I’ve wanted to share this story here for months but my lawyer asked me to hold off.
But basically what happened was we have this anonymous Instagram account in our town that publishes people’s submissions. Back in November they started to get a lot of submissions from former employees of this really popular local restaurant. The stories alleged a lot of stuff, like that one of the owners regularly served alcohol to underage women, that people were threatened to be fired if they didn’t come to work during a pandemic and then fired when they contracted Covid possibly from coming into work, and just general stuff about the owners being really cruel and toxic.
I’m a local freelance journalist, so I tracked down the people who submitted to the account and interviewed them. Then I shared their stories on my personal Twitter account.
The owner then filed a lawsuit against the former employees he assumes made the posts. He sued me too for sharing the stories.
I’m pretty sure it’s a SLAPP suit, a lawsuit intended to bankrupt me and the former staff to get us to stop talking about their experiences working for them. But SLAPP lawsuits aren’t illegal in my state, so I’m just stuck trying to somehow pay the legal fees.
The bright side is we finally published the story today, which means I’m allowed to go full public with what the restaurant owners have been doing.
I say all that to say this: the restaurant industry is a toxic, often abusive environment for employees, but a lot of local media outlets around the country would rather continue to get free meals from trendy restaurants and ignore the knowingly bad treatment.
Even if I lose everything in this lawsuit, it’s worth it to me to share their stories and keep fighting against toxic work environments.