Reuters reports that Starbucks has been slapped by a lawsuit from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for firing a barista-in-training with dwarfism in El Paso, Texas. The barista was terminated because she asked for a stool or a small stepladder to perform her job.
The feds argue that this violates the Americans With Disabilities Act, which says that employers cannot ignore a request for “a reasonable accommodation by a qualified individual with a disability.”
]
The El Paso Times quoted the Starbucks spokeswoman, Stacey Krum, saying that the company has “zero tolerance” for worker discrimination, adding, “We definitely want to make clear how seriously we take the concerns that have been raised in the lawsuit.”
Follow Stick a Fork In It on Twitter @ocweeklyfood or on Facebook!
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.