Chipotle Mexican Grille is making headlines again, but this time it’s not for E. coli concerns.
Chipotle has recently been ordered to pay $550,000 — $50,000 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages — to a former employee for discriminating against her because she was pregnant, reports the Chicago Tribune.
Doris Garcia Hernandez, 31, worked at a downtown Washington, D.C., Chipotle back in 2011 when she became pregnant. After telling her supervisor about the pregnancy that November, Hernandez says he started restricting drinking water and forbidding routine breaks. She was ultimately fired in January after she left work early for a prenatal doctor’s visit.
According to The Washington Post, when Hernandez needed to use the bathroom, she was required to tell each employee in the store where she was going and then wait for permission to leave her work area. Yet, these rules were not in place for non-pregnant employees.
Also in her complaint, Hernandez said she notified her supervisor days in advance that she would need to leave work early for a prenatal appointment. He allegedly ignored these requests and told her she couldn’t go on the morning of the appointment; she went anyway. The following morning, her supervisor fired Hernandez in the store’s lobby in front of her coworkers.
To add insult to injury, Hernandez had received positive performance reviews before announcing her pregnancy.
This supervisor sounds like a big tool to me. What’s a pregnant Chipotle worker supposed to do? VOMIT on the black beans and pee all over the floor? Pregnancy pretty much guarantees a woman will become besties with the porcelain throne. And restricting her drinking is just idiocy. Moms-to-be NEED sufficient water intake to support both themselves and their growing fetuses.
At least justice has now been served.
Featured photo via Flickr/Mike Mozart
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