Lackmann Employee Fired

by Max Heintz and Michelle Hausman

Stories collide as controversy surrounds Lackmann Food Services

Another Lackmann dilemma has hit our Garden City campus.

This time it involves the firing of one of its employees and the uprising of the concerned student body.

After word got out that Shuron Jackson was fired from his job at the Grill in the University Center, a group of students collaborated and created a petition to bring him back. Sean, as most people know him, was fired for two different reasons. The story from the petition says that recently "the food service switched over to a different meat for the burgers. To be specific, they started buying lesser quality meat for the burgers to save money." When Sean spoke up about this to Mr. Katona saying that "it was wrong to serve students lower quality burgers," he was fired. As for Mr. Katona, he had a different story.

According to Lackmann officials, on Thursday, November 20th, at about 6:00pm, Jackson was fired following an altercation with a fellow employee. According to Mark Katona, Area Coordinator for Lackmann Culinary Services, the incident began when Jackson complained to another chef about the length of time that was needed to cook the new type of hamburger used by Lackmann. Katona went on to say that Jackson continued to complain, yelling at his fellow chef, and threw a hamburger on the floor of the kitchen. "...[He] wouldn't comply with what we told him to do." During this quarrel, the chef Jackson confronted allegedly cut himself with a knife. As the incident continued, managers first asked Jackson to "calm down," before asking him to leave.

When asked whether rumors that Jackson had been denied his paycheck were true, Katona answered that Jackson had, indeed, asked for his paycheck, but was not given it because paychecks are given only on Fridays.

Despite allegations that the meat was of poor quality, Katona maintained that the only difference between the current hamburger meat and that used before November 20th is the fat content and the thickness of the patty. In an interview, Director of Auxiliary Services, Alain Lanz, stated that the burgers used currently have less fat than the previous burgers and are thinner. He added that the lower fat content was the reason the burgers now take longer to cook. Lanz also explained that this was done to appeal to the perceived preferences of the students.

Katona indicated that Jackson had a history of acting inappropriately. He stated that an incident had been brought to his attention where during a conversation between Jackson and a female student about softball, Jackson had mentioned that he had "made a home run last night."

Katona stated that Jackson would not be returning to the University Center Grill. "He did a great job for some of the students but by the same token...there were times when his emotion would get the better of his reaction."