One thing’s for sure: This former Chick-fil-a employee is anything but chicken.
After months of harassment and transphobic discrimination by co-workers, mishandling by supervisors, and a wrongful termination, Erin Taylor of Decatur, Georgia is taking the fast food giant to court.
While she wasn’t aware of the company’s queerphobic history when she started training for her location’s director of operations role last year, the restaurant’s culture soon made itself apparent.
“I was excited, and unfortunately that excitement changed quickly, starting with my first day,” she tells NBC News.
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Taylor says she almost immediately started to be harassed by a co-worker with “very vulgar comments” including explicit “sexual passes” at her. She reported this to her supervisor, but the complaints went unheard.
When she went on to report the situation to franchise owner, Joe Engert, his response was shocking.
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According to Taylor’s lawsuit against the fast food giant, “The Franchise Owner responded by saying that it should be an honor that with (Taylor) being a transgender woman that someone liked her enough to hit on her.”
After her co-workers learned that she was transgender, Taylor was faced with even more unprofessional and discriminatory behavior.
“A lot of transphobia started happening,” she notes, stating that the “countenance of the entire restaurant changed.
Other employees who had only ever known her as a woman started to suddenly find themselves unable to gender her correctly, and the verbal harassment from her main problem co-worker turned transphobic and violent.
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In November, she was given permission to leave work one day after a specifically bad bit of harassment — a move that wasn’t quite as gracious as it seemed.
Taylor was soon fired for leaving during her shift. This entire shifty situation seemed to her like an excuse to fire her for being transgender. After months of harassment, Taylor knew it was time to speak out and fight.
She filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission later that month, and is now prepared to take the chain’s queerphobic discrimination on in court.
“In any professional environment, I would expect that company, and individuals working for that company, to uphold themselves in a professional manner,” she states. “That didn’t happen.”
Hear Taylor tell her story in the video below:
