French supermarket sees sense over rubbish bin "thief"

Sometimes you just have to admit that it's a mad, bad world in which those at the top of the heap are in charge and make the rules and those at the bottom - well they just have to like it and lump it.

But sometimes - especially when the regulations are enforced and the outcome is just so barmy, the cause of the so-called "little man" can be helped by the support of those around him and justice can be done.

Monoprix (screenshot from BFM TV report)

Such is surely the case of Kader, a 59-year-old employee of the French supermarket chain Monoprix in the southern city of Marseille.

Last Monday he was sent home from his job and threatened with being sacked.

His crime?

He had supposedly "stolen" six melons and two lettuces.

Except there's a very good reason for the inverted commas.

As the regional daily La Provence reported, Kader had simply retrieved them from a bin at the back of the store where, as out-of-date products, they were waiting to be collected and taken to the nearest landfill.

It appeared that such behaviour was tantamount to "misconduct" and as far as Monoprix rules were concerned employees weren't allowed to take home food even if it were destined for landfill; it said as much in the work contract Kader had signed.

"I didn't know," the shelf-filler who had been working for the store for the past eight years told the newspaper.

"I'm so ashamed. I've never, ever stolen anything in all my years of working," he continued.

"I told my manager, 'If I've stolen something, call the police'. I'm not a thief and I've never taken a thing in my life."

Management at the store remained stumm, refusing to talk to the local media.

But the story soon spread and was reported nationally.

Kader repeated what he had told La Provence on national radio Europe 1.

"When I passed the rubbish bin I saw the melons and lettuce ready to be thrown away," he said

"I thought they were in a reasonable state so I decided to take them home - just to eat," said the father of six.

The unions were soon on the case, pointing out that Monoprix's main shareholder, Casino , had just reported record profits but according to company rules, "appeared ready to fire a man for taking home food that was going to be thrown away."

A demonstration was held outside the shop. Kader's colleagues were interviewed and expressed how "pathetic" they found management's decision.

Monoprix's official Facebook page started receiving complaints and there were calls from some Internauts for a boycott of the store.

And an online petition was started, calling for Kader to be reinstated.

So much bad publicity and on such a scale for a management stance that was surely both as untenable as it was ridiculous.

The Powers that Be at the store finally caved in on Friday, seeing sense and reducing Kader's penalty to a simple one-day reprimand for having failed to follow company regulations.

Regulations which the national daily France Soir says the company had hidden behind in an attempt to explain its (over)reaction and which officially aimed, "To protect human health by avoiding the consumption of spoiled products."

Kader spoke to the local commercial television station, LCM, after he had received news that he was being reinstated.

"I was moved by the reaction of the media, my colleagues and the unions," he said.

"I would just like to thank everyone for the support they've given me."

Escaped UK schizophrenic found teaching in French school

Lewis Alexander Mawhinney applied for a job as a German teacher in the southern French town of Digne-les-Bains in December last year.

The 26-year-old, originally from Northern Ireland, apparently came with excellent qualifications.

As the national daily France Soir reports, because the local education authority was particularly short on German teachers, it immediately offered him a job under contract at two of its schools; the Pierre-Gilles-de-Gennes lycée and the Maria-Borrely collège.

He began on January 3. But not all was as it at first appeared.

Cloth embroidered by a schizophrenia sufferer (from Wikpedia, author - cometstarmoon)

"We had no reason to complain about his behaviour and I never heard the slightest negative comment about him from his colleagues, pupils or parents," Pascale Garrec the director of the lycée is quoted as saying in the regional daily Midi Libre.

"It was during a conversation outside of the professional context that I became concerned over some of the 'peculiarities' about comments he made."

Among them were claims made by Mawhinney that he was a secret service agent working for Scotland Yard, and that led Garrec to alert the local police.

His behaviour in the classroom was also somewhat unusual according to pupils who spoke to another regional daily La Provence, and some of them found him "weird".

"He didn't seem to know the rules of German grammar," one pupil told the paper.

"When we asked him a question, he wouldn't reply immediately and instead would give us the answers the next day after having searched the Internet."

Another commented on the teachers apparent "normality" inside the classroom but odd habit of "putting on his gloves to open and close the door so as not to leave fingerprints."

Investigations revealed that the man described as "discreet" had in fact escaped from a clinic in the Northern Ireland capital Belfast in 2008, where he was being treated for schizophrenia after a knife attack on a man the previous year.

Mawhinney has been fired from his post and is being held in a psychiatric unit in the town awaiting his return to Belfast.

French lottery winner shares 10 million euros jackpot with friends

The New Year got off to a rather special start for two couples in their 60s from just outside the southern French city of Arles as they picked up €10 million between them in the lottery.

image - screenshot from TF1 report

Except the win wasn't quite as straightforward as is it might initially appear.

Because in fact only one man held the winning ticket, but he decided to share the jackpot with his wife and the other couple because he was - well to put in quite simply - a man of principle.

As the regional daily, La Provence explained when it first reported the story, the two couples, who had known each other for more than two decades, had been regularly playing the lottery for the past three years.

They tried their luck at Christmas, says the paper, choosing the numbers together and handing over the €10 at the local tobacconists.

The draw was made and they won - absolutely nothing.

A week later though Jean-Pierre who, as the French media has reported, prefers to stay out of the limelight, entered the lottery again, only this time without telling either his wife or his friends.

He chose exactly the same numbers as the previous week, paid the €10 and...yes you've guessed it...the numbers came up.

And he was €10 million the richer.

Now this is the point where most of us would probably in theory wish to be magnanimous.

But as the recent example of Jeanette French in the United States proved that isn't always the case.

She was the 72-year-old woman from Florida who had been a member of a syndicate playing the State Lottery for the past eight years.

When the syndicate scooped the $16m jackpot the other seven members refused to split the winnings with French, because as ABC News Radio reported, she hadn't put her dollar in the collective pot.

The case soon became one for the lawyers.

Not so with Jean-Pierre though.

He immediately told his wife Eve - all right it would have been difficult to have kept it from her probably - and the other couple, Jean-Paul and Sophie.

Not only that, he has also split the winnings four ways and never considered keeping the money for himself.

"It's normal that we should share the money as we've known each other for 22 years," he told France Info radio.

"I went to see them and asked them to give me the usual €5 they contributed every week, and when they did, I told them we had all won €10 million."