Aramark employee says he was fired for “sexual harassment”
A familiar face around Elon’s campus was fired Thursday afternoon.
Eddie Talley, an Aramark employee, claims Aramark fired him for “sexually harassing” students.
“They said they had some sexual harassment complaints,” Talley said. “I joke with everybody, that makes me popular. I think my jokes got me fired.”
He told ELN that he made a joke to a group of boys Wednesday to “keep your pants on.” He also said that when a girl said her blood pressure was acting up, that he responded with “my gayness is acting up.”
Talley, commonly known as ‘Octagon or Acorn Eddie’ to students, claimed that last year Aramark told the former manager of Acorn Max Akhlaghi to fire him because “too many gay people were coming in.”
“I am an out gay man,” Talley said. “I’m not scared to tell someone I’m gay but Aramark didn’t like that.”
Talley said that his Dad has contacted a lawyer and that he may plan on suing Aramark for discrimination and unlawful termination.
Talley lives in a mobile home near Elon. He said that as a result of his termination, he canceled his cell phone and is now worried about bills.
“I don’t want to come back,” he said. “I just want to keep my relationship with the students, especially the upperclassmen.”
Aramark issued this statement to Elon Local News: “We take all termination decisions seriously and consider personnel matters such as this to be private. In order to protect the confidentiality of our employees and in the interest of fairness to everyone involved, we will not be providing further comment on this matter.”
Joe Bruno, Julie Morse and Michael Gaytan contributed to this story.
Eddie has been blatantly sexually harassing students for some time now, even when told to stop. His termination has nothing to do with his sexual orientation but his ignorance and inappropriate behavior. I have friends who have specifically avoided Acorn and Octagon just to not have to deal with him and I have personally expected him to be fired much earlier than now. Good to see him go
They fired a guy in 2010 named Garland who worked in Harden’s dining hall… He did nothing wrong but he was fired too. He was the man. This guy here was super cool too.
Sounds justified to me. I suppose I’d be fired if I sat in girls’ laps or told them to keep their clothes on.
he was the best