Discover how one Woolworths employee's encounter with a shoplifter cost them their job
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The safety of retail workers is a growing concern in Australia as incidents of shoplifting continue to rise.
One such incident involving a Woolworths employee and a shoplifter has sparked a debate about the safety measures in place and the responsibility of supermarkets to protect their staff.
Clinton Freshwater, a 44-year-old Duty Manager at the Wynnum Plaza Woolworths store in Brisbane, found himself at the centre of this controversy.
Freshwater, who had been with Woolworths for 15 years, was fired after a physical altercation with a shoplifter.
On the day of the incident, Freshwater was alerted by a senior staff member about a suspicious customer who was making other workers feel 'uncomfortable'.
‘He kept walking around the store and loading stuff into his bags…there was a couple of times where he pretended to line up at the registers and then would disappear again,’ he shared.
When the customer finally tried to exit the store without paying, Freshwater confronted him.
‘He walks straight through the self-service checkouts, and that's when I ran to catch up with him a little and [had] just gone, “Hey mate” and straight away he swung around and got me on the side of the head with a bottle of milk,’ he recalled.
This led to a physical altercation that resulted in Freshwater being fired.
‘Just to show you how poor the practices are within Woolworths, they didn't even call security for me…they definitely need to look after their people more,’ he expressed, claiming that the company's response to such incidents is inadequate.
He argued that the supermarket's approach to safety training is also insufficient, with online safety courses serving as mere check-box exercises that do not prepare workers for real-life situations.
‘If we didn't have that once every couple of nights, it wouldn't be a normal night sort of thing,’ he stated.
‘Not long before that, I had three or four kids come in and run riot in the store, they threatened me multiple times, and I asked them to be banned from the store, and my bosses just said to ignore them,’ Freshwater added.
Woolworths has declined to comment on the specific incident, citing ‘confidentiality obligations to the former team member’. However, the company reassured that employee safety is their top priority.
‘No product is more important than our team members’ safety,’ the company spokesperson said.
‘We take the safety of our frontline team members extremely seriously, and we have made significant investments in CCTV, body-worn cameras, personal duress devices, and training to help team members remain out of harm’s way,’ they added.
This incident has sparked a broader conversation about the safety of retail workers in Australia.
The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) has been advocating for better safety measures in supermarkets, including the introduction of a safety clause in Enterprise Agreements. They also staged a nationwide strike last year.
However, the union claimed their efforts have been consistently thwarted.
The RAFFWU argued that supermarkets only employ security guards when theft rates exceed a certain threshold, not when anti-social behaviour increases.
The union claimed that this approach prioritises profits over the safety of workers. The union is pushing for a process that would see a store shut down and an investigation launched whenever a worker is assaulted, abused, or threatened.
This news comes in the wake of a recent incident where a supermarket employee was left in critical condition while attempting to thwart a thief at a Sydney shopping centre. You can read more about that here.
Prior incidents mirror this event, including an IGA employee assaulted by a customer and, in another instance, a store manager hospitalised after a violent altercation with a customer.
The Woolworths incident is a reminder of the challenges faced by retail workers. It underscores the need for supermarkets and other retail businesses to take a more proactive approach to worker safety rather than simply reacting to incidents as they occur.
What are your thoughts on this issue, members? Have you or someone you know witnessed similar situations in the retail industry? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments below.
One such incident involving a Woolworths employee and a shoplifter has sparked a debate about the safety measures in place and the responsibility of supermarkets to protect their staff.
Clinton Freshwater, a 44-year-old Duty Manager at the Wynnum Plaza Woolworths store in Brisbane, found himself at the centre of this controversy.
Freshwater, who had been with Woolworths for 15 years, was fired after a physical altercation with a shoplifter.
A Woolworths employee was fired after a physical altercation with a shoplifter. Image source: Shutterstock
On the day of the incident, Freshwater was alerted by a senior staff member about a suspicious customer who was making other workers feel 'uncomfortable'.
‘He kept walking around the store and loading stuff into his bags…there was a couple of times where he pretended to line up at the registers and then would disappear again,’ he shared.
When the customer finally tried to exit the store without paying, Freshwater confronted him.
‘He walks straight through the self-service checkouts, and that's when I ran to catch up with him a little and [had] just gone, “Hey mate” and straight away he swung around and got me on the side of the head with a bottle of milk,’ he recalled.
This led to a physical altercation that resulted in Freshwater being fired.
‘Just to show you how poor the practices are within Woolworths, they didn't even call security for me…they definitely need to look after their people more,’ he expressed, claiming that the company's response to such incidents is inadequate.
He argued that the supermarket's approach to safety training is also insufficient, with online safety courses serving as mere check-box exercises that do not prepare workers for real-life situations.
‘If we didn't have that once every couple of nights, it wouldn't be a normal night sort of thing,’ he stated.
‘Not long before that, I had three or four kids come in and run riot in the store, they threatened me multiple times, and I asked them to be banned from the store, and my bosses just said to ignore them,’ Freshwater added.
Woolworths has declined to comment on the specific incident, citing ‘confidentiality obligations to the former team member’. However, the company reassured that employee safety is their top priority.
‘No product is more important than our team members’ safety,’ the company spokesperson said.
‘We take the safety of our frontline team members extremely seriously, and we have made significant investments in CCTV, body-worn cameras, personal duress devices, and training to help team members remain out of harm’s way,’ they added.
This incident has sparked a broader conversation about the safety of retail workers in Australia.
The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) has been advocating for better safety measures in supermarkets, including the introduction of a safety clause in Enterprise Agreements. They also staged a nationwide strike last year.
However, the union claimed their efforts have been consistently thwarted.
The RAFFWU argued that supermarkets only employ security guards when theft rates exceed a certain threshold, not when anti-social behaviour increases.
The union claimed that this approach prioritises profits over the safety of workers. The union is pushing for a process that would see a store shut down and an investigation launched whenever a worker is assaulted, abused, or threatened.
This news comes in the wake of a recent incident where a supermarket employee was left in critical condition while attempting to thwart a thief at a Sydney shopping centre. You can read more about that here.
Prior incidents mirror this event, including an IGA employee assaulted by a customer and, in another instance, a store manager hospitalised after a violent altercation with a customer.
The Woolworths incident is a reminder of the challenges faced by retail workers. It underscores the need for supermarkets and other retail businesses to take a more proactive approach to worker safety rather than simply reacting to incidents as they occur.
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