Store Manager Fired For Capturing Crook

First Southwest Convenience Stores honored 7-Eleven manager Wiley Berggren for increasing sales and controlling overtime hours. Then the company fired him for capturing a thief.

“This has sort of ruined the holidays,” said Berggren, who was an eight-year company veteran until last Tuesday, when he was fired for violating a policy of not confronting suspected thieves.

Only 2-1/2 hours earlier he had been honored at a luncheon for his good work as a manager. Then he was summoned to headquarters and dismissed.

Berggren said his troubles began Dec. 9 when he saw three youths trying to steal beer as he emerged from a storeroom.

One of the youths attacked him, Berggren said, so he tied him up with a trash bag and held him until police arrived. The other two escaped.

Berggren said he was only acting in self-defense.

“These punk kids have no regard for anybody or anything,” he said. “I didn’t want anybody to get hurt.”

The dismissal of Berggren has made him something of a martyr in the West Texas media and on the talk-radio circuit in Texas.

It even has the Odessa police expressing sympathy for him.

“I know Wiley Berggren personally,” said Cpl. Robert Hammerman of the Odessa Police Department. “The man is a hell of a 7-Eleven manager.”

Company policy states that employees face termination for standing up to suspected criminal activity, no exceptions.

Working in a convenience store, a prime target for hold-ups, can be a deadly profession.

In fact, it is the second most dangerous line of work in terms of violent crime, after driving a cab, according to a recent study by the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, a federal agency.