New York Food Store Employee Fired After Pretending Cooler Was A Gas Chamber
(JTA) — A health food store in southeast New York fired an employee several days after he made anti-Semitic comments and actions toward her.
The worker at Mother Earth’s Storehouse in Ulster, New York turned the light off in the produce cooler and told an employee named Sarah, “You’re in the gas chamber,” then called her a “f**king Jew.”
Sarah’s mother Jackie Winder Shabanowitz of Kerhonkson, New York, posted on Facebook about the March 11 incident on Friday. She also wrote that “Sarah went to management, they told her not speak about (it), removed her from produce which she has been for a year, and put her on the register. The coworker was forced to apologize but still has his job in produce. On Wednesday, the coworker harassed her again to which she reported to management.”
Two days after the second incident, the store posted an apology on Facebook and said that the employee had been fired, writing: “The Management of our Kingston store would like to apologize to our community for the upset that has occurred. The situation has been handled and the employee is no longer employed by us. We have never, nor will we ever tolerate hate. We were conducting an investigation.”
One comment in response said that “Instructing an employee to keep quiet about such a hateful and frightening experience was not intelligent or kind, and it amounts to further intimidation.” It also complained that the store took too long to resolve the issue. The store acknowledged in response to the comment that “Management mishandled this.”
Meanwhile, Sarah quit her job, local newspaper the Daily Freeman reported.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO