“If this potentially saves someone from being unfairly dismissed due to a health condition, then it’s worth it to me.”
Published on August 26, 2024, 6:12 p.m. ET
A woman on TikTok named Tara Rule (@pogsyy) claims that during her layover from New York back to LA at Reagan Airport in Washington, DC, she heard a corporate representative from Texas Roadhouse talking on the phone in a common room. But what the representative allegedly said shocked Tara.
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In a series of videos, Tara explained what she apparently heard and what happened after she tried to locate the people the company representative allegedly spoke to.
Let’s break it all down…
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Did accidentally eavesdropping on a TikToker at an airport save a Texas Roadhouse employee’s job?
In her first video, dated August 22, Tara sits quietly eating. Her text overlay reads, “I’m sitting there listening to a company rep talk about how they’re going to fire a girl who’s fighting for her life in the hospital because she hasn’t checked in for a couple days and they haven’t been able to get through to her (husband) emergency contact because she’s in the ICU and they found out through FACEBOOK and are trying to send her a fake benefits package or something via company certified mail so the husband has to sign for it and it looks like she got the termination agreement in a sneaky way.”
“She keeps saying, ‘We need to make sure they don’t know what it is,’ so they can pull her 401k account because she didn’t disclose that she had a previous medical condition,” Tara continues in her text overlay. “And it’s for TEXAS ROADHOUSE, of all things. So dystopian.”
“So if you know someone at the hospital who has been working for Texas Roadhouse for some time, do not sign this benefits package,” she concludes.
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Two days later, Tara posted another video saying she was trying to check if she had found the couple in question. In the meantime, however, Texas Roadhouse had apparently responded to some comments on her TikTok video on Facebook.
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Tara showed a screenshot of Texas Roadhouse’s response to another Facebook user: “Thank you for reaching out regarding the TikTok video that secretly recorded part of a conversation about one of our employees that she was not involved in. The allegations in the TikTok are false – we do not terminate a 401k plan nor do we send an employee information about ‘fake’ benefits. Rather, the conversation was about our employees attempting to contact an employee’s family members.”
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Her comment continued: “Recording and sharing false information on TikTok about a conversation that person was not a part of was completely inappropriate and misleading. Texas Roadhouse is a people-first company and we fully support our Roadies.”
Tara then showed a screenshot of her responding to the restaurant’s comment with a comment of her own. Tara wrote:
“Hey, that’s my video! I’m happy to post more documentation if you’d like – you could have alternatively contacted me personally instead of making inappropriate and rather odd comments about this situation. Or you could have even sent me a cease and desist letter if it wasn’t true, but you can’t send a cease and desist letter if it is true, so maybe that’s why.”
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“Anyway, I filmed myself eating because there were birds flying around the airport and I overheard the conversation,” she continued in her comment. “You can’t expect privacy in public!”
Speaking to the camera, Tara said, “At the end of the day, I don’t give a damn if Texas Roadhouse is mad. If it potentially saves someone from being wrongfully fired because of a health condition, then it’s worth it to me.”
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On the same day, Tara released another video, this time announcing that she had found the affected couple and had contacted them.
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She also said she noticed Texas Roadhouse using the same “stock comment” over and over again when responding to people on social media. Tara said she thought it was telling that the company was being “defensive” instead of launching an investigation. She also said she “welcomes” any lawsuit from the company because she knows it would be a “PR nightmare” for her if they even tried and that she did nothing wrong. She said the company can reach out to her and that “we can have a very low-key, very empathetic conversation.”
In another video that day, Tara said she and other people online noticed that Texas Roadhouse was allegedly deleting comments on social media. Tara insisted the restaurant needed a PR team.
On August 26, Tara said he would have a “big” update on the situation, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
