Woman With Special Needs Fired By Sparta Panera, Mom Says

SPARTA, NJ — “I guess I can’t do anything right. I don’t do the right things.”

That what a Sparta woman with Down syndrome told her mother this week when she was fired from the local Panera Bread after she was given tasks that went beyond her job description, her mom says.

Jenni Barkhorn, 28, worked at the Sparta Panera Bread for the past two and a half years, mom Rita Mueller said. Barkhorn enjoyed her job of cleaning up the dining room, but additional tasks added by a new manager were too much for her to handle. Difficulty with the additional tasks was something the manager cited in firing her, Mueller said.

“Her world crashed down on her and mine crashed with her,” Mueller said.

Halfway through her shift on Tuesday, Barkhorn was called away from making coffee and into a meeting with her manager, and a job coach provided by the state, where she was fired.

“Jenni told me she kept saying, ‘I have to go make the coffee. I can’t do this right now.’ When the job coach explained the circumstances to Jenni and she realized what was happening, she left the room, went back toward the dining room and broke down in tears,” Mueller wrote in a widely shared Facebook post.

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“Professionally, to have an employee walk out, upset, crying, rush hour peak, doesn’t that look bad for the business?” Mueller told Patch in a phone call on Thursday.

Panera responded to the claims in a statement to Patch on Friday, saying: “We are fully investigating this situation and will review our policies and procedures to make sure this and every employee are treated the right way.”

Barkhorn regularly worked Tuesdays and Wednesdays from noon to 2 p.m., sweeping up the dining room floors and wiping down tables, Mueller said. In recent months, Barkhorn was down to just one day a week after needing to take Wednesdays off for a class at the community college. Mueller said management wasn’t willing to find another day for Barkhorn to work.

The issues really started when a new manager took over, Mueller said, who began giving Barkhorn additional tasks like making coffee, making sure the coffee station was stocked with lids and sugars and taking plates back to be washed. “One added task would have been enough but not three,” Mueller said.

Panera was fully aware Barkhorn needed accommodations at work because a job coach with the NJ Division of Vocational & Rehabilitative Services helped Barkhorn apply and interview for the position. She was also in touch with her manager, Mueller said.

Mueller said the fact that Barkhorn only worked two hours and one day a week was the “absurdity” of the situation.

“One day, two hour thing, there should be no reason for her to be going through all of this,” Mueller told Patch. The firing took a toll on Barkhorn’s self-esteem, although she was doing better on Thursday, Mueller said.

“Those are things that hurt, and it has nothing to do with the Panera— but it does,” Mueller said.

News of Barkhorn’s firing spread quickly after Mueller shared her story on Facebook, drawing condemnation and calls for boycotts from locals.

“When I was on maternity leave, I would frequently run over to the Sparta location to grab breakfast or lunch. I would see Jenni there from time to time, always working hard and I even saw her walking to work – I thought to myself, what dedication! I am disgusted and outraged over this,” one woman wrote, adding that Panera had lost her business.