He says a co-worker's apple helped him manage his diabetes - then cost him a 15-year career
Costco fired a manager of nearly 15 years over a single apple, a new lawsuit alleges - and he says bias, not theft, drove the decision.
The claim sits at the center of a complaint filed on August 6, 2026, in federal court in Alabama by a former assistant front-end manager at Costco's warehouse in Hoover. He is 69 and of Iranian national origin, and he says he spent nearly 15 years at the retailer - promoted again and again, named Employee of the Month several times, and moved into management only months before he was let go.
According to the complaint, a new general manager transferred into the warehouse in March 2025. During one of their first interactions, the filing says, she asked him - the warehouse's oldest manager - when he planned to retire, a question she did not put to younger managers. What followed, the complaint alleges, was heightened scrutiny of his work. Eighty-two days after she arrived, his career was over.
At the heart of the firing was an apple. The former manager says he has diabetes and that Costco had long let him eat when he needed to steady his blood sugar. On or about June 8, 2025, the complaint says, a co-worker handed him an apple after his lunch was cut short. He alleges he did not know it came from store inventory and had no intent to steal, and he says employees at the warehouse routinely tasted produce to check its quality without being disciplined.
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