You are Karissa Dawson, general manager of the Marion Hotel in rural North Carolina. For years families have loved to come and spend time in the hotel. The Marion Hotel was a three-diamond property and the 218-room facility was the place to stay in western North Carolina. The hotel had a full-service restaurant that was a training center for the local college students. Employees were expected to exceed guests’ expectations and use their skills to carefully exceed the opportunities and challenges that would occur on a daily basis.

Four and half years ago, you hired Michael May as your purchasing manager. May was 57 years old at the time. His past work experiences met your needs and his references were outstanding. He and his wife wanted to move to this part of the country so this position would be beneficial for him and the Marion Hotel. As purchasing manager, May was required to negotiate with vendors and suppliers for a variety of hospital supplies including furniture, bed linens, bathroom amenities, food and beverage items, cleaning supplies, and other supplies and equipment as needed in the daily operations of the hotel. May also handled incoming shipments and acquired an off-site warehouse where inventory could be stored. May’s performance evaluations had ranged from very good to excellent.

Yesterday, the hotel operator received a call from a woman who identified herself as Becky Reimbold. She explained that she was an associate with KBA Property Preservation a company that was hired to remove property from May’s residence as he was being evicted from it. According to Reimbold, the company had run across items that appeared to be Marion Hotel property.

The receptionist attempted to transfer the call to you, or Bette Haver, the HR director, or director of security Jim Hartman, but you were all in the same meeting. The receptionist recorded the details of the call from Reimbold for you, Haver, and Hartman and provided the information to the three of you in sealed envelopes.

Later in the day, Hartman contacted Reimbold at KBA Property Preservation, who told him that the company had found numerous boxes of commercially packaged washcloths and towels, food items including vacuum packed steaks; assorted toiletries and cleaning supplies, and other items that appeared to be property of the Marion Hotel. Hartman was told that the nonperishable property had been moved to a storage facility and Reimbold asked Hartman to come to the facility so he could verify that the items belonged to the Marion Hotel.

Hartman and Andrew Logan traveled to the storage facility to examine the property. Hartman had Logan take pictures of the items. Hartman wrote a report summarizing his findings: “After looking through the items we found six boxes of hotel logo bathroom amenities and numerous washcloths and towels that were clearly unused hotel property. There were three vacuum cleaners of the same brand and model number used by the hotel.” KBA’s Becky Reimbold stated, “We threw away numerous items because they were perishables and could not be stored in the storage shed by law.”

After Hartman presented his findings to top management, you (the general manager), Bette Haver (HR director), and Kip Williams (legal counsel) met with Michael May to inform him of your findings. Williams explained the sequence of events that had led to this meeting. May vehemently denied that he had stolen anything from the hotel. He did admit, however, that he had been given samples of many items from vendors. He was reminded by Bette Haver that the Marion Hotel policies require all employees to report gifts that they receive from those doing business with the hotel.

You told Michael May that he was suspended effective immediately and that the hotel’s leadership team would meet with him two days later after they had discussed the actions he had taken as an employee. Later in the day, you reviewed the hotel’s policies. One thing in particular stuck in your mind: “The Marion Hotel will not tolerate stealing, nor will it tolerate the possession of company property or other employees’ property without prior permission.”

You had a sleepless night and wondered what you might have done to prevent things like this from happening. More importantly you wondered what to do with Michael.

Question: 

What are some of the legal and ethical issues in this call particularly as they relate to potential age discrimination?