Ford Motor Company has now fired at least five factory workers over alleged unpaid snack purchases at self-checkout kiosks plagued by reported malfunctions, and three of those terminations were later reversed after reviews cleared the employees.
The latest case belongs to Nick Nabozny, a 38-year-old worker at Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant who spent nine years on the job before management pulled him aside on April 27 and accused him of walking out with a bag of Doritos and Ritz crackers with cheese without paying. Nabozny earned $40 an hour and was on track to make more than $125,000 last year with overtime. Ford ended his career over snack food.
Nabozny said a union bargaining representative delivered the accusation bluntly: "They have you on camera in the marketplace stealing food." Ford showed him surveillance footage from earlier that month, captured at one of the Aramark-operated self-checkout kiosks installed inside the plant. Nabozny told the Detroit Free Press he was stunned.
"I asked, 'What did I steal?'"
He described what the footage actually showed: him grabbing two snacks, scanning both items at the kiosk, pulling his debit card from his pocket, tapping it, and waiting for the transaction to register. That sequence, according to Ford, amounted to theft.
"I never stole anything in my life. Why would I jeopardize my livelihood and my family's livelihood to steal food when I'm making good money?"
Nabozny's firing follows the widely reported case of Kurt Kromm, a veteran electrician who spent 11 years repairing robots and automated equipment at Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville. Ford fired Kromm in May over a $1.95 package of Grandma's Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Kromm, a diabetic, said he stopped at the kiosk during an overnight shift after his blood sugar dropped to 60. He needed something to eat fast. Ford accused him of leaving without paying for the cookies. Kromm maintained he had paid.
He went home and checked his bank records. A matching $1.95 charge sat right there on his statement. Kromm sent the proof to Ford. The company took ten days to respond, and when it did, it asked for a notarized copy of the bank statement before it would consider the matter further.
Kromm submitted the notarized document. Several weeks later, Ford informed him he would be reinstated with full back pay of approximately $33,000 and invited him to return. No apology accompanied the offer.
Kromm, as the Daily Mail reported, turned the company down flat.
"There was no apology. There was no serious, 'We're sorry.' There was just, 'Oh, you're not coming back?' No, I am not interested in coming back."
Kromm said he is considering filing a lawsuit.
A Detroit Free Press investigation found three additional Ford employees fired over similar alleged snack thefts at the kiosks. All three were later reinstated after company reviews cleared them. Their names have not been made public.
That brings the known total to at least five Ford workers terminated over kiosk-related accusations, with four of the five eventually cleared or offered reinstatement. The common thread in every case is the same Aramark-operated self-checkout system.
Ford employee Brendan Fluker told the Detroit Free Press that workers have long raised concerns about the kiosks. The problems they described include failed transactions, duplicate charges, frozen screens, and missing receipts. None of those complaints stopped Ford from using the kiosk footage to justify firings.
A Ford spokesperson acknowledged the kiosk problems only in the most cautious terms, saying the company is "aware there have been some issues raised regarding the kiosk functionality in some limited cases" and is "working with Aramark to review these situations." The spokesperson also said Ford has "invested significantly to upgrade our workplaces, including self-serve kiosks operated by Aramark to provide 24/7 convenience for our employees."
Aramark offered even less. A spokesperson said only that the company "remain[s] focused on operating with integrity and accountability." Neither Ford nor Aramark addressed Kromm's specific allegation that Aramark shared surveillance footage with Ford before verifying whether his payment had actually been processed.
That allegation sits at the center of the broader pattern. If Aramark flagged workers as shoplifters based on camera footage alone, without first checking whether the kiosk had simply failed to process a legitimate payment, then Ford fired people on the basis of incomplete evidence from a system its own employees had been warning was broken.
It is unclear whether Nabozny has been offered reinstatement. Ford declined to comment on the specifics of individual cases. The status of the three reinstated workers' claims, and whether they received back pay, has not been publicly disclosed. Kromm's potential lawsuit, if filed, could force Ford and Aramark to produce internal records showing how many workers were flagged by the kiosk system and on what basis termination decisions were made.
Ford installed these kiosks as a convenience. Workers used them in good faith. When the machines malfunctioned, the company treated the employees as criminals, firing longtime workers, in some cases overnight, over items worth less than a cup of coffee. In Kromm's case, Ford demanded a notarized bank statement before it would even consider that a $1.95 charge had gone through. The burden of proof landed entirely on the worker, not on the system that failed.
When a company fires a man over a bag of cookies and then quietly offers him $33,000 to come back without so much as an apology, the problem is not snack theft. The problem is a corporate culture that treats its own workers as guilty until they can prove otherwise, at their own expense and on their own time.