Waitress’s private sex video shared by coworkers in Facebook group chat, NC suit says
A former waitress at a chain restaurant in Raleigh said she endured seven months of sexual harassment at the hands of her coworkers before she quit in 2019.
Now she’s suing.
The woman filed a sexual harassment lawsuit seeking $100,000 in lost income and emotional duress against Charlotte-based Firebirds Wood Fired Grill on Thursday, according to court documents filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“Restaurants have long ignored sexual harassment of a work force that has to make a majority of its income from gratuity in the form of tips,” her attorney John S. Austin of Austin Law Firm PLLC told McClatchy News in a statement. “The days of ‘they all do it’ should have disappeared in the ‘70s when Helen Reddy sang ‘I Am Woman.’”
Firebirds is a chain of restaurants serving “classic American cuisine” with locations in 19 states — including seven in North Carolina, according to its website.
A representative for Firebirds did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.
Austin declined to comment on the allegations in the lawsuit but said “sexual harassment of women in restaurants is institutionally pervasive.”
According to the complaint, the waitress worked at Firebirds from August 2018 until February 2019. During that time, her coworkers shared a sexually explicit video of her in the Facebook group chat the wait staff used for scheduling, the lawsuit states.
“The video was an intimate, sexually explicit video (she) made for (her) boyfriend’s eyes only,” her lawyer said in the complaint.
Coworkers then shared the video with the kitchen staff, who reportedly passed it on to others at the Raleigh restaurant, according to the lawsuit. Management “did nothing to discourage this behavior or remove the video or advise staff of the damage such actions caused,” the complaint states.
In the three months that followed, the waitress’s attorney said she was “harassed, groped, and ridiculed.”
Someone at the restaurant drew “cartoon female breasts” next to the waitress’s name on the schedule one day, according to the lawsuit. On another day, a kitchen worker reportedly grabbed her around the waist. The complaint described a pattern of “sexual and physical assaults” by kitchen workers against the female wait staff.
People who worked at the restaurant said “they all do it,” the lawsuit states.
But when the woman complained to a local manager and later human resources at corporate headquarters, her attorney said “nothing became of the investigation.” Instead, the waitress said she received a threatening text message from an unknown phone number that said, “You can run but you can’t hide sl**, you won’t be taking anyone down but yourself.”
She eventually quit in February 2019, citing “intolerable working conditions.”
The lawsuit alleges sexual harassment as well as constructive discharge and seeks a jury trial, back pay, past and future losses, job search and medical expenses, compensation for pain and suffering, punitive damages and attorney’s fees.
