The majority of employment arrangements are at-will, meaning an employer can fire an employee for any reason or no reason at all. But there are exceptions to that rule, and some reasons for firing are illegal. And there may be some hoops an employer must jump through before firing a union-member employee
So while it might seem like an easy answer to say “Yes, you can fire an employee for shopping at work,” the answer gets a little more difficult if the employees were union members whose termination didn’t go to arbitration first. If that’s the case, you may end up in federal circuit court.