Lawsuits: Wendy’s manager groped, bullied workers

2 ex-employees sue for compensatory, punitive damages.

Two former Gwinnett Wendy’s employees are suing the restaurant’s franchisee, claiming a manager groped them, showed his naked body to employees and threatened to have Mexican employees deported.

Civil lawsuits were filed last week by a Norcross man and a Duluth man against Hoover Foods Inc., a Suwanee-based Wendy’s franchisee. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution typically does not identify plaintiffs in lawsuits alleging sexual harassment or assault.

Both plaintiffs claim that when they worked at the Wendy’s on Spalding Drive in Norcross, they were sexually harassed and sexually assaulted on “virtually a daily basis” by a manager.

One plaintiff claimed that the manager poked him in the clothed buttocks with a spatula and proceeded to use the uncleaned spatula to flip burgers. The Wendy’s restaurant has not had a health inspection grade below a B for at least the past eight years.

The manager would grope, ogle and slap employees’ buttocks and genitals, make lewd comments and repeatedly ask the plaintiffs “to engage in sexual activity,” according to the lawsuits. The manager also allegedly exposed his naked body to the plaintiffs and other employees. The AJC is not identifying the manager because he was not named as a defendant in either suit.

The manager also repeatedly bullied Mexican workers about their heritage and threatened to have them deported if they complained about their treatment in the workplace, the suit alleges. The plaintiffs said they and other employees “forcefully and consistently objected” to the manager’s sexual and nationality-based harassment, but the manager did not stop.

The plaintiffs are accusing Hoover Foods of failing to “institute adequate policies and procedures to accommodate complaints and investigation of complaints” of sexual and discriminatory harassment. The plaintiffs’ manager and district manager “actively discouraged” and forbade contact between management and low-level employees such as the plaintiffs, the suit says.

The plaintiffs and other employees complained to the district manager, Hoover Foods’ human resources department, and through a hotline designated for harassment complaints, but the company “took virtually no action” to punish the manager, the suits say.

The Duluth plaintiff alleges that Hoover Foods did not respond to or investigate complaints against the manager until after the plaintiff filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint.

After that complaint was filed, the manager threatened to fire the plaintiff and “bragged that no one is going to do anything about their complaints.” The Duluth plaintiff also alleges that the manager cut his salary, denied requests to transfer to another store and threatened him after the EEOC complaint was filed.

The EEOC investigated complaints from both plaintiffs and said there was reasonable cause to conclude the plaintiffs were discriminated against because of their sex and national origin, according to August 2016 determinations. The EEOC proposed that Hoover Foods give both plaintiffs financial compensation, but the company did not do so. In October, the EEOC notified the plaintiffs that they had the right to file suit.

A representative for Hoover Foods did not immediately return a request for comment.

The plaintiffs are suing for compensatory and punitive damages.