Credit: The Providence Journal
A former dishwasher at a Cheesecake Factory in Providence, Rhode Island is suing the company for discriminating against him. For being straight.
Jessie Ross claims that in August of last year he was felt up, both on his butt and his crotch, by a fellow male employee.
When Ross went to complain to his manager he was pushed aside after being told it would be looked into.
Ross said that the issue didn’t stop there and that since there was a large amount of gay men working at the restaurant, “rough behavior” was a regular occurrence.
Remember, state and federal laws ban discrimination on sexual orientation and that street goes both ways.
That said, Ross claims that he continued to be harassed at work and felt unsafe there. He eventually went back to his manager but the manager seemed to not care because of his “protected status as a heterosexual male.”
“I was an outstanding employee,” Ross says, “Why would I make something up?”
It wasn’t until much later that Ross had finally had enough. He informed his manager that he was so uncomfortable working there that he needed something to be done. That’s when the manager fired him.
But, things didn’t end there because apparently Ross received phone calls and text messages with threats “in an effort to intimidate him and cover up his firing.”
Ross’s lawyer, Joseph Daigle, says he has evidence to support the accusations.
Now a year later, the lawsuit has been brought to public and we'll see how things end for Jessie Ross.
We’ll keep you informed when the story updates.
