Why Should You Boycott Hannaford?

By: Rich Bergeron 

     Visitors to this site may wonder why anyone should engage in a boycott of this supermarket company. I am personally involved in this campaign because of a recent incident where the North Conway, New Hampshire store fired over 20 employees, and some of them had decades of tenure in the company. 

      So, what kind of major incident would require terminating the employment of 20+ people just before the holidays? 

       It's all about coupons, specifically coupons which were rolled out and provided to associates and customers in order to counteract the opening of a new Market Basket location in town. Ironically, Hannaford's "Rewards" Program turned out to be a cause for punishment of the affected employees. The program came along late in the game compared to other stores, and the company obviously hasn't ironed out all the kinks yet. 

       It is important to note here that Hannaford operates under what I would call a "coupon culture" in terms of how it motivates employees to go the extra mile. Coupons are essentially an extra employee discount perk. Managers are often encouraged to use various store coupons to reward staff members who are doing a good job. 

       We are not talking about a case here where the fired employees manufactured their own coupons or photocopied coupons and schemed to defraud the company. This is nothing like that blockbuster movie about coupon fraud. Here, there was no conspiracy or collective effort to take unfair advantage of a promotional offering by the company. 

       There were also no clear instructions or guidelines announced by the store's manager as to how employees could utilize the coupons. Some employees were actually fired over a mere $30 worth of discounts on groceries. All fired employees had no real reason to believe that using one of those themed coupons had to be extremely limited. There were boxes of coupons distributed and employees were encouraged to give them out and never given warnings that they could not use them for their own shopping purposes. Yet, any employee who used one of those coupons more than once was summarily dismissed from the company without a fair severance package. 

       The method and bogus reasoning for these mass firings begs the question: is this a corporate ploy to cut payroll due to the massive losses the store has suffered as a direct result of their inability to stop customers from switching to the new Market Basket store? After all, many of the fired employees had seniority in the company and will likely be replaced by entry level employees who will naturally be given much lower base pay packages. It is certainly much less expensive for a corporation to engage in mass firings like this than it would be to layoff the same number of employees.  

       There is also a red flag here that has to be raised regarding the company's recent losses in court that inspired a change to the overtime exempt status of many mid-level managers. The Portland Press Herald published an insightful article on this subject in October that explained the rollout of the changes in depth. 

       Rather than let existing managers who were on salary work as many hours as it took to keep their departments in line, upper management began cracking down and trying to make sure every overtime eligible employee stuck to a tighter schedule. Time and a half payment for every hour an employee worked into overtime obviously added up quick. The upper management crackdown raised tensions and lowered the quality of customer service at the same time. While some employees were able to work overtime hours without pushback, others were repeatedly cautioned and chastised for going over their allotted 45 hours of work per week. 

       The competition with another popular supermarket in North Conway created a perfect storm of financial trouble when added to the new overtime conditions. It seems obvious to me that this coupon debacle materialized as the safest way out for corporate officials to initiate a massive payroll cut there. It makes no sense that the firings were accomplished to send some kind of important message that coupon abuse will not be tolerated. 

      I think the real message sent here by the company is that those at the corporate level don't really give a damn about the people who work under them at the end of the day. Some of those given their walking papers were Manager of the Year honorees and were once saluted for their work ethics and attention to detail. They were all let go at one of the toughest times of the year financially with Christmas presents to buy and Thanksgiving travel and/or hosting expenses looming. 

       The most disturbing aspect of this case is that Hannaford has been experiencing multiple cybersecurity issues recently. It is not the first time the company was the victim of hackers. Back in 2008, a single message sent to one store resulted in a data breach that impacted 4.2 million customers. While this is yet another reason customers should boycott Hannaford, it really speaks to the failure by corporate officials to do much better in the area of implementing the right technology in their daily operations. 

