Circle K worker who reported a knife threat says her firing was backdated to the day she was sent home

The complaint, as reported, does not say which five days Circle K counted as no-call, no-show, and the account does not include a response from the company ^[16]. Two stretches on the complaint's calendar are long enough to supply them ^[4]. The first began May 7. That day she called the store and said she would not return until she could speak with human resources or the store manager, who was on vacation until May 13 ^[9]. The assistant manager answered that the coworker would be kept off the schedule until then ^[9]. The second ran from May 14 to about May 22, while she waited to hear about her job and a possible transfer ^[15]. Each followed a manager telling her she could, or should, go home ^[4].

The company-side reading is simple: she set her own conditions for returning, then stayed away. If the five days fall in that first week, a termination dated May 14 fits it ^[16]. The store manager's own call on May 13 complicates that. She asked whether the worker wanted to come in the following day and said she would not be scheduled alongside the coworker ^[11]. A manager offering a shift is hard to reconcile with a week the system treats as unexcused ^[11][16].

If the counted days fall after May 14, the record dates the firing before the absences it cites ^[6]. The worker says the store manager had told her to go home and she was waiting for follow-up, and that she had not regularly worked weekends during her month of employment ^[17].

Her complaint also moved upward slowly. The store manager was away for seven days after the knife incident ^[5]. According to the complaint, the assurance about the schedule did not hold: a colleague told the worker the coworker had been at the store on a day she was scheduled to work ^[10]. Her police report and ethics-hotline call came on May 14, eight days after the knife came out ^[14][3]. She reached a district leader on or about May 22 and was told hours later that she had been terminated ^[15].

I think the May 14 conversation is the part of the record the retaliation count leans on hardest. Asked about a transfer, the store manager said "Transfer for what?" according to the complaint ^[12]. She asked whether the worker believed the coworker would "come to the store and kill her" ^[13]. When the worker said she thought it possible, the manager said she would "cut off all communication" and sent her home ^[13].

The suit was filed October 1 against Circle K Stores Inc. in the Southern District of Indiana ^[2]. It pleads sex discrimination and retaliation under Title VII, the main federal law barring workplace discrimination based on sex ^[2][3]. Every managerial decision it describes before May 22 was made inside one store, by an assistant manager and a store manager, in a job that began on or about April 21 ^[1][15].