A Chipotle in Lenexa, Kansas, fired an assistant manager after an employee accused the manager of attempting to forcibly remove her hijab.
The employee, a 19-year-old Muslim woman, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week. The young woman said the assistant manager at the location where she worked began asking to see her hair starting in July.
“We have a zero tolerance policy for discrimination of any kind and we terminated the employee in question nearly two weeks ago following a thorough investigation,” Laurie Schalow, chief corporate affairs officer, said in a statement to The Star.
The woman wrote in a complaint filed Aug. 23 that, “I informed him that I wear a hijab for religious reasons and I cannot remove it.”
“I was not the one that should be required to move to a different location."
The assistant manager, however, continued asking to see her hair, the complaint said. He also made similar comments to the employee’s cousin who worked at the same location.
“I would tell him no and walk away,” she wrote.
On Aug. 9, after the store had closed, she was cleaning when the assistant manager “came up behind me and pulled hard on my hijab.” Her hijab was attached with pins and only came off halfway. Her hair was exposed a little bit, the complaint said. The assistant manager then asked the employee’s cousin if he could see her hair.
“I was shocked, humiliated and scared,” she wrote while also saying the assistant manager kept laughing.
The hijab is a religious head covering worn in public by some Muslim women around the world for a variety of reasons, but traditionally as part of their religion and a way of exhibiting modesty.
The employee reported the incident to two managers but gave her two weeks’ notice the next day. A week later, the location’s manager texted her and asked her if she wanted to be transferred to a different location so she wouldn’t lose her job.
“I was not the one that should be required to move to a different location,” she wrote.
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