PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — A convenience store clerk who was fired recently for refusing to sell cigarettes to a customer trying to pay for them with state welfare benefits has been fired, but her story has gained traction in local and national media.
According to press reports, Jackie Whiton was working at a C.N. Brown Big Apple convenience store recently when a man in his 20s attempted to purchase cigarettes using an electronic benefit transfer card, which is issued to families in New Hampshire and Maine who are on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF program. Whiton, a six-year employee of the store, refused to sell the man the cigarettes.
“I told him he couldn’t buy them with the card and he said ‘yes he could,’” Whiton told the Union Leader newspaper in New Hampshire. The man’s foster mother returned to the store the next day to complain and Whiton again refused to accept the EBT card as payment for cigarettes. She was fired by the company the next day.
The story about Whiton was published by scores of local and national media outlets over the past couple of days.
According to New Hampshire officials, there are few restrictions on how a EBT card can be used, but they can’t be used at liquor stores. C.N. Brown, the Maine-based company that owns the store Whiton worked at along with 77 others, said in a statement Thursday that it was notified by the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services that it needed to comply with policy or risk being terminated from the program.
“Our employees cannot impose their own personal biases over these products and make decisions about what will and will not be sold to individual customers,” said C.N. Brown general manager Chick Wilkins. “Each of our more than 800 employees may have individual opinions about many of the products sold in our stores — tobacco, wine, beer, condoms, high-calorie products — but these products must be made equally available to all eligible purchasers.”
Wilkins said Whiton was given the opportunity to keep her job if she would adhere to company and state policy.
“Unfortunately she declined to comply, and we had no choice but to let her go for violation of company policy,” Wilkins said in a press release.
So the taxpayers are footing the bill for the above items mentioned? How ridiculous is that!
Cashiers need to do their jobs, not be busybodies and judges.
She was doing her job. Stopping something that should not be bought with the card. It should not be allowed. State sanctioned smoking
As a former TANF recipient, I had to sit through an orientation. They make it clear to you, that the CASH BENEFITS can be used for ANYTHING at any store that takes them. The only way she would have been protected BY THE LAW, is if the customer tried to use the food benefits, not the cash.
You don’t have to agree with the rules, but in this case, if she wanted to keep her job, she had to adhere to them.
If you want the rules changed (as they should be), then you need to go to your state senator or congressperson.
Thank you for setting the record straight. The cash portion of the EBT card can be used to purchase anything that can be bought at a store, and well as pay your rent or other bills. IT IS NOT FOOD STAMPS. PERIOD…
and now I will boycott C.N.Brown stores……
for refusing to sell, or firing the cashier?
Don’t really agree that EBT cards should be allowed to be used on these things, however, being a rogue cashier isn’t the best means of changing things. She could have kept her job and still brought attention to the matter.
This is really a tough spot for C Store operators…
on one hand, as working people, they probably resent their hard earned money being spent like this, but on the other hand, the store is still being paid for the cigarettes…
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I think that any type of public assistance should be modeled after the WIC program…The recipient gets vouchers for the bare necessities….no cash period. This would make the program less attractive to the criminal element..
She may have been wrong (under the law) but, I LIKE her!
The law as it stands is terrible. Public assistance should be limited to essential items, not tobacco and alcohol and such. The problem is, if one store refuses to partake in this BS, then the folks on the public dole will just go to one that does, and the first store loses business and nothing has been accomplished. The law needs to be changed, and maybe well publicised incidents like this will make people lean on their elected idiots to do just that.
If people buy cigarettes and alcohol with their EBT cards they are getting too much money. The EBT card is for necessities not smokes and booze. Why should the taxpayers pay for their habits.