The manager at a Panera Bread location on Park Avenue South in Manhattan was reportedly terminated after video surfaced showing him punching a female employee during an altercation Wednesday afternoon. The manager, who is seen towering over the woman, was filmed by a witness who also saw him throw the worker "down a flight of stairs."
The witness tells Gawker:
We walked in, in the middle of her quitting her job mid shift. She was yelling at a different manager than the one who hit her and was throwing some bags of chips on the ground, threatening to turn up in this bitch, etc. Really nothing I haven’t seen before or wouldn’t expect from someone who has to work at a fucking Panera all day.
Then out of nowhere white shirt manager approaches her and immediately gets physical with her, keep in mind she’s about 5’2 at most and he was bigger than me... He legit threw her down a flight of stairs and out the front door for really no reason, she runs around to the other entrance to retaliate and that’s where the video starts. You might wanna say she hit him first, but really he had FULL CONTROL over her the entire time, was throwing her around, I think she gets one slap in that was louder than it was painful, then he half punches her once, she spins, and then he REALLY FUCKING PUNCHES her.
"It was like a man hitting a child,” the witness, Joe Schumacher (no relation to the Gothamist weatherman), tells the Daily News.
After Gawker published the video, Panera issued this statement: "Today there were reports of a physical altercation between two associates at our Park Avenue South bakery-cafe. We have a zero tolerance policy for violence and worked swiftly with authorities to investigate. The associates who were determined to be involved no longer work for Panera.”
That's a step in the right direction, but this sort of thing is going to keep happening until we ban all chain stores from NYC.
