Lizzy Donker, Editor-in-Chief
Several McClurg Dining Hall (Clurg) employees have come forward with allegations of workplace mistreatment including public humiliation, lack of confidentiality, retaliation towards those who speak out, an us-versus-them power dynamic and an overall lack of compassion. Clurg’s upper management denies the claims, calling them mere “opinions.”
A Clurg worker supplied five pages of complaints to The Sewanee Purple on condition of anonymity, saying they believed conditions for employees needed to be addressed but feared being retaliated against or fired if named. The complaints compiled by the worker included:
“When crew has gotten in trouble they send them to the dish room and everyone knows exactly what has happened. They are sent to work in the dishroom to embarrass them and degrade them.
“When managers are called out for not doing their job they retaliate by making the one that called them out do more things. Example– like making them sweep and mop the whole dining area everyday.
“We have had on and currently have people that are homeless and trying to better themselves that are having a hard time. The managers would not let them eat food before they left, but made them throw it away instead– we understand we cannot take food home– but this person could have ate before going home but was told he already had a break that day! Where is the compassion?
“A special needs person was fired and escorted out of the building for being late for work– they have been a long-time employee.
“Nothing is confidential. Even in a meeting with upper management the whole cafeteria knows before the end of shift.
“Cannot go to management or upper management cause all those that have are retaliated upon. They turn everything around on us that complain.
“Many lately have quit because of treatment of managers and upper management– why? Why not treat us better?”
Brent Tate, Assistant Vice President and Director of Sewanee Dining, disputed the worker’s complaints. “There are aspects of the statements which seem to be people’s opinions about things, as opposed to operational issues,” Tate said. “Dining really makes an honest attempt to keep everyone happy at the end of the day. We make an honest attempt to provide all that we can to the students, as far as their experience is concerned, and we do the same for the staff. I’m sure there are times that we fall short, but the main thing that we stress is communication.”
In an interview with The Purple, the first anonymous Clurg worker who compiled the document said many of their coworkers feared “getting on the radar” of management.
“If you do something maybe that just wasn’t up to par, or maybe you didn’t know or maybe you just messed up, you get on radar,” the worker said. “They keep you on radar, and they nitpick, constant nitpick, and they look for things to find to get you in trouble.”
The worker recalled one of their co-workers saying they felt sick and their blood pressure might be spiking. The anonymous worker said that staff repeatedly asked management if paramedics could be called.
The anonymous worker said management refused, instead asking if anyone in the dining hall had a blood pressure cuff. The worker said their ailing co-worker was then told to eat a grapefruit to help lower her blood pressure. But when the coworker did so, the anonymous worker said, management said, ‘You need to pay to eat, to eat the grapefruit.’”
After leaving work that day, the anonymous worker said, the co-worker went to the hospital and suffered a heart attack. “I don’t understand what their reasoning is for making them pay [for grapefruit] that day, whenever they’re already having trouble; you know, there’s no compassion.”
The anonymous worker said that their co-worker continued having health issues, including multiple strokes, but when they reported feeling “off” to management, management responded, “this is going to count against you.”
The worker recalled another employee with mental health issues who was followed around the dining hall by reprimanding and “nitpicking” management. The employee finally blew up, the anonymous worker said, and was forced to leave and write a letter of apology to the entire dining hall staff. “They read it [out loud] to the whole restaurant, gosh, all the crew members.” Subsequently, the worker said, that co-worker was “punished” by being forced to work in the pots in the back.
“And everybody knows that if you get in trouble, either you’re put in the dish room, or you’re put in pots,” the worker said. “It’s degrading.”
Another dining hall employee, who also spoke to the Purple on condition of anonymity confirmed these allegations, and shared other instances of maltreatment. In one instance, the second anonymous worker described how another coworker who was homeless and living in a tent had health issues. While staff pooled their resources to help that co-worker buy a camper, management did not share the same level of compassion.
“They had fixed the fried chicken that day, and [the homeless co-worker] said, ‘I won’t have to worry about finding something to eat tonight.’ So, they went ahead and fixed [him] the plate, and they wouldn’t let him take it with him and made him throw it away. [They] said, ‘You already had your 30 minute lunch.’”
Another former worker who spoke with The Purple on condition of anonymity confirmed the claims on the five-page complaint list. That worker, who left Clurg a year ago, recalled an instance having a pan full of hot grease spilled on them while they were working at the allergen free station. “All levels of management wanted me to continue working,” they said, “even though I had burning hot grease in my shirt, pants, shoes, and socks.” That worker added that they were only allowed to go to the restroom to change their clothes after another cook argued with managers on their behalf.
