Tevin Burrow, a former employee of a Jack’s Family Restaurant in Warrior, filed a complaint in federal court this week against the company based on claims that the location was a racially hostile environment.

Burrow, who is identified as an African American man in the complaint, says that while working at the Jack’s on Russell Hill Drive, he tried to report a white coworker to management for using the “n word” on a daily basis.

When Burrow tried to report this to a manager, he was instructed to “let it go,” the complaint says.

Efforts to contact Jack’s legal representation were not immediately successful.

Burrow was also forced to receive scheduling information in an online work group chat where several Jack’s employees, exchanged “blatantly racist comments,” according to the complaint.

Some examples highlighted in the complaint include “displays of a Nazi swastika” and a comment that “Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy once you get to know him.”

When Burrow asked for the company’s HR contact information in June, less than a month after being hired, he said he was told “HR doesn’t care what we do here as long as we make money,” according to the complaint.

Within a week of Burrow leaving a message for HR, he was “abruptly terminated” on June 29, 2023, after getting into a verbal altercation with the assistant manager when he asked to leave his shift out of concern for a possible burglary at his home, the complaint claims.

Burrow was informed he was terminated for violating company policy after using profanity in front of customers during his argument with the manager.

The complaint argues that this policy was “inconsistently enforced” at this Jack’s location because his co-worker had not been fired after using racial slurs in front of customers.

Roughly a month after Burrow was fired, he was contacted by Jack’s HR regarding his complaint.

According to the suit, there was no follow up after Burrow described the work environment to HR.

The co-worker has said made racist comments remains employed at the location, the complaint states.

“No employee should have to learn to accept racist slurs and white supremacist rhetoric to keep their job,” said Burrow’s representative Artur Davis, a lawyer at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP.

“To this day, the manager who tolerated this kind of workplace appears to still be employed at Jack’s, while my client was let go within a week of his complaint. 99% of the people who spend money at Jack’s would expect better.”