Fired for a cookie after 11 years at Ford, he proved he wasn’t a thief and even got a better job

An error at a self-service kiosk temporarily cost a veteran Ford employee his job. Kurt Kromm, who says he worked for 11 years at the automaker’s pickup truck plant in Louisville, Kentucky, says he was fired on charges of not paying for a 10 reais ($1.95) chocolate chip cookie in the unit’s cafeteria. The episode takes on even more unusual contours given the worker’s history: at the age of 60 and with an average of 60 hours a week in 2025, Kromm declared to have received more than R$ 1 million (more than US$ 200 thousand) last year.

According to his account to the Shifting Gears newsletter, it all started around 3:30 am on May 9, during a 12-hour shift. Diabetic, he says he bought the cookie after feeling dizzy because of the low glucose level. When swiping the debit card at the kiosk, the machine displayed a red screen indicating a failed transaction, and so he migrated to a second device to complete the purchase.

A week later, Kromm was called to a supervisor’s office and told he was being fired for non-payment, with Ford citing security camera footage. He claims to have been escorted out immediately, prevented from collecting his own tools, and says that a representative of the union (UAW) advised him to apologize to speed up an eventual reinstatement. Kromm refused, convinced that he had paid, and says he heard that the company’s zero-tolerance policy against theft had already cost five other workers their jobs.

The turning point came when he presented the bank statement with the cookie debit. Even so, according to the employee, Ford demanded that the document be notarized. The kiosk operator, Aramark, eventually confirmed to the automaker on June 12 that the payment had been processed, and days later Kromm was allowed to return.

Too late. He had already landed a job closer to home and with a higher salary, jumping from $48 to $52.51 an hour, with an additional $10 an hour. Ford said it did not comment on individual cases, but acknowledged that there are times when it realizes that something could have been handled differently. Colleague Victoria Thomas, an electrician for 34 years at the company, says that the failures in the kiosks are known and that she knows people fired because of a US$ 2 drink, without the documentation that Kromm had to defend himself.