       Hannaford's struggles to maintain safe and effective technology platforms opens them up to a serious negligence lawsuit. While here they are blaming their own employees for alleged coupon abuse, the buck should stop with their own corporate failure to shore up their own computer systems. These alleged abuses were caught by way of corporate investigators spying on employee rewards program accounts. 

      If corporate officials could so effectively track unauthorized coupon use through the rewards program, why couldn't that same rewards system flag and prevent that so-called abuse? Why does Hannaford not have failsafe measures in place that would reject any unauthorized coupon use and refuse to honor coupons being applied improperly? This seems like it's a situation that was blown out of proportion on purpose and put on the backs of employees who have no involvement in creating and implementing such an inferior setup. The fact is, if any employee or customer was trying to scan a coupon one too many times, the system itself should have kicked in to reject the transaction. 

       

Modernizing your backend systems so this doesn't happen is an absolute good and helps ensure this doesn't happen.
It does NOT help that the company and its subsidiaries run on ancient systems and is a major follower in adaptation than to get ahead. @AholdDelhaize @Hannaford pic.twitter.com/v2epB5VwMZ

— scorpstang (@Brucifer387336) November 9, 2024

     It would be a different story if every fired employee knew there was some kind of glitch and exploited it knowingly. Instead, we have a situation here where they were never given any indication that what they were doing was wrong or unauthorized until the day they were all suspended before ultimately being fired. More importantly, the lack of any warnings given or proper instruction on how to use the coupons from upper management makes me question why the store manager who oversaw the coupon roll out didn't get the axe. If there was no justification for firing him because he didn't police the coupons as diligently as he was policing overtime hours, then there was even less impetus to fire the end users who were just trying to save money on groceries in a tough economy. 

       All the heartache, agony and distress these ruthless and cold mass firings caused could have been easily prevented by proper use of technology. The same could be said about Hannaford's current cybersecurity crisis. This is a corporate failure at the end of the day that the company is laying at the feet of loyal employees. Those workers had nothing to do with neglecting to install failsafe measures in the software corporate officials used to spy on them and detect all this alleged unauthorized coupon use. 

       What's worse here is that corporate could have taken a much more civil approach to address this situation. All those fired employees could have been warned or officially reprimanded instead of having their jobs terminated. They could have been required to pay back the discounts they enjoyed, and many of them would probably be fine with that. Corporate investigators and store management instead chose to go scorched Earth in this situation, and there's absolutely no justification for that under the circumstances. 

       So, at the end of the day, why should anyone who currently shops at Hannaford reward such callous and uncalled for behavior by continuing to do business with a company that treats their senior employees that way? Why should any Hannaford shopper trust that the company's technology is safe to use with all their cybersecurity and data breach struggles? After all, if corporate officials can spy on employees using their rewards program, they can do the same snooping around in customer rewards accounts. Will Hannaford punish customers who supposedly abused these coupons next? 

       The key here is a lack of accountability at the Hannaford corporate level that typically takes years and massive amounts of money spent on formal lawsuits to ultimately correct. I don't think anyone should wait that long to directly address this pompous and callous example of corporate malfeasance. The time to address this nonsense is right now. 

      Show these out of touch clowns that firing employees without cause has serious consequences. Having no consideration for decades of exemplary service to the company by some of their best employees should not be tolerated. It's time to speak to real abusers here in the only language they will understand. 

      

     Close your rewards accounts. Switch your allegiance to any other supermarket. Share this site. Tell these corporate bozos that they messed up and must literally pay for it in lost revenue. They had no problem burning good, hard-working individuals who were just trying to save a few bucks, so let's cost them a few more bucks in return. Please join in the boycott. 

       If you were an employee impacted by these firings, feel free to reach out to me at rich.bergeron@gmail.com or by phone or text at 603-630-6235. I want to use this site to tell your stories. Use the same contact information to share your story if you have another example of Hannaford's corporate corruption or greed that is not related to this one. I am also the author of a comprehensive book on representing yourself in court and would be happy to offer free guidance as to how to seek justice through the courts for any victim of Hannaford's piss poor corporate leadership.