Black man fired by Home Depot after response to racist customer says he won’t accept job back

A black man who was fired by Home Depot over his response to a racist customer has decided to decline the company’s offer to give him his job back.

Maurice Rucker captured national attention last week after he said he was fired by Home Depot after his encounter with a customer who he said verbally assaulted him at the Albany, N.Y., Home Depot where he worked. 

After the story went viral, the company said in a statement to The Hill on Friday that it reviewed Rucker’s case and decided to offer him his job back.

{mosads}

“We’ve taken another look at this and we are offering Maurice his job back,” a spokesman for the company told The Hill. 

Rucker said Monday in an interview with The Washington Post that the company’s decision to offer him his former job back “has nothing to do with me.”

“It has to do with the media reaction to them firing me. … The fact they can fire me after 10 years for reacting to someone who is racist is insane,” the 60-year-old continued.

Rucker then told the publication that he rejected the company’s offer based on his poor experiences as an employee while working for the company for nearly a decade.

“I felt like there wasn’t a whole lot of love for me there,” he said, adding that he felt under-appreciated and underpaid with the company.

According to the Times Union, Rucker’s salary only increased from $12 per hour to $12.78 per hour in the time he spent working for the company.

Rucker, who was named “Cashier of the Month” earlier this month, also told the Post that prior to the encounter with the customer, he had received two “write-ups” from his superiors.

The first reprimand was for poor customer service at a previous store and the second one was for putting fertilizer in the wrong can.

“I went to work every day thinking I could be fired. Every task I did, I wondered if I could get fired for this,” Rucker said. “There was a passive bias toward me at that particular store.”

Rucker said he is now considering taking legal action against the company over the incident.

The company initially said Rucker did not follow “proper protocol” in his response to the customer and fired him last week. 

Rucker said his termination was due to an incident that began when a customer approached his register with an unleashed dog earlier this month.

Rucker said he told the unknown customer: “Sir, when you have your dog in here we prefer that you keep it on a leash.'” 

But in response, Rucker said the other man told him: “F— you. You’re an asshole, you’re a piece of shit.”

Rucker said the shocking response was just the beginning of a rant filled with insults, including racist remarks. 

“If Trump wasn’t president, you wouldn’t even have a job,” the man said, according to Rucker’s account of the incident. “He said, ‘You’re from the ghetto, what do you know?’ ” 

Rucker said he spoke up because he wasn’t going to stand for the customer’s racist insults. 

Rucker then said he asked the man to leave the store and told him: “You’re lucky I’m at work because if I wasn’t, this wouldn’t be happening, or you wouldn’t be talking to me like this.” 

Home Depot faced immediate backlash for firing Rucker over the incident, with some protesters even staging a demonstration outside the store that fired Rucker.

A GoFundMe for Rucker has raised more than $3,000 for him in the past several days.