Two Lululemon employees were fired after they called the cops on three masked men pillaging their Atlanta-area apparel store.
Earlier this month, three thieves burst into the Lululemon store in Peachtree Corners, a suburb to the north of Atlanta, grabbing armfuls of athletic clothes.
"No, no, no, you can march back out," former assistant manager Jennifer Ferguson yelled at the looters, who allegedly had struck that store several times before.
"Chill, b—, shut your ass up," one of the robbers yelled back before sprinting out the door.
Ferguson and fellow employee Rachel Rogers followed them out the store but did not try to stop the robbers. Instead, they called the police, who tracked down the perps and charged them with felony robbery.
Lululemon's regional manager fired Ferguson and Rogers without severance after the incident as the Canadian-based company has a "zero-tolerance policy" on chasing or physically engaging with a thief.
Atlanta joins many other Democrat-run cities struggling to curb spiking crime rates as its progressive leaders' efforts to defund the police have backfired. Atlanta's rising crime rates have left the city in chaos, so much so that one of its wealthier neighborhoods is pushing to secede and become its own city. In March, rioters protesting the construction of a new police training center hurled "large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks" at officers attempting to protect the site.
"We are not supposed to get in the way," Ferguson said of the incident. "You kind of clear path for whatever they’re going to do. After it’s over, you scan a QR code. And that’s that."
"We’ve been told not to put it in any notes, because that might scare other people," Ferguson continued. "We’re not supposed to call the police, not really supposed to talk about it."
According to Ferguson's husband, Lululemon management told the women it would "look bad for Lululemon to be the company calling the police."
A Lululemon spokeswoman says the employees were not fired for calling the police, but rather for engaging the criminals at all.
"The two employees at our Peachtree Corners location in Georgia were not terminated for calling the police," the company said in a statement. :They were terminated for knowingly violating our zero-tolerance policy related to physically engaging with the perpetrators which put their lives and the safety of our guests and other employees at risk. Employees are able and instructed to call 911 when needed, and that was not the cause of termination in this case."
UPDATE 6:00 p.m.: This piece was updated with a statement from Lululemon.