The reason was written into his own termination letter, he claims
A longtime PepsiCo service technician says he lost his job for one reason: he kept insisting the company pay him for his full workday, not just part of it. In a complaint filed September 4, 2026 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the worker - who the filing says spent more than five years in the role - alleges PepsiCo and an affiliate, Grayhawk Leasing, refused to count time he worked before and after his official hours, then fired him weeks after he pushed back.
The setup will sound familiar to anyone running a mobile or field workforce. Each morning, the technician logged into a company iPad, picked up his routes and job assignments, and drove a company vehicle to his first stop, according to the complaint. None of that counted as paid time, the filing says. Under the policy it describes, technicians who took vehicles home had to reach their first job by 10:00 a.m., with pay starting only then - regardless of when they logged in or how far they had to drive. During a period when his territory sat about an hour and a half from home, the complaint says, that meant roughly three hours of unpaid driving a day. Technicians who worked past 6:30 p.m. had to punch out and then drive home unpaid, the filing alleges, still responsible for the vehicle and its equipment.
The technician says he contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry, which, according to the complaint, told him he was entitled to be paid from the time he logged on until he logged off. He raised the issue with managers, in group settings, and during a company investigation, the filing says. It describes a meeting at which a manager told him to “shut up and grab a sandwich” - an exchange the complaint says prompted him to file an internal HR complaint in December 2024. Nothing meaningful came of it, the filing alleges.
Then the timeline tightened. On January 30, 2025, according to the complaint, the company suspended him “pending further investigation for potential violation of Company Policy” over “concerns around Time and Attendance.” A week later, on February 6, 2025, he was fired.
For HR teams, the detail that stands out is what the complaint says the termination letter contained. The filing quotes the letter as stating: “During your interview, among other things, you acknowledged that you feel entitled to receiving pay as soon as you log into the company iPad prior to you getting to your first stop.” The complaint argues that sentence connects the firing to his wage complaint - the documented link at the center of his retaliation claim.
The case turns on what wage-and-hour law calls the “continuous workday” - the idea that once an employee starts the first real task of the day, the clock keeps running through the travel and work that follow. The filing brings claims under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act. It also notes the worker, then 67, had gone more than five years without a disciplinary mark before the company moved from suspension straight to termination, with no step in between.
Two practical pressure points sit underneath the case. The first is unpaid time for staff whose day starts on a device rather than at a desk. The second is the risk of writing down a reason for a termination that a former employee can later read back as punishment for a protected complaint.
The allegations have not been tested, and no court has ruled. The technician is seeking unpaid wages and overtime, liquidated damages, lost earnings, reinstatement or front pay, and a jury trial.
