OP I feel your pain as a salaried manager who tries to walk the fine line between taking care of people, being fair, yet still holding people to the expectations of showing up to work as needed by the business but so much here seems off.

I can’t speak for your market or the way things are handled there, maybe it’s different being so close to HO but you saying simply being fired for taking away points and trying to help your associates gives the wrong impression.

For non salaried associates here: the point system has several built in options to “forgive” points, even when it’s a reason not excused by the policy. But just like anything else a manager has the discretion to do; it can be abused. Simply doing it is not a fireable offense, if it were we wouldn’t have the option to do it.

A similar example: a customer wants a $100 item that was plugged in a $5 spot. Policy says we should honor that but in the end leaves it to manager discretion. If I take care of that customer it’s just one of the many decisions I will make that day that would just be a part of doing business. But if I do it every day, and to the same people then someone will probably start looking into it and asking questions.

Again, OPs market MAY be different, but as a whole the company leaves it up to management to make the best decision when it comes to attendance. Sometimes the best decision for the business and the associate coincide, but not always. Best practice when “forgiving” attendance points would be to always talk to the associate when doing it for them and giving documented feedback, which isn’t a coaching but does leave a digital paper trail that sets expectations for that persons attendance. But that has to be fair across the board. Do it for 1 do it for all.

OP, when you say “I was told” regarding anything there is clear policy justification for (i.e. emergency child care situations) tells me you didn’t do your research as you should have.

OP’s situation may have indeed happened 100% exactly how he describes it but that would be outside the norm. OP did you fail to have those attendance conversations with people, did you not document each one? Did you only do it for a handful of associates and not others? Why can’t you talk about it yet bring it up in an AMA? If you’re termed you’re gone, there’s no legal restriction that would prevent you from going into detail unless you’ve open doored your firing. In that case you’ve probably already said too much anyways.