Panera Bread Manager Allegedly Punches Female Employee In New York City Store [Disturbing Video]
A Panera Bread manager reportedly punched a much smaller female employee and knocked her to the ground this afternoon in one of the fast-casual franchise’s Manhattan locations after things got physical between the two restaurant workers.
Panera indicates that the employees involved in the brawl were fired, and the NYPD has the altercation under investigation.
The disturbing and chaotic incident right in the middle of the lunchtime rush was caught on cell phone video (see clip embedded below), which a tipster initially forwarded to the Gawker website.
Someone on the video can be heard shouting “don’t hit her” to no avail, unfortunately.
Apparently, the situation got rough between the two Panera workers prior to the recording.
According to what the tipster told Gawker, moreover, the unhappy worker was in the process of quitting in the middle of her shift and throwing bags of chips to the floor, when she allegedly slapped the much larger man, and he then unleashed a haymaker.
“…Then out of nowhere white shirt manager approaches her and immediately gets physical with her, keep in mind she’s about 5’2 at most and he was bigger than me… He legit threw her down a flight of stairs and out the front door for really no reason, she runs around to the other entrance to retaliate and that’s where the video starts. You might wanna say she hit him first, but really he had FULL CONTROL over her the entire time, was throwing her around, I think she gets one slap in that was louder than it was painful, then he half punches her once, she spins, and then he REALLY F*****G PUNCHES her…”
The woman apparently only suffered minor cuts in the incident, and the blow on video from the man about twice her size evidently landed mainly on her ear.
A Panera spokeswoman released the following statement this evening about the Panera Bread brawl.
“Today there were reports of a physical altercation between two associates at our Park Avenue South bakery-cafe. We have a zero tolerance policy for violence and worked swiftly with authorities to investigate. The associates who were determined to be involved no longer work for Panera. The health and safety of our associates and guests will always be our top priority.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj5L9g0ugeA
Separately, Panera Bread plans to deploy touchscreen kiosks as a replacement for human order takers starting next. Whether that will have an impact on employee job satisfaction in general remains to be seen.
[image credit: kmf164]
