‘Get your a** on-site or find another job’: One-legged employee sues company over unyielding return-to-office mandate

A Las Vegas man with a prosthetic leg is suing his former employer after being “forced back” to work under a strict return-to-office policy he claims violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Even though John Waudby, 54, had requested an ADA accommodation, and could do his work sufficiently from home, he was instructed by a supervisor to “get his a** on-site or find another job,” according to a federal discrimination lawsuit obtained by The Independent.

“It was further communicated to [Waudby] by his training director, ‘[T]he company does not care about your ADA accommodation. Either come on-site or find another job,’” Waudby’s complaint states.

Waudby, an animal lover who has raised money for abused pets, says being made to show up physically each day caused him “to suffer severe pain,” according to the complaint. When he complained, however, it says he was soon fired.

Foundever, formerly known as Sitel, provides “customer experience” services to some 800 companies across the globe, operating call centers, running chatbots, tech support and social media moderation teams, and other back-office functions that most industries today largely outsource. The Luxembourg-based firm offers fully remote, hybrid, and on-site work.

A Foundever spokesperson and the attorneys defending the company against Waudby’s allegations did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, a federal holiday.

Remote work or so-called hybrid schedules, with a mixture of in-office and work-from-home, can offer significant productivity gains and make for happier workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But, bosses such as JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon argue that being on-site is crucial for collaboration and in maintaining company culture. (An internal memo obtained by Barron’s showed employee morale dropped sharply following Dimon’s five-day-a-week in-office mandate, which began last March.)

RTO mandates have also led to other lawsuits, such as a complaint filed by a former Tesla executive who said he agreed to take a job working remotely for the electric carmaker, which then almost immediately went back on its word and threatened to fire him if he didn’t relocate – allegedly prompting the recurrence of an agonizing medical condition and nearly destroying the man’s marriage.

Waudby took the job at Foundever on October 1, 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, according to his complaint, which was initially filed last month in Clark County, Nevada, District Court and removed to Las Vegas federal court on October 8. At the time, 100 percent of the workforce was remote due to the nationwide quarantine, it explains.

Waudby started as a customer service agent, fielding inquiries from consumers, and was later promoted to “senior learning specialist,” training new hires and providing ongoing training to existing employees, according to the complaint.

“Prior to [Waudby’s] onboarding, [he] made [Foundever] aware of his disability due to issues with his prosthetic leg,” the complaint states. “... [Foundever] was aware of [Waudby’s] physical impairment(s) which substantially limited [Waudby’s] major life activities, [Waudby] provided records of such impairment(s) to [Foundever], and [Waudby] was regarded as having such impairment(s).”

In October 2023, three years after Waudby joined Foundever, the company notified all employees that “on-site work would resume” in January 2024, the complaint continues.

It says Waudby then “reminded [his bosses] of his accommodation request to continue working from home and provided the necessary Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) paperwork advising of such.” The setup “would not have affected his job performance,” as evidenced by his having worked remotely at that point for 36 months straight, earning a promotion along the way, according to the complaint.

But when management allegedly failed to follow up with Waudby, he sent emails on October 17, 2023, October 30, 2023, and November 16, 2023, to try and get a supervisor to approve a continuing remote work arrangement under the ADA, the complaint adds. Still, Waudby’s entreaties went ignored, and he “was forced back on-site,” returning to the office on January 7, 2024, “while under considerable pain,” the complaint states.

Yet, Waudby’s complaint alleges that others with the same job description had in fact been allowed to continue working from home, “notwithstanding the purported requirement to return to on-site work by the stated deadline.” However, Waudby’s concerns about this, which he brought up to his superiors, “were left unanswered,” the complaint maintains.

Waudby finally got an answer from his training director, who, according to the complaint, “told him to ‘get his a** on-site or find another job,’” and that the company “does not care” about his ADA claims.

“No other communications or meetings were held to attempt to engage in good faith with [Waudby] to find a suitable accommodation,” the complaint states.

On January 15, 2024, it says Waudby emailed Foundever management to inform them of the training director’s alleged threats, but never heard back. Over the next few months, Waudby kept on contacting company officials to inquire about working remotely, but they still failed, “without reason or… good cause,” to respond, according to the complaint.

“On April 1, 2024, [Waudby] received a letter informing him that his employment had been terminated, without any reason provided for the termination,” the complaint states.

Waudby believes his firing was pretextual, the complaint contends, and that he was actually let go due to “unlawful discrimination on the basis of his disability and/or retaliation for his repeated requests for reasonable accommodations under the ADA.”

The experience “caused [Waudby] to suffer severe pain during his last months of employment” with Foundever, and has left him enduring “severe emotional distress and financial hardship,” according to the complaint.

Foundever and its subsidiaries have paid out more than $16 million in penalties since 2000 over wage-and-hour violations and discrimination complaints, according to data from nonprofit economic justice watchdog Good Jobs First. Employee reviews on Glassdoor are mixed, but of 18,310 respondents, 79 percent still say they “would recommend” a job at Foundever to a friend.

Waudby’s lawsuit accuses Foundever of disability discrimination; retaliation; intentional infliction of mental and emotional distress; and negligent hiring, training, and supervision.

It says that as a disabled person, Waudby “received adverse treatment from [Foundever] compared to his similarly situated, non-disabled co-workers,” and that it was “done willfully, oppressively, maliciously and in callous indifference to [Waudby’s] rights which subjected him to mental and emotional suffering in the form of worry, fear, anguish, shock, nervousness, stress and anxiety in an amount subject to proof at trial.”

The suit also deems Foundever’s conduct “extreme, outrageous, and egregious under the circumstances,” and that instead of taking Waudby’s grievances seriously, the company simply let him go. Further, it alleges, Foundever failed to “adequately train and supervise its employees, managers, supervisors and/or agents regarding discrimination and retaliation in the workplace.”

Waudby is now seeking a money judgment plus punitive and exemplary damages to be determined in court, as well as court costs and attorneys’ fees, plus interest.

Foundever has not yet filed a formal response to Waudby’s claims.