COVID cases, harassment complaints preceded Fort Worth restaurant closing, workers say
It took 24 hours for one of the few successful Fort Worth restaurants to open during the coronavirus pandemic to come to its tumultuous ending, according to former employees.
Kristi Wilson, the manager of the Southside Rambler, was fired on July 20 after she had spoken up for weeks about needed safety measures with multiple workers sent home with the virus, she told the Star-Telegram. Within two hours, she said, all but two of roughly 30 workers quit, some of them protesting outside of their former workplace on West Magnolia Avenue. The doors were shuttered by the next morning, the gate surrounding the gravel patio locked.
Though the unceremonious end of the trendy spot came about quickly, Wilson, 41, and other employees allege there had been internal problems since its mid-May launch that went beyond coronavirus concerns. They believe those problems, coupled with Wilson’s firing, sparked the protest and subsequent closing.
Three staff members tested positive for COVID-19, all of whom had begun self-isolating as soon as they started experiencing symptoms, Wilson said. But she says she was told by management to not speak about the cases, which she found “deeply disturbing.” Her request to bring in a company to deep-clean the grounds — a routine practice at other eateries — was denied, she said.
On top of this, she said there was one employee, whom she didn’t want to name publicly, who had made sexually explicit and inappropriate remarks in front of several employees. Multiple people who spoke with the Star-Telegram said they heard these conversations.
The person at the center of the allegations didn’t respond to a Facebook message requesting comment.
Kevin von Ehrenfried, who co-owned the Southside Rambler with his wife, Julia Cary von Ehrenfried, didn’t respond to multiple calls and voicemails over the past week. Neither Kevin nor Julia responded to a message left with a staff member at The Tipsy Oak, the restaurant they own in Arlington.
Some investors in the Southside Rambler had pulled out in recent weeks over problems with the owners, even though the business was pulling in more than $50,000 a week by capitalizing on its outdoor patio, according to Wilson. There were four or five days left on the restaurant’s contract, she said, when one of the partners fired her inside of his car.
“I became a problem to everybody in trying to fix the problem — that’s probably why they wanted to terminate me,” Wilson said. “I do what’s right, I do what’s best ... and that’s how everybody should live. And that was violated.”
She believes her termination was unlawful, she said, as the explanation given to her was that she had made errors with the books and was “in cahoots” with the workers. She acknowledges there were minor mistakes with the books that had to be corrected, largely because she was never properly trained. “I just didn’t see that on the grounds of termination,” Wilson said.
She also said she loved her workers and they loved working for her — which she doesn’t feel translates into being in cahoots with them.
The Southside Rambler is among the shortest-lived restaurants in Fort Worth in recent memory, according to the Star-Telegram’s longtime food columnist Bud Kennedy. After opening in mid-May, its lively decor — an outdoor stage, pots of cacti and a bar sitting underneath the words, “A Sunny Place for Shady People” — are now unused relics.
The restaurant was so popular, with people chatting at tables and local artists playing live music, that it had drawn the attention of concerned residents in the Fairmount-Southside Historic District. City managers responded to noise and social-distancing complaints as recently as late July, and Wilson said the Tarrant County Public Health Department visited about eight times in total. But they were never found in violation of government restrictions, she said.
As the restaurant limited its indoor capacity to 50 percent as required, she said, it continued to seat plenty of people outside while maintaining at least 6 feet of space between tables. There’s no occupancy limit on outdoor seating for restaurants under Gov. Greg Abbott’s statewide executive order outlining the reopening of businesses.
Wilson’s problem, she said, was with the defensive and anti-science attitude coming from the top-level management in regard to COVID-19 precautions. She says that not long after she began taking temperature checks at the front door, she was ordered to stop. One of the owners pressured people to not wear their masks, she said.
She said she also was among those who heard the “vulgar” words from the unnamed employee and brought the issue to the owners. There was nothing done in response, she said, and with great trepidation she continued to report to work.
She didn’t want to leave a paying job when she possibly wouldn’t have been able to find another one, she said. It’s a feeling she believes had to be shared by others on staff.
“You’re put between a rock and a hard place, because how can you just quit your job and walk away from something where you might not be able to get a job right now?” Wilson said. “It was really difficult for me and it was very uncomfortable.”
‘I should’ve done more’
A former staff member who wanted to remain anonymous said she was hopeful when she came on board, hoping she could rise up in rank as she had at other restaurants where she had worked.
But it quickly became a job she didn’t sign up for, she said, with higher-ups giving her increasingly more and more work to do. She said these same managers would also fire workers for minor mistakes instead of trying to walk them through what they had done wrong.
The final straw for her, she said, was when she discovered nothing had been done about the unnamed individual’s inappropriate remarks. She had overhead him using lewd language in the restaurant on a couple of occasions, she said, but only later discovered he was continuing to speak this way in front of others on staff.
“I had no idea. I seriously had no clue. I knew he was inappropriate but I thought he was handled,” she said. “I’m thinking, ‘There’s no way in hell that I can — I cannot work for somebody like that.”
The employee quit along with almost the entire rest of the staff. She said she didn’t want her name published because she didn’t want to risk hurting her chances for future employment in Fort Worth’s restaurant scene.
On July 20, around 20 to 25 employees protested outside of the restaurant, some of them holding up signs. Three former workers said in an interview with Fort Worth Weekly that day they were protesting what they described as sexual harassment in the workplace and the unjust firing of a manager who looked out for them.
Vincent Vitek, a 40-year-old who was hired by Wilson after he lost his bartending job, was fired by one of the partners before he had a chance to quit, he said. The reason given to him, he said, was that he had touched a lemon with his bare hand, but he believes it really had to do with his close relationship with Wilson.
It didn’t come as a surprise to him when nearly everyone on staff quit as an act of solidarity with his boss.
“We saw how much time and effort she put into the place and really giving it a personality, trying to shine away from the image that the owners had left,” Vitek said. “She was great with customers. We had regulars.”
Wilson said it was flattering the staff would quit for her even though she would never ask them to do that.
But she also feels, “I should’ve done more to protect the staff,” she said.
She regularly disinfected the restaurant with Clorox wipes and hassled people about wearing their masks, she said, but couldn’t find a way to pay for a cleaning company to come herself. It would have cost around $2,500 and that was far too much for her, she said. She believes the restaurant was putting staff and customers at risk of contracting COVID-19.
As much as she holds herself accountable, though, she feels certain individuals with management bear the most responsibility. She and other employees told the Star-Telegram they ultimately cared deeply about what they were trying to create — a fun place with a good culture — but were hampered by the missteps of management.
Several workers got together recently to burn their uniforms in a fire, Wilson said, the thick smoke representing the end of their short-lived journey. They talked about positive memories at the restaurant, and what led to its demise.
“I just hate that we developed such a fun place and the way that it went down was very ungraceful,” she said. “You go in with grace, you go out with grace — and it was heinous, honestly.”
This story was originally published August 5, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
