A Walmart worker claims he was fired because he left his shift early to be with his grandmother in her dying moments.

Vaughn Sawyer III, 29, of Lewiston, Maine, left his shift at the Auburn Walmart early on September 19 after he got a call from his aunt saying his grandmother, Jacqueline, only had a few more hours to live.

Sawyer claims he told his manager that he had to leave for a few hours and that he would return later to fill out his bereavement paperwork.

‘She went from a few days to live to a few hours pretty quickly,’ Sawyer told the Daily Mail. ‘So I rushed over there.’

He claimed he told his manager that he would finish unloading the truck, so that the next shift would be set up, but after that he was going to leave to say goodbye to his grandmother. His manager told him that was allowed, he claimed.

Just over three hours later, Sawyer returned to fill out his paperwork, but he couldn’t find a manager, so he left. The next morning, he returned to drop off a set of keys.

‘Do you want your last check too?’ he claims an employee asked him.

‘And I go: “What are you talking about?”‘ Sawyer recalled.

A manager came into the office, where they handed the father-of-two his last paycheck.

‘And that was about it,’ Sawyer told the Daily Mail. ‘I was very hurt.’

Sawyer had been working at the store as a stocking and receiving manager for roughly two years and managed a group of 15 people.

‘So, for [Walmart] to just toss me aside, not even an exit conversation or anything, it was kind of hard,’ he said.

The single father knew his ‘points’ were stacking up against him, as he has previously had to leave early to tend to his parental duties. If a Walmart employee hits a certain number of points, they could face termination.

However, he claims a manager had never confronted him about it, and he had discussed using the day as the start of his bereavement, he said.

Shortly after, Sawyer received a message from a member of his former team, showing a photo of him that once hung in the manager’s office with a hole punched through his forehead in the trash can.

‘That solidified how they really felt about me in there,’ Sawyer said.

‘Where the hole punch was, it doesn’t really remove anything identifying anyway,’ he said. He doesn’t know if the location of the punch was deliberate or was a joke.

Sawyer said he would consider returning to work if he was offered his job back.

A Walmart spokesperson told the Daily Mail: ‘We do not speak on personal matters.’

Now, Sawyer is navigating finding a new job, while also grieving his grandmother, whom he was very close with.

‘She was always a pillar of stability and a pillar of strength for me,’ Sawyer said.

Jacqueline lived in the second-floor apartment above him for most of his life, and he spent a lot of time with her growing up after his parents split.

Some of his favorite memories are going to church with his grandmother on Sundays and swinging by Tim Hortons afterward for brunch. On Thursdays, the family would get together for ‘Italians night,’ where they would order subs from Forks Market.

Jacqueline, a first-generation American, would also sometimes host spaghetti nights, where she would whip up her own sauce – something Sawyer would look forward to.

‘That was my favorite part, the sauce,’ he said.

Leading up to her death, Sawyer would talk with his grandmother, and they would make sarcastic jokes.

‘We had some good times,’ he said. ‘It was mostly just sarcastic jokes here and there that she would pick up on and chuckle, kind of thing. Towards the end, she would only react, she couldn’t really engage too much.’

The family believes Jacqueline passed away at the age of 83 from a combination of Alzheimer’s and a brain hemorrhage.

The family remembered Jacqueline as a ‘strong and courageous woman’ who ‘loved her family,’ her obituary said.

‘Jackie was the very definition of a classy lady, with just the right touch of sass,’ it said. ‘She dressed beautifully every day, with her hair perfectly styled and her lipstick always on point. She simply did not leave the house without putting on her lipstick – not even for a trip to the emergency room.’

The family also remembers her for her ‘legendary sweet tooth,’ as the grandmother would always have a basket full of chocolate bars by her door and ‘no fewer than six different flavors of ice cream in the freezer.’

‘To Jackie, there was always room for something sweet – and usually enough to share,’ the obituary said.