Employment Discrimination: The Case of Chuck E. Cheese’s
The supported employee worked at Chuck E. Cheese’s from 8 a.m. to noon, Monday through Friday. His job duties consisted of various cleaning tasks, including mopping the floors, vacuuming carpets and cleaning the bathrooms.
He was accompanied on the job every day by a job coach. Creasy, the restaurant’s district manager, happened to be visiting the restaurant on March 18,
1997, the supported employee’s first day of work and he saw him working.
Creasy asked Wittwer, a restaurant manager, who he was and Wittwer explained that the supported employee was mentally retarded and nonverbal and that she had just hired him; Creasy then told Wittwer to fire him.
At trial, Wittwer testified that Creasy told her about an incident that had occurred in a Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant in California that had involved another employee with a developmental disability and said that it was now
CEC’s policy not to hire “those kind of people.”
Wittwer asked Creasy if she could have a couple of weeks to see what she could do with the supported employee; Creasy agreed. After Creasy left the restaurant that day, Wittwer wrote and sent a letter via facsimile to the human resources department. The letter stated, in part:
I hired a 50-year-old man yesterday who happens to be autistic and has a diagnosis of mental retardation. He works with job coaches who are fully trained and cost us nothing. He started today and will be doing all of our cleaning and maintenance. Our district manager wants me to fire him because, we don’t need
“those kind of people” working for us. Can someone please help me with this situation, so we can at least give this guy a chance? We are an equal opportunity employer, are we not?
Between March 18, 1997 to April 7, 1997, Creasy visited the Madison restaurant on various occasions and observed the supported employee working.
On April 7, 1997, after the supported employee’s shift had ended, Creasy contacted the supported employment agency and informed the receptionist that the supported employee’s services would not be needed for the rest of the summer.
At trial, Creasy gave three reasons for firing the supported employee: no position was available; the restaurant’s sales were starting to decline and labor costs were high; and that, in failing to get the carpets cleaned before the restaurant opened, the supported employee was not meeting Creasy’s performance standards. Creasy denied that he fired the supported employee because he was disabled.
The supported employee has lived with his foster mother, Thomas, her husband and her two children for four years. She testified that the supported employee communicates with her by nodding yes or no in response to her questions or by pointing at pictures in his communication book.
Thomas testified that the supported employee was very excited and happy when he got the job at Chuck E. Cheese’s. He showed Thomas and her family his uniform and jumped up and down so high that his head hit the ceiling. Thomas testified that she knew that the supported employee was very happy working at
Chuck E. Cheese’s because he expressed that to her and because he would get up and ready for work in the morning on his own.

Thomas testified that the supported employee came home early on the day he was terminated and went immediately to his room without communicating with anyone. She testified that, from his demeanor and body language, she could tell that something bad had happened to him; in her words, the supported employee was “devastated.”
Thomas spoke with Wittwer and Lemanski that same day and learned about the supported employee’s termination. She testified that she then went in to talk to the supported employee who indicated that someone at Chuck E.
Cheese’s had told him that he was being let go from his job. Thomas testified that from that day to the present, the supported employee has been less attentive to his personal hygiene, fails to get up on his own in the morning, has less interest in participating in social activities or family activities and lost 11 pounds.
According to his foster mother, although the supported employee subsequently obtained another job in the community, he did not express the same joy as when he got the job at Chuck E. Cheese’s. According to her, the supported employee is still puzzled about why he got fired and worries that it will happen again.