Workers also reported not being allowed to use the restroom when not on break and being followed into the restrooms by managers telling them that “they need to get back to work.”
“You wouldn’t believe how many women here have had UTI’s because they hold and hold and hold. They understand if you have to go, but they will give you a hard time about it,” the second anonymous worker said.
The former worker said they were once followed into the men’s restroom by a female manager while on their break, and were subsequently summoned to management’s office to be given a verbal warning.
Tate denied that workers were being prevented from using restrooms when needed. “We do ask that they handle their restroom breaks during down times,” he said. “But if you have to go to the bathroom you have to go to the bathroom. There’s nothing more or less than that.”
“It’s workers versus management,” the second anonymous worker said. “You don’t feel comfortable talking to them… It creates a very hostile work environment.”
Workers attribute the us-versus-them dynamic in the dining hall to rules prohibiting managers from eating with other staff, spending breaks with other staff, or hanging out with staff members outside of work hours.
Tate, Sewanee’s Dining Director, denied that Clurg workers and managers were prohibited from socializing after work. “We do not control what staff do off the clock. That is not a rule. At the same time, while they are at work, it’s not we don’t allow, it’s we like to keep a separation and an understanding of who management is and who is not so that when there actually has to be some management that has to happen, that there isn’t a blurring of the lines of the relationship between that staff member and that employee.”
Asked if that might create an us-versus-them dynamic, Tate said, “It definitely does. I think what we do to try and combat that is we try to acknowledge staff at the same time…We try really hard to let staff know how much they’re appreciated.”
Tate added that appreciation is expressed through accolades such as awards for perfect attendance and employee of the month and other regular positive gestures for staff.
Though the second anonymous worker confirmed concerns that being assigned to the dish room made workers feel like they were being treated “like a dog,” Tate denied that was a form of punishment. “Our dish room staff are the most important staff in the dining hall at the end of the day.”
Tate added that there is an effort to maintain confidentiality about individual staff issues.
“We have to be very careful about how we disseminate information. It can be misconstrued as something other than that, but it’s more to try and keep what’s confidential confidential. At the end of the day, everyone works together, everyone talks together, and very similar to in any small town, word travels.”
Asked about the anonymous employees’ allegation that individual staff members have been called out in front of the entire dining hall staff, Tate said that only occurs when something involves or is relevant to the staff as a whole. “We will bring it up to the entirety of the staff and let them know that this type of behavior, not the person, but this type of behavior is something that we need to address.”
Jodie Garner, a long-time employee of McClurg dining hall who was recently fired, said she shares the anonymous workers’ concerns because she experienced them. “I worked at McClurg for six years, and for a long time I really loved my job. But things changed, and what used to be a good place to work turned into a place I dreaded going because of the way management treated me.”
Garner recalled being unfairly written up for putting nutella on a pizza at the pizza station–something she said she didn’t do but was blamed for because she was assigned to that station on that day. Garner said she was also called out at a staff meeting. One of the managers “even gathered all the employees together and said in front of everyone that I was responsible,” Garner said. “It was humiliating.”
The first anonymous worker who compiled the complaint list recalled the event happening at a crew meeting, “She [Jodie] sat there and cried the whole time because everybody knew who she was.”
Garner said she was fired after returning from Spring break last year with her nails done– which she and other workers told The Purple is a violation of McClurg policy. “I wasn’t even on food line at the time, I was housekeeping, so I didn’t think it was a big deal. I had already cut them down short, but [two supervisors] sent me home anyway,’ Garner said. “Then, out of nowhere, I got a phone call on my day off telling me I was fired. No warning, no explanation—just like that, six years gone.”
Garner added she tried to appeal her dismissal to Clurg management and the University’s Human Resources Office without success. “It felt like employees like me had no support at all.”
Though asked to comment on the employees’ concerns, officials with HR did not respond by The Purple’s Sunday deadline.
“I gave a lot of time and hard work to that job,” Garner said, “but instead of being respected, I was bullied, written up unfairly, and embarrassed in front of others. In the end, I was thrown away like I didn’t matter.”
This is truly disheartening to read as an alumna. The staff at McClurg are always kind and gracious to the students, and deserve the entire campus’s respect for feeding students and faculty alike, as well as for maintaining a dining hall that has received various accolades and reflects well on the University as an institution. I hope this article serves as the impetus for better working conditions for the hardworking McClurg staff. I also hope they know how appreciated they are by current and former students.
