Employee Chased with Pizza Paddle over Garlic Sauce in Customer Attack

Edgewood, MD (WorkersCompensaiton.com) – Police in Edgewood, Maryland, said a Papa John’s employee stabbed a customer in self-defense after the customer attacked him with a pizza paddle.   

According to the Hartford County Sheriff’s Office, the argument between the customer, 40-year-old Herbert Harris, and the employee, 26-year-old Robert Klein, began when Harris complained his pizza did not come with garlic sauce and pepperocinis. The argument escalated to the point that Harris went behind the counter of the restaurant, pushed Klein and then attacked and chased him with a metal pizza paddle.   

Police said Klein fought back.   

"At that time, Klein, unable to escape the physical assault and in fear of his safety, grabbed a pizza spear to defend himself from the attack, and stabbed Harris in self-defense," the sheriff's office said, according to the station.  

Harris was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and police charged him with second-degree assault.   

The attack was one of the latest in attacks on food and retail workers since the start of the pandemic over seemingly minor things.   

In another Maryland event, in May, a McDonald’s employee Britrain Marcelus Gray, 23, of Odenton, was working in the drive-thru of the restaurant when he was shot by what police thought was a drive-thru customer.   

In June, police were called to an Arizona Wendy’s for a customer assaulting an employee. Police said a customer became enraged when she was given fries that were cold and nuggets that weren’t spicy. In response, the customer threw her food and drink and the employee, the Casa Grande Police Department said in a statement.   

In January in Los Angeles, police said a customer shot and killed a Taco Bell employee when the employee refused to take a fake bill as payment. Police said the suspect attempted to use a counterfeit bill at the drive thru. When the employee refused to take it, the suspect opened fire. The 41-year-old employee was shot several times and declared dead at the scene.   

A recent report from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) found that violence and harassment against food workers is common at most popular fast-food chains.   

The study looked at 911 call logs made from McDonald’s, Burger King, Carl’s Jr., and Jack-in-the-Box location in nine of California’s most populous cities between 2017 and 2020. The analysis found that during that time, restaurants made at least 77,000 calls for violent or threatening incidents.   

A handful of the locations, the report said, saw two or more 911 calls per week.   

The report authors called the findings, a “crisis of violence” in the industry that is disproportionately doled out on fast food workers.   

“They’ve been choked by customers, pulled by the hair, grabbed at or pushed, and hit with food or other projectiles,” the report read. “Many more workers describe living in fear as a result of threats from customers or being emotionally shaken by violent incidents they witnessed.”  

In September 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidelines for businesses to protect workers in light of increased attacks at the hands of customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the suggestions were training employees on how to diffuse a situation, providing a safe room with two doors and a telephone for workers to retreat to, and putting in place processes to deal with customer aggression.   

Since the end of mask mandates and other safety guidelines, that direction from the CDC has been removed.   

But the attacks continue to happen.   

And according to SEIU, employees report not getting training on how to deal with violent situations, other than calling 911. One employee told SEIU that not only were they not given training, but that many times they were one of maybe two employees at the Burger King she worked at because of staffing shortages and that despite previous violent attacks, the company refused to hire a security guard to protect workers.   

Representatives of McDonald’s told the Counter, an industry magazine, that the chain does training at its corporate-owned locations. But the company, the sheer number of restaurants makes it hard to make sure no incidents happen.  

“While we do everything, we can to keep all McDonald’s restaurants running smoothly without interruption, the unfortunate reality of sitting at the heart of 14,000 US communities with more than 800,000 individuals working under the Arches is that things happen,” the company said in a blog post.   

Safety experts said that attitude, taken with employees’ experiences and the number of 911 calls pain a bleak picture – a safety crisis in the fast-food industry, largely neglected by chain executives.  

“Parent companies set certain requirements for their franchisees, ‘Your store has to look like this, your food has to taste like this, you have to cook it this way,’” said Deborah Berkowitz, a worker safety and health fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, and former senior policy advisor for OSHA. “But when it comes to protecting workers, they go, ‘We’re not going to give anybody any direction.’ That’s just irresponsible.” 

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