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Ugly Wal-Mart tale resonates

A black executive wrongly accused of using a forged company check to buy gift cards hears from a disgusted nation.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published December 10, 2005

[Times photo: Melissa Lyttle]

Reginald Pitts, 34, waited hours to buy Wal-Mart gift cards for employee incentives. Store managers called sheriff's deputies to investigate what deputies said was "a forged check," but they found no case in just minutes. The human resources manager has hired an attorney.

BRANDON - Samantha Devine was about to go to Wal-Mart on Causeway Boulevard to buy holiday gift cards for co-workers. Then she read what Reginald Pitts encountered there.

"It made me so angry I haven't set foot in a Wal-Mart since," said the office manager of a Valrico medical clinic. "He was seriously wronged. This was simply deplorable."

Nobody has called for a boycott, but news of Pitts' ugly experience spread quickly around the country and continues to ricochet through e-mail networks and blogs across the Internet.

The initial story was picked up by 73 newspapers and TV stations. Pitts was interviewed on CNBC. ABC's Good Morning America called. At 12:30 p.m. Monday, Pitts is scheduled to appear locally on Your Turn with Kathy Fountain on WTVT-Channel 13. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition called to offer support as did several dozen callers and e-mails from people he has never met.

"The response has been overwhelming and overwhelmingly supportive," said the 34-year-old human resources manager who has hired an attorney to review his options.

Pitts is the GAF Materials Corp. manager who stood waiting for about two hours on Nov. 23 to buy $13,600 worth of Wal-Mart gift cards for employee incentives.

For reasons Wal-Mart managers never provided, the store could not verify the company's check or that Pitts was who he said he was. Some African-American clerks watching nearby suggested the long delay was based on race, because the store had processed gift card orders on third party checks just as big for white customers earlier in the day with minimal scrutiny. Pitts' white assistant had been buying the gift cards from the same Wal-Mart like clockwork for years.

Ultimately store managers called the sheriff's department to investigate what deputies called "a forged check." Deputies grabbed Pitts by the arm, but spent only minutes determining there was no case before handing Pitts the check and leaving.

"For a while there I thought I was going to jail," he said.

Shocked, Pitts concluded he got the shoddy, impersonal treatment because he is black. "They offered no other possible explanation," he said.

Wal-Mart, which says it does not tolerate racial discrimination or profiling of its customers, opened an investigation into the incident, which the company conceded was "very poorly handled."

"We are now wrapping up that investigation and will have something to report about it soon," said corporate spokeswoman Mona Williams. "We have taken this incident very seriously."

While no one from the store at 11110 Causeway Blvd. apologized, Lawrence Jackson, executive vice president of the People Division (Sam Walton's name for human resources) of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., called Pitts last week.

"He said that he was apologizing as one HR manager to another and as one African-American to another," Pitts recalled.

Pitts' employer, Wayne, N.J.-based GAF, is the nation's biggest manufacturer of shingles and roofing materials. The company lodged a protest with Wal-Mart over the treatment of one of its managers.

Was it a case of racial profiling?

"It's hard to say without all the facts," said Jonathon Ellis, Pitts' Tampa attorney. "Before we get into trading allegations and filing lawsuits, though, we want to hear Wal-Mart's explanation."

Some calls and communications Pitts received came from other African-Americans who said they encountered similar treatment this year when using third-party checks. An Orlando woman said she waited almost two hours to get her employer's check verified, even though most of the questions were about her, not the credit-worthiness of the check-issuer.

A black social worker in Eagan, Minn., said Wal-Mart called police to arrest her after a clerk accused her of using a supposedly bogus $92.69 check to buy home items and bottled water. The check turned out to be good. Wal-Mart apologized and settled for $1,000.

Many of the calls came from African-Americans convinced their behavior in stores and their credit are more closely scrutinized because of their color.

"Reggie Pitts was clearly treated differently because of his skin color," said Ida Times, an administrative assistant in a Marin City, Calif., church who on Friday was forwarding to several friends the Pitts story that had been e-mailed to her.

"It doesn't take that long to verify a check. And Wal-Mart certainly had no reason to call the police. These people need some sensitivity training or to be relieved."

Quanteer Williams, a Baltimore software engineer, read the story through an e-mail alert circulated among alumni of Pitts' alma mater, North Carolina A&T. "I've never met Reggie Pitts. But no one deserves to be humiliated, treated like a criminal and disrespected the way he has," she said. Many callers tell Pitts he is obligated to step up and hold accountable a giant corporation that many African-Americans blame for other past slights.

"If the evidence shows that's what happened to me, I intend to," he said.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or 727 893-8252.

[Last modified December 10, 2005, 01:12:22]