restroom stall at Wal-Mart when an associate opened the stall door or looked under it to search for possible dead customers? One can immagine the feedback which would have respectively appeared online as a result. The simple fact is that people and organizations make all sorts of mistakes; this one is no different, aside from the fact that it happens to be more tragic than average, and more unfortunate than most.
As for the fact that the woman recieved no reply, I would attribute that to a large and rather messy beurocracy system at the home office rather than heartlessness as some might suggest; to the contrary, whenever a Wal-Mart associate or an associate's kin pass away the company sends flowers to their home and family. I have witnessed this on multiple occasions; and I while I am aware of the problems that Wal-Mart faces as a company, I have also seen a regular hourly associate's funeral where there were more store managers and associates there than her own family. That doesn't happen at every retailer.
To the people discussing pay, I could go a long way talking about fair wages, but ultimately it's a global problem; not a sign of Wal-Mart's "evil." It is also true that Wal-Mart Associates make more than the retail average and have more advancement options than the employees of other retailers. In any case, it should be noted that wages did not enter into the general topic of this original bulletin.
Wal-Mart has problems; but that doesn't keep it from being the company which I respect most; and I say that as an hourly associate. That said, this incident is most unfortunate, and I wish her and her family alike the best.
Joshua Howard - Wal-Mart Store 5041 (Bonney Lake, WA)
It wasn't 9 hours, it was 5. Even so, unbelievable.
How often did the custodian go in to clean the bathroom? Wouldn't you at least tap the second time to ask if everything was OK?
I will refrain from my usual dissertation on wallyworld in deference to this sad event.