Walmart VP of Corporate Communications David Tovar probably had that dream you have sometimes. You know, the one where you forgot to hand in a big paper, or didn’t pass that test, or missed that one requirement for your major and didn’t really get your degree. But then you wake up and have your coffee in peace because it wasn’t real. But for David Tovar it was real. He didn’t get his degree from the University of Delaware as he claimed he had. He was a few credits short and it wasn’t a dream. So Walmart canned him, because you’re supposed to tell the truth to your employer. Essentially David Tovar stole his job from someone who had actually done the work to meet its requirements and who didn’t lie–that’s the problem.
The soon-to-be-dismissed Tovar told CNBC that he was put through “a battery of tests including questions about leadership, drug tests, background checks…[and] my education was flagged. They asked me about it, and I was 100 percent transparent.” In other words, after they had him, he was honest about what they already knew. In June Tovar talked about his “passion for measurements” in an interview, a passion which apparently doesn’t extend to measuring how many credits you took in college, or the importance of the truth.
