What does a pair of underwear, boots made out of snake skin, a Bloody Mary mix, and a pair of headphones have to do with Wal-Mart’s anti-union activity? That’s what Wal-Mart apparently wants to find out. All these items, plus a karaoke machine and a Toby Keith CD, were purchased by Wal-Mart’s former #2 man, Tom Coughlin, the man who made famous the phrase: “At Wal-Mart we make dust, our competitors eat dust.” Now his former employer is trying to make dust out of Coughlin. This week, Wal-Mart went to Circuit Court in Bentonville, Arkansas to release the retailer from any responsibility to honor Coughlin’s multi-million retirement plan. In a filing recently with the Securities & Exchange Commission, Wal-Mart admitted that it fired Coughlin for “gross misconduct.” Although Coughlin says he is innocent, his former employer says he filed phoney expense accounts to cover up half a million in unauthorized items, like underwear and snake skin boots. Coughlin claims all these random articles were part of his “union activity” and that he was merely seeking reimbursement for his expenses. Wal-Mart now wants to strip Coughlin of his stock awards and any incentive payments in his retirement agreement. Wal-Mart has already suspended 186,407 shares of Coughlin’s restricted stock, worth $9.77 million, and 302,503 stock options. Wal-Mart says Coughlin violated his fiduciary duties, and engaged in “a scheme to misappropriate corporate funds and property for his own personal benefit.”
Wal-Mart likes to say, “Our people make the difference.” In this case, Wal-Mart wants one of their people to make up the difference that he took from the company. This embarrassing “Snake Bootgate” case is likely to slither in and out of the headlines for the next year, as Wal-Mart goes after one of its own. Now if Wal-Mart would only pay as much attention to its other 1.6 million workers as it does to this one celebrity case, the company might not have as much internal dissention as it does today.
