Imagine you are in the middle of a 12-hour workday at your six-figure job. You start to tire so you head down to the cafeteria to pick up a snack that will boost your blood sugar levels and get you through your shift.
Now imagine the less-than-$2 cookie you purchase costs you your job.
Kurt Kromm, a Ford plant worker in Kentucky, doesn’t have to imagine that situation because he is currently living it.
Kromm was fired from his job at Ford’s truck factory in Louisville, Kentucky, where he had worked for 11 years building Ford Super Duties, Expeditions, and Lincoln Navigators, after the plant claimed he stole the cookie.
Kromm, 60, said he worked 60-hour weeks at the plant in 2025, according to a quote he gave Shifting Gears.
“I earned over $200,000 last year. Why would I steal? I spent $1,200 last year in the canteen mainly on Diet Cokes,” said Kromm, who is diabetic. He said he purchased the Grandma’s Chocolate Chip Cookie after he felt light-headed from low blood sugar.
But the plant claimed he didn’t purchase the cookie. The plant claimed he stole it.
Ford worker proves he didn’t steal cookie that cost him his job
Around 3:30 a.m. on May 9, Kromm was near the tail end of his 12-hour graveyard shift when he went to one of the factory’s payment kiosks to purchase the $1.95 cookie he desired.
Kromm didn’t find out he allegedly stole the cookie until he was told by a supervisor.
“My direct supervisor came to get me and said, ‘We need to go to the office.’ I asked, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ And we sat in the labor office for like half an hour, waiting. Then the union bargainer came in. He says, ‘This is bad’ And I’m, like, ‘Bad? I haven’t done anything.’ The bargainer says, ‘They’re going to terminate you. They got you on video stealing a cookie,’” Kromm told Shifting Gears in an exclusive interview.
The video showed a red screen at the kiosk where Kromm was supposed to pay for the cookie. That screen is supposed to be green.
Kromm says he was accused of stealing and was escorted out of the factory by security. A bargainer from his union, UAW, told Kromm to apologize that day, but the fired worker refused because he insisted he had paid.
To prove his innocence, Kromm sent screenshots of his debit card transaction payment to Ford and his union rep on May 20. Two weeks later, the UAW contacted Kromm and told him Ford would need copies of his bank statements notarized. A week after that, on June 12, the union informed Kromm that Ford had contacted Aramark, the company that maintains the payment kiosk, and they confirmed that the cookie had been paid for.
By June 17, Ford offered Kromm his old job back, and a day later, UAW Local 862 contacted him to let him know he would be “made whole” for the five weeks of lost wages.
The two checks he received on June 25 were for $ 28,000, less than the $33,000 he was told by the UAW he would be getting.
Kromm had already found new work and did not return to work for Ford.
Former Ford worker can’t believe he was fired over a cookie
In addition to being a long-tenured worker at the plant, Kromm says he frequently worked up to seven days a week and was a member of the plant’s Emergency Rescue Team. His good standing with the company didn’t help his case.
“I thought this all was a joke, at first,” Kromm said.
“They said they had zero tolerance for theft, and that this has happened to five people they’ve had to terminate. I looked at my rep and said, ‘Really? Are you shitting me?’” Kromm said. “I said, ‘If you wanted to get rid of me, you could’ve just asked. I’d quit. Why are you doing this over a cookie?”
When he was escorted out of the building, he had to leave thousands of dollars worth of his personal tools that he took to work.
But even worse than the betrayal from Ford, Kromm said he really couldn’t believe that his union rep would urge him to apologize for something he didn’t do.
“These people appease the company. I was at Chrysler for 12 years, and my building chairman Curt Wilson would’ve knocked someone upside the head and said, ‘This is absurd.’ But the (Ford) union kept saying, ‘People go back sooner and have better luck if they’re apologetic,’” Kromm said.
Ford spokeswoman Jessica Enoch told Shifting Gears, “We don’t talk about individual cases, but there are times when we look into things and realize it could have been handled differently. When that happens, we try to rectify it. We value our employees and want to be as fair as possible.”
Other workers at the plant also noticed the UAW’s lack of action on this issue, with one member at that Louisville plant telling Shifting Gears, “They allowed a man to be terminated. And that little store should be removed if they won’t take accountability for the fact that the machines don’t work.”
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