Dumped in a Parking Lot: How Pfizer Fires Sales Reps It Doesn't Like

Two drug sales reps fired by Pfizer (PFE) may have failed to prove the company discriminated against them based on their age but their cases nonetheless give a glimpse into the brutal process Pfizer managers sometimes use to get rid of sales reps they don't want. One staffer was literally stranded in a parking lot two miles from home by the boss who fired her.

Both reps -- Marjorie Wagoner and Karen Kirkpatrick -- had managers who made remarks suggesting that they should retire. They were then dragged into four-hour meetings where they were berated in an attempt to extract confessions that they had faked their paperwork, the court rulings say.

Wagoner and Kirkpatrick were both in their 50s when Pfizer accused them of falsifying the "starter" forms they use to gather doctors' signatures in exchange for the free drug samples they hand out. Both denied they faked the forms, and claimed that dates on them were only altered to correct doctors who had written the wrong date. Pfizer conducted audits of their paper trails and then brought them to Chicago. Here's what happened to Wagoner, who was 56 and had worked for Pfizer for 26 years:

Four starter forms were discussed during the Chicago meeting, but they were projected on a screen and were not easily legible. Wagoner described this interrogation as "rapid fire" and a "witch hunt," and felt "berate[d] ... with false accusations that [she] had changed the date on certain drug sample starter forms to balance [her] daily sales activities." Wagoner tried to explain the discrepancies found in her starter forms, but was repeatedly cut off and told that she was "lying." She further attested:

... the meeting was intense and relentless, and at one point I said, I have to take a break because my temperature is rising because people were asking questions. I didn't know the appropriateness of it. I wasn't a part of -- I wasn't getting it at that point. And we took a break, and I went to the bathroom, and I was not well. It was -- I had not been treated so rudely in my life ...

The meeting lasted four hours, and left Wagoner "physically shaken."

When Kirkpatrick, 55, got a new boss, district manager Geoff Holt, he took her aside at their first meeting and said:

"Karen, hey, Curt McAllister and I were in the bar last night and we didn't realize that you were as old as you are." Kirkpatrick twice asked Holt what he meant, but Holt refused to respond. When the two met again in October 2005, Holt told Kirkpatrick, "Well, you certainly have been doing this a long time now. Have you thought about retirement?"

At this meeting, Kirkpatrick was repeatedly accused of changing the dates on her starter forms. The meeting was very upsetting to Kirkpatrick, who was understandably shaken by the accusations. She began crying, and twice became physically ill. According to Kirkpatrick, at no point during the four-hour meeting did she admit to falsifying her starter forms.

The day she was terminated, Kirkpatrick was told to meet Holt at a storage unit with her company credit card and company car keys. Kirkpatrick handed the credit card, which she had already cut into pieces, and car keys to Holt. Holt turned to Kirkpatrick, said "you're done," and drove away in the company car, leaving Kirkpatrick stranded more than two miles from home.

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