Legal Question in Employment Law in Georgia

I work for a huge well known restaurant chain and I'm not sure if this would be an employment law problem or an immigration law problem. There are elements of each and possibly even age discrimination.

I've been with this current restaurant for almost 20 years with an exemplary record. (Before this I worked for another well known restaurant chain for 10 years with a perfect record.) I have always worked in the kitchen as a cook/trainer and pride myself on how well I work with my fellow employees as well as management. However...

The kitchen manager has a terrible attitude against me and always has, tho I can't for the life of me figure out why. We've worked together for a long time and I recently learned that he has been trying to either fire me himself, or get me fired.

The District Manager of this restaurant used to be the Kitchen Manager, and the KM used to be the Assistant KM. (I will mention now that the KM is Mexican and I am the only white American.) The DM and I are good friends - I've always done a good job for him and work very well with him. He had confided in me a good while back that the KM (then Asst. KM) was always trying to get him to fire me. I asked him why and was told he was not sure but suspected that he wanted an all-Mexican kitchen. I never thought too much about that, but at present I am the only white American on day shift. Everyone else is either a member of his family or friends. I also know that most of these employees are here illegally, so not only has he hired family (his mother, sister, and assorted brothers and uncles) most of them are illegal aliens. This has been going on for years. There are several that have been fired a number of times, only to be hired back when they obtain new ID's.

This has never bothered me - I have always had a 'live and let live' towards this but I've taken about all that I can from this person.

He harrasses me almost daily about anything, I'm blamed for things that happen even when I'm not there. He's made comments about how I'm too old for this job and threatens me with transferring to another store, or even termination but, at the same time he knows he can't fire me for no reason.

You might be asking yourself "why don't you just transfer or find another job."

My answer to that is - I have worked for this company for a very long time and make good money and it does not make sense to me to start over somewhere else for considerably less money. Also my job is very close to where my wife and I live. This is important to me because my wife has had a small stroke and is confined to the bed. She is non-ambulatory and I need to be as close as I can to be there when she needs me.

My job is perfect except for this one person and I need to do something about it - possibly even a lawsuit. The stress of going to work where one, possibly more, of my managers are trying to find a way to terminate me is really getting to me.

Any advice would be welcome and if anyone has any questions for me please ask.

As you can tell, there are many aspects to my problem.

(I submitted this under "Employment Law" but also could be submitted under "Age Discrimination Law", "Immigration Law", "Race Discrimination Law" and possibly more)

Thank you,

James H.


Asked on 5/20/11, 12:18 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Glen Ashman Ashman Law Office also dba Glen Ashman Attorney

There is no law that says an employee has to be treated nicely. In fact you can be fired for a bad reason, or even no reason. Unless you have solid proof that you have been discriminated against because of your race (and nothing in your post says that), your choices are to leave an employer that you dislike and breaks the law, or stay.

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Answered on 5/20/11, 10:11 pm


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