Shortly after a manager at a Pizza Hut franchise in Elkhart, Indiana, announced that he was fired for refusing to open on Thanksgiving Day, the company is offering him his job back.
Tony Rohr, 28, had worked for the chain for more than 10 years.
When he refused to open on Thanksgiving Day this year and force his employees to work, he says, he was told to write a letter of resignation.
Instead, he wrote one explaining why the store should remain closed.
“I said, ‘Why can’t we be the company that stands up and says we care about your employees and you can have the day off?'” Rohr told CNN affiliate WSBT Wednesday. “Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only two days that they’re closed in the whole year. And they’re the only two days that those people are guaranteed to have off to spend with their families.”
Rohr told the affiliate he refused to quit and detailed his frustration in the letter.
“I accept that the refusal to comply with this greedy, immoral request means the end of my tenure with this company,” he says he wrote. “I hope you realize that it is the people at the bottom of the totem pole that make your life possible.”
He was fired shortly after, he says.
The local franchise told the affiliate that Rohr was not fired, but quit. Now, Pizza Hut’s corporate office says the franchise “made a serious error in judgment, one which we hope to help remedy.”
It sent CNN a statement that said the store has agreed to hire him back.
“We fully respect an employee’s right to not work on a holiday, which is why the vast majority of Pizza Huts in America are closed on Thanksgiving,” the corporate office said in a statement. “As a result, we strongly recommended that the local franchisee reinstate the store manager and they have agreed. We look forward to them welcoming Tony back to the team.”
But Rohr, who was managing some 15 people when he departed, said Thursday that he was not sure he wanted to return to the team. “That’s something I can’t decide right away,” he told CNN in a telephone interview as he prepared to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family — and without pizza. “I’ll start looking into stuff tomorrow.”
He said publicity about the story has spread. “All my friends are telling me how cool it is and how proud they are — ‘You’re my hero’ and stuff you don’t expect to hear,” Rohr said. “No, I’m just some guy who told his boss ‘No’ and got burned. There are people who save lives.”
CNN’s Tom Watkins and Jose Lesh contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire
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