URGENT COMPLAINT ~ PHYSICAL ATTACK RELATED TO COVID-19 ~ RESPONSE REQUIRED CalOSHA Oakland District Office Wendy Hogle-Lui, District Manager 1515 Clay Street, Ste. 1202 Oakland, CA 94612 Phone (510) 622-2916 Fax (510 622-2908 VIA EMAIL: DOSHOAK@dir.ca.gov RE: McDonald's, 6623 San Pablo Avenue, Oakland CA 94612 STATEMENT OF MARIA RESENDIZ June 29, 2020 My name is Maria Resendiz, | am 19 years old and | work full time as a cashier at the McDonald's at 6623 San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, California. | have been working at this, McDonald's since the beginning of 2020. Before that | worked at the McDonald’s at 4514 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland during 2018 and then again in 2019. Both McDonald's are owned by Michael Smith, On June 27, 2020 at around 3pm | was attacked while working at the drive-through window by a customer who was angry because | told him he needed to wear a mask. After | told the customer that he needed to wear a mask, the customer said he did not know he needed to wear a mask. There were signs saying customers must wear a mask on the two drive- through windows, where you pay and where you pick up the food, but | don’t think there was a sign at the entrance to the drive-through or at the speaker. ‘The customer used racially-charged language toward me, saying, “I don’t need no Mexican bitch to tell me what to do.” | was already feeling threatened because although he was in his car, he was not buckled up, his head, arms and part of his chest were outside the car window, and having been the victim of similar attacks in the past at the Telegraph store, | felt | needed to protect myself. I threw a children’s size cup of water at his car. It did not stop him. | saw the attacker pull his car out of the drive-through and park his car. | went back to my position at the window, and he walked up to the drive-through window. He kept calling me a “nasty Mexican bitch” and said that | shouldn’t be working there, that he had my job in his hands, and he said he makes more money than I ever could working at McDonald's. He was banging on the window, and saying, “Where’s your niggah at so | can beat his ass, call your nigga.” He wouldn’t stop screaming the slurs, insulting me and calling me fat and saying he has my job in his hands. | had my hand on the sliding window to keep it shut because it didn’t haveany lock. | was trying to ignore him, but then | took my hand off the window to walk toward the phone to call 911, and then the attacker slammed the window, opening it with his hand. I was trying to close the window, which slides back and forth, but he put his hands to stop it from closing completely. The lock on the window has been broken for 2 months, and the restaurant management knew the lock was broken, but did not fix it. | was still reaching to call 911 because the phone was on the other side of the soda machine so | had to lift my hand off ‘the window. This is my best memory of everything that happened because | was adrenaline scared and shaking, but this is how | remember it. The attacker started screaming that he wanted my name and the corporate number. He kept telling me to come closer to the window so he could slap me and hit me, | saw that Betty Orozco, the manager, wrote my full name on a piece of paper to give to the attacker, and even though I was trying to call 911, | let go of the phone and gave it to Betty so I could take the piece of paper away from her. She hung up the 911 call. Betty said she had to give him my ame so he would leave, and I said, “What if he kills me?” She didn’t say anything. | told Betty not to give him my full name because he was making threats and he was screaming that he was going to come back and beat my ass, and he said he lived across the street and that if he didn’t beat me up at that moment he would come back to beat me up if he sees me work there. | walked back to close the window and that’s when he grabbed me and hit me and slapped me. Betty was behind me which prevented me from moving backwards away from the window because she was blocking the space behind me. | threw a glass of water at him to get him to let 0 of my arm, that’s where some of the bruises are now, so he would leave, but that didn’t work, so I tried to push his hand away. Betty was also grabbing my arms, | think she was trying to prevent me from defending myself, and because she was standing there I couldn't get more space away from the attacker, and the man was able to hit me repeatedly, the attacker had the advantage while Betty had my hand restrained. The attacker was skinny, not too tall, not too fat, so | thought he could get in through the window. | was worried that he would climb in the window, and he was trying to pull me out, through the window, so | had to protect myself and my coworkers from him coming inside. Betty was trying to get me away from the window, but | was using my hands to try to close the window. He had one of my hands and then he grabbed me, and that is when I put all my weight on the floor to keep myself steady. Then he grabbed my neck and my shirt and that is where the scratches on my neck came from. All| could do then was push my weight down on the floor so he couldn’t pull me out through the window or try to grab me. have bloody scratches on my neck and you can see his 3 fingers on one side and his other finger on the other side, that is how I know he grabbed my neck, and | remember clearly that when I moved he grabbed my shirt and | was hitting him with my other hand, and that’s when | stood up and pushed the window as hard as | could, | just kept trying to close the ‘window, and he was face to face with me and he didn’t have a mask and when he talked he was spitting. Thankfully | had a mask on. | have bruises on my arms, and my hand and arm are in the cast because of the injury to my hand.Nobody called the police. The attacker left because his passenger, a woman, got out of his car and tried to pull him away from the window. He told her, “No, leave me alone until | beat this bitch ass,” and he kept hitting and slapping me on my face. Finally the girl got him to leave the window. Betty took me to the back room. A coworker came in and told me, “You should just ignore them, now Michael is going to have another lawsuit.” Jabeth, my coworker, told me, “You need to call the police. This can’t happen, you are all bleeding, you need to call your mom.” had to call the police because no one else did. The police came and asked Betty Orozco for the surveillance video so they could identify the attacker and his car, but she refused to cooperate and did not provide the video. [Iwas taken by ambulance to Highland Hospital. They examined me and took x-rays of my hand and fingers. They said they aren’t broken but they said my hand and arm needed to be in a cast. Ihave not been back to work since. Thirty minutes before the attack happened, between 2pm and 2:39 pm, | saw Michael, the owner, in the store. | was on my 30-minute break, but | had a question so | asked Michael what do I do if a customer doesn’t wear the mask? And Michael said, “Don’t serve them. That is all you can do.” He told me | was authorized to tell the customer to put on the mask, but if they refuse, we don’t give them service. The day before the attack, on June 26, | had come back to the store to give Pablo the manager papers from the doctor, because | was injured at work on June 21, | slipped and hurt my left shoulder and left back. | went to Concentra emergency and they gave me medicine and said nothing was broken or dislocated. When | gave the paperwork to Pablo, he asked if | could work that day, and | said no, because | was still aking medication, but | said | could work the next day. I can’t sleep. When I close my eyes I see everything again. | feel like I'm feeling it again, | see the attacker's face, because we were face-to-face when this happened. I can’t sleep and | get really anxious and nervous and scared, And I have to lock every window now. But that is a trigger from a previous violent incident when | worked at the Telegraph McDonald's store. 1 experienced more than 10 attacks at the McDonald's store on Telegraph, most of them were verbal, including death threats, and some of them were physical. Some of the prior violent experiences include: 1. drunk customers throwing a cup containing feces, vomit and blood at me. | was forced to stay and work my shift to the end in the same clothes. 2. customers throwing cups of water at water at me, and rather than allowing me to change my clothes, the managers forced me to continue working without writing incident reports, 3. customers making death threats because they were not satisfied with their orders, and rather than the managers protecting me and backing me up, they abandoned me to handle these situations on my own. No incident report was filed here.4, a customer threatening me and my co-workers, and eventually shattering a window and getting shards inside my co-worker’s eye because we could not serve him ice-cream at 3am or 4am. Rather than call the police and support me, the owner of the store blamed me for the damages and | was transferred to the San Pablo McDonald's. 5, Homeless people coming into the store to verbally attack, threaten and physically attack Us because we cannot serve them. We have never had training on how to deal with these customers. There are many security issues that the store owner, Michael, should pay attention to, like fixing the locks on the drive- through window at the San Pablo store, and providing a security guard at the San Pablo store. The Telegraph and Market Street locations have a security guard during the day, but we need security guards at night as well. During the day there are 12-15 people working in the San Pablo store, but at night there are only 5-6. Rather than only paying attention to whether there are enough fries, Michael needs to focus on the safety of his workers. | know he has a lot of restaurants, but as his employees, we need to feel safe at work. He also needs to train the managers better on how to deal with violent situations. | have worked in two of his stores and there are security problems in both, and | can’t believe he still has the same managers that didn’t help me or other people who were in danger. Michael is risking his employees’ health and lives at this point. And it’s not fair. | feel like | can’t tell Michael this because he will fire me. He has told me that if I don’t get along with the customers or my coworkers ~ and he said it directly to me, looking at me face-to-face, eye-to-eye — that he would fire me. Michael said this to me 2 weeks ago, the day he talked to ‘me about a previous incident where a customer had to wait in the drive-through, and the customer behind that customer got angry, and a coworker pointed to me and told the second customer it was my fault, and | told her that she didn’t need to say that, she should just tell the customer she is sorry for the wait but there was an issue. Michael investigated this incident and told me if any of the coworkers came to him about me doing something wrong big or small he was going to fire me. He said, “I don’t care about drama, | just care about my business and my money.” Sincerely, Maria Resendiz