I’m so disappointed to have read this today. The staff at McClurg deserve better. They are an integral part of the Sewanee community and do so much for the students, past, present, and future. Please do better.
As an alum who continues to value the community(including all staff and professors) that I gained from attending Sewanee, I’m disheartened to say the least that McClurg employees are/were allegedly treated this way. They fed us with smiles on their faces and were constantly friendly, even with this alleged nightmare of a working environment behind the scenes. Considering the hefty price of Room & Board at Sewanee, the human beings behind the meals I ate to fuel me for my classes should never be treated as anything less than hard-working employees with dignity.
This is truly disheartening to read as someone who works closely with McClurg management. Out of over a dozen claims highlighted by Ms. Donker, half of them are factually incorrect. The other half are focused on specific details that paint an inaccurate picture by omitting other details for additional context. The one sided nature of this article is actually evidence for me that McClurg management is successfully keeping things confidential, and inaccurate face-saving floor gossip is Ms. Donker’s only source of information.
For example, nutella on a pizza may not sound like a big deal, but that incident – unplanned and unlabeled, an employee going rogue and just trying it for fun – is a VERY serious breach of safety protocols which could’ve sent a student with a nut allergy into anaphylaxis. It can never ever happen and long term employees in particular should know better.
I would welcome any additional transparency about the management practices of McClurg. As someone on the inside I promise you we have nothing to hide except the crazy private drama of food service workers in rural Tennessee. Of course sometimes things are not handled perfectly, but our managers work very hard keeping McClurg running smoothly. They catch all kinds of crap from difficult people on a regular basis… it’s really sad that the Sewanee Purple believes airing our personnel issues with such a strong anti-manager bias is exposing workplace mistreatment.
Even if some of the article is incorrect no University employee should be homeless.
Comments from both the worker and manager sides of the interview make it clear that the us vs them mentality exists between the employees and the managerial staff. I wouldn’t know what goes on behind the closed kitchen doors, but still I will say that those with the power in an unbalanced power dynamic have every incentive to keep any misdeeds they are responsible for secret. I commend the workers who stepped forward for speaking, even when fearing retaliation, and Lizzy for publishing the article. This is something everyone: students, faculty, staff, and alumni like myself, needs to be taking seriously if we expect this university to continue to thrive. Ecce Quam Bonum… right?
It’s disheartening to see blame being placed on the victims of abusive management and minimizing their statements to gossip. Invalidating their experiences and creating an environment to where victims coming forward will not be supported is shameful. Do better.
Well said, Maggie!
You are not defending victims. You are punching down on food service middle managers who do not make much more than the workers they supervise, and who have done nothing to deserve this level of contempt. There are a some very kind, dedicated, women working in McClurg whose week has been ruined by this slander and I’m not having it.
The real story here is this: 1) social justice bullies gin up a controversy, 2) ignoring or denying fake controversy gets taken as evidence of guilt, 3) demand action to address the “problem”, 4) real damage is done to people’s reputations and institutional trust, 5) progressive zealots pat themselves on the back for speaking truth to power and defending the oppressed when really all they did is take a dump on the floor and force other people to clean it up.
I am heartbroken, yet unsurprised by this news. I’ve heard stories off and on during my 4 years at Sewanee of Clurg workers (the backbone of the University) being mistreated, threatened, or retaliated against, but I never imagined it would be like this. Even if some of these are anecdotal, the sheer number of complaints and the consistency of their content tells me that there is certainly a power imbalance in the Dining Hall; a power imbalance that incentivises management to misuse their power. Lizzy clearly made a good faith effort to get both sides of this story, yet how are we to feel sympathy for management when all they do is deny, deny, deny, while admitting that there is an “us-vs-them” imbalance? I’ll be treating the Clurg workers with extra compassion from now on, maybe management can take a lesson from it.
Compassion,understanding,and respect.yea I’ve always said Communication is most important in this line of work,and information,we need to be clear on things like allergies,something that important,need extra attention.
This was so well written, and is clearly *so important.* I commend the author on highlighting such an evidently divisive issue, and collecting both sides so comprehensively. I would hope that employee well-being would be taken seriously in any capacity and that these complaints would issue a full investigation by upper management, even outside of Sewanee Dining. I echo what others have said, power dynamics are never easy to speak up against and are so crucial to dismantle when possible. ALL staff at McClurg are essential to the Sewanee community, and at the same time, doubling down on “there’s nothing wrong here” from management is a telltale red flag when you have multiple reports of mistreatment complaints from staff. This reads as beyond disheartening to me. I am angry reading this. The staff deserve so much better.