It’s not just expectant mothers, employees who use PTO, and insiders who leak us full audio from big company meetings who have to worry about Paycom finding any excuse possible to fire them!
Last week, local media reported that the EEOC had recently filed a federal lawsuit against Paycom, alleging the company fired a woman in 2024 for having an onion allergy.
Here are details via The Independent:
A woman alleges she was fired after suffering several life-threatening allergic reactions to onions in the office, a lawsuit claims.
The suit, filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has accused payroll company Paycom of firing employee Katie Jorgenson shortly after she joined the company due to her fatal onion allergy, per The Oklahoman.
The commission detailed the suit in their press release, alleging that shortly after Jorgenson was hired by Paycom, she began to suffer anaphylactic reactions due to food brought in by her coworkers.
According to the suit, three days after starting in late May, co-workers carried burgers with onions past Jorgenson’s cubicle, causing her to suffer an anaphylactic reaction. The very next day she was exposed to onions again, which resulted in paramedics being called to the office.
Listen, I’m a fan of onions. I dig onion burgers, love French onion soup, and – pro tip – always add them to my burritos from Taco Casa. I think they make most any food better.
That being said, does anyone else think Paycom fired the wrong person here?
If you ask me, bringing anything with onions – or fish or curry – to an office environment should be a fireable offense! For a company desperate to fire people for any reason possible, I’m surprised Paycom hasn’t already thought of it.
Here’s more:
The next week she was allowed to work in a secluded area over lunch, but was still exposed to onions four more times, with the last resulting in a hospital visit, the lawsuit claims.
She was then transferred to an office on a different floor with fewer co-workers. However, that desk was 15 feet from a break room where people routinely ate. According to the suit, those co-workers were not made aware of Jorgenson’s allergy. The suit alleges that Paycom told Jorgenson to wear a mask and carry an EpiPen instead of accommodating her needs.
She was then exposed yet again on June 17 and June 18. Both times she had an anaphylactic reaction, and on June 18 she needed “multiple rounds of EpiPen administration and other medical intervention before her condition stabilized.”
On June 19, she was fired, with the company stating that it was for “health and wellness,” according to the suit.
Yep, she was fired for her own “health and wellness,” which is apparently Paycom-speak for “please stop almost dying on company property.”
Anyway, my heart goes out to Jorgenson here. Having a life-threatening onion allergy sounds like a massive pain in the ass – scary, annoying, and probably impossible to explain to every coworker carrying an onion burger through the office like some El Reno dandy.
That being said, I can also see how accommodating a deadly onion allergy in an office could create some logistical headaches. What was Paycom supposed to do? Ban onions from the entire building? Assign an onion monitor? Make every employee walk through a lunch TSA checkpoint before entering the office?
“Patrick? Couldn’t they have just let her work remotely?”
Fair point.
In fact, when your options are A) let an employee do payroll software stuff away from office lunches, or B) repeatedly expose her to onions until the EpiPens come out and then fire her for “health and wellness,” maybe don’t pick B.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
