You might think of a food fight as a relatively minor, though messy affair. Most often perpetrated by high school kids. But a real-life assault with a foodly weapon netted a Parma, Ohio woman a stiff sentence including a 2-month work stint in a Fast Food joint…
Rosemary Hayne being sentenced to jail time and service, working in a Fast Food resto…
What she did
The court found customer Rosemary Hayne, 39, guilty of one count of assault, after Hayne threw a chicken burrito bowl into Chipotle worker Emily Russel’s face back in September.
“This is not ‘Real Housewives of Parma.’ This behavior is not acceptable,” Judge Timothy Gilligan of Parma Municipal Court said during sentencing. “You didn’t get your burrito bowl the way you like it, and this is how you respond?”
What she got
According to The Washington Post (WAPO), Hayne was initially sentenced to 180 days in jail, with 90 suspended. But the judge finally agreed to an amended sentence which will see Hayne’s jail time reduced by 60 days in return for her working 20 hours a week at a fast food restaurant for two months.
Victim traumatized
Russell moved in to support a 17-year-old employee who was working the counter after Hayne got loud and abusive.
“She started screaming at me. […] The next thing I knew she threw the food in my face. I was so embarrassed and in shock.” Russell said the food was at 200 degrees F, because she had just made it. The assault left her with facial burns. “I couldn’t believe my customers had to witness that.”
Here’s the clincher: Russell told WAPO that she has already remade Hayne’s order twice, following initial complaints from the customer. It was then that the eruption occurred.
“I had to work with food in my face and hair for the next four hours after it happened because no one was sent to relieve me,” Russell said. She also reported that she went to a hospital emergency room after her shift.
Russel told WAPO,”[Hayne] got exactly what she deserved.”
Long-term effects
Russell didn’t recover from the shock quickly. In fact, she told WAPO she left Chipotle six weeks after the incident, saying the company had been less than supportive of her. And she didn’t feel safe. “I was working 65 hours a week. I was exhausted. I had anxiety every day going to work.”
Russell has since found a new job at another Fast Food chain. A GoFundMe campaign has raised nearly $2,000 to help with her extra expenses incurred due to the assault. Russell said she has used the donations to help pay her bills. She plans to start therapy soon.
My take
This is another instance in which an increasingly pressured ordinary person met her ‘last straw’. And let all her anger, frustration and other negative emotions about a life that’s been getting harder and harder to endure explode in the direction of the one unlucky person who happened to be in her face at the moment.
“Everyone has bad days, but it should never come to a point where you have to mistreat a human being,” Russell said. Alas, it’s much more than that.
We’re all increasingly frustrated and hard-pressed to meet our financial and social obligations these days. We will come through the current hard times – the most trying most of us have seen in our lives – in some condition or another. But the Ohio Chipotle’s incident is a stark reminder of how important it will be for us all to dredge up the extra forbearance needed to avoid being broken by our own respective ‘last straws’.
~ Maggie J.