A restaurant owner shocked a 25-year-old female employee, not just by firing her, but for his crude attitude toward her once he informed her of the termination.
Terry Carter, owner of Terry’s Turf Club in Ohio, which has been featured on the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives,” told Evelyn Marie Reid she’d be fine, and instructed her to “Just keep your legs open.” Carter also said, “I’ll miss that a**” as he followed her up the stairs, according to Reid.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, Reid talks about the incident:
“On Tuesday evening, I was contacted to work a double shift at Terry’s Turf Club where I have been happily employed since January. Halfway through my shift, Terry came up to me and fired me, without warning and said to me “you’ll be fine, just keep your legs open.”
When she was trying to depart, she said Carter would not leave her alone.
“I walked to gather my belongings up a flight of stairs,” she recalled. “Terry followed me. He said, “I’ll miss that a**” as he was behind me on the stairs. At that point I got my phone out and started recording him because I was extremely uncomfortable.”
Reid went on to explain, “The video I took was over 3 minutes long where I was asking for some sort of explanation as to why I was fired. Terry refused to give me any explanation other than ‘it’s just not working out.’ He then, again, told me ‘I don’t have to explain anything to you, keep your legs open’ with a smile on his face.’
In the video Reid posted, Carter again says “Keep your legs open.”
The young waitress pleaded to the readers, “Please do not give your business to Terry’s Turf Club on Eastern Avenue in Cincinnati, OH. Please share this so that people know the type of person the owner is.”
Although she has gotten backlash Reid doesn’t plan on backing down stating “Just because you’re a privileged white man doesn’t mean you can say whatever you’d like.”
“Thank God I have proof, otherwise no one would have believed me,” she
told Fox 19. “Because in this day and age, it’s just if you say ‘Oh, this person did this to me,’ then I’m trying to ruin their life.”
The burger joint is infamous for gaining rave reviews, but that has changed. Since the post was made public, the restaurant’s Facebook page has been saturated with one-star reviews and Yelp has temporarily disabled their review site because of this incident.
“I can’t believe he was dumb enough to say this on film,” Donyetta Bailey, a local employment attorney, told WKRC, after she reviewed the video.
“It’s horrific, but in this day and age, I feel like this is what we’ve come to. People are getting more emboldened because they feel like there isn’t any repercussions for their action.”
Bailey added, “If I were her, I would contact a lawyer and go to the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] and file a charge for sexual harassment and wrongful termination.”
