Tannislado Alvarado v. Cajun Operating Company

I. BACKGROUND

At the age of sixty-five, Alvarado was hired by Jesus Tapia (Tapia), the store manager of a Church’s Chicken (Church’s) ALVARADO v. CAJUN OPERATING COMPANY 16383 in Tuscon, Arizona, to perform part-time maintenance work. Alvarado eventually became a cook at Church’s. The cook position required the performance of various duties, including cleaning the walk-in refrigerator.

For approximately three and one-half years, Alvarado per- formed satisfactorily according to job evaluations from Tapia and his successor, Tina Montague (Montague). That all changed when Alvarado called Church’s hotline to complain that Montague had made inappropriate comments about his age. When confronted, Montague denied any wrongdoing. However, three days later she gave Alvarado his first Perfor- mance Counseling Record (counseling record) delineating Alvarado’s asserted failure to complete his daily duties, such as panning and rotating chicken, battering chicken, and clean- ing the walk-in refrigerator. Olivia Martinez (Martinez), an assistant manager, gave Alvarado two additional counseling records for similar derelictions. Martinez subsequently stated that she only wrote the…