Memo to Sprint employees: Don’t be a hero

Yesterday, our sister paper in Denver reported an incident in which two Sprint outlet store employees were fired for chasing down a shoplifter from the Apple store in Denver’s Cherry Creek Shopping Center.

Mike McGee and Paul Shoemaker were on their break on April 16 when they heard a security guard yell, “Somebody stop that guy!”

The Sprint employees saw a kid running with something wrapped in a black fleece, “like a football.” They chased the guy into Macy’s department store and out through doors leading to a parking garage. There, Shoemaker tackled the kid and McGee held him down until Denver police and mall security guards could take over. The alleged shoplifter had about $500 worth of stolen Apple merchandise, Westword‘s Michael Roberts reports.

Roberts writes:

Word soon got around about the pair’s actions, and they were treated like

minor celebrities by fellow mall workers. For instance, Shoemaker says, “The

lady at the Apple Store was so thankful. And she told me, ‘We’ve been sending

you business over the last week,’ because a drive that Sprint supports works

really well with their iPad. They were telling people to come over and get it

from us.”

But the pair’s corporate employers frowned upon their vigilante heroism.