A California Taco Bell fired employees who engaged in a group sex act in plain view of other guests during a Christmas party at the restaurant last year, according to a lawsuit filed by the ex-employee who reported them.
The lawsuit also alleges that the employee who reported the incident at the holiday festivities – leading to her former co-workers’ dismissals – ended up being forced to quit her job after facing threats and getting her car window shattered by an associate of the terminated colleagues.
A message seeking comment about the allegations in the claims filed by Alana Bechiom in Los Angeles county superior court on 15 November was not immediately returned by the company that owns the franchised Taco Bowl location in question.
Taco Bell’s public relations office said in a statement to the Guardian: “While we don’t own or manage this location, the franchisee who owns and operates this restaurant has shared that they take these claims very seriously.”
The allegations in Bechiom’s lawsuit are more salacious than what typically is found in civil court documents.
As she puts it, her supervisor at the Taco Bell where she was working invited her to a Christmas party at the chain establishment on 18 December 2022. Bechiom said she brought a bowl of guacamole to the gathering, which she was told would be a potluck-style buffet.
Bechiom said she arrived to find the place’s windows covered in wrapping paper. The lobby’s surveillance cameras were also covered as her supervisor provided alcohol to employees, including some whom Bechiom alleged were “overserved”.
Late in the night, Bechiom stepped outside briefly, she recounted. She then walked back in to allegedly find a co-worker “having sex with his wife in front of everyone at the party”.
Bechiom said she also saw that co-worker’s wife simultaneously kissing two women: her manager and another colleague.
The scene left Bechiom “shocked, disgusted and outraged”, the lawsuit said. Bechiom reported that more was in store for her after she ran out of the restaurant but came back in to fetch her guacamole bowl.
Her manager and one of the other co-workers participating in the group sex act were vomiting, she said in her lawsuit. While one vomited in the trash, the other threw up right in her guacamole bowl, she alleged.
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Bechiom complained to Taco Bell human resources as well as the Colorado-based company which owned that franchised location, Alvarado Restaurant Nation. She said the manager and other employees who engaged in sex at the party were fired.
But she said her problems didn’t stop there. She alleged that associates of her fired colleagues threatened her and broke her car window. Instead of disciplining those who were intimidating her, Bechiom’s superiors sought to transfer her to another location, her lawsuit asserted.
Bechiom eventually quit.
Her subsequent lawsuit demands damages from her employers because she says they created a work environment so hostile for her that she had to resign. It remained pending Tuesday.