A former McDonald’s worker has filed suit against the Golden Arches, saying she got fired for reporting dangerous food to authorities.
“Milk at a 60 degree temp for 48 hours,” says former McDonald’s worker Cindy Jones, describing the food she served at a Genesee County restaurant. “Would you drink it?”
That is the question Jones would like to ask her former managers.
She says she worked at the Clio Road McDonalds in Flint for more than 7 years, and worked her way up to middle management.
“I loved that restaurant. It was my life.”
Then one day last year she says she came to work and discovered the fridge not working. She says she notified her manager.
“I told her, but she didn’t take care of it.”
So, after two days of serving happy meals and other food stored at almost 60 degrees, Cindy says she called the Health Department and the McDonalds Corporate Office and left anonymous messages.
“I tried to be discrete. I tried to hide my identity because I didn’t want to be fired from the store,” says Jones.
She didn’t expect someone to play one of the messages for her boss, who Cindy says fired her right away. The termination notice said she, “used poor judgment to call the McDonalds’s customer hotline because this has a negative impact on the restaurant.”
The termination notice also accused her of lying, but Health Department inspection reports show an investigator did indeed find the fridge at 56 degrees, 15 degrees higher than health code says is safe.
NBC25 contacted McDonald’s Corporate Office, but they have not yet provided any comment. The owner of the store, Sam Cox, told NBC25 he values all his employees, especially workers who have served his businesses for a long period of time like Jones. He says there is more to the story, but would not go into detail because of the legal situation. He says he would have liked it if Jones had given him a call as well as her manager about the situation, before going to the health department.
“I never would do anything to harm the store,” says Jones. “Everything I did was for the safety of the public.”
She says she hopes her lawsuit sends the message that restaurant owners cannot fire workers for blowing the whistle on dangerous food. She says it’s a matter of public safety.
Sam Cox owns three McDonald’s restaurants in Genesee County, on Miller, Ballenger, and Clio Roads.
