Firehouse Subs Chain Owner Allegedly Refuses to Shovel His Walkway, Resulting in Injury to Employee’s Dad

The owner of a Firehouse Subs franchise in Indiana has come under fire for failing to salt the walkways in front of the store, resulting in a local dad falling over and fairly seriously injuring his face.

His daughter posted to Facebook calling the store owner out, writing, “I’m glad instead of worrying about helping your customers and salting your walkways you were more concerned with worrying about telling my father the sidewalk in front of your establishment is not your responsibility after he did this to his face.” She also revealed that an employee left the phone on while the owner was avoiding speaking to the family, resulting in them hearing him admit that he was pretending not to know what happened so that he wouldn’t be liable (I’m approximately 95 percent certain that’s not how liability works).

A Redditor posted a screenshot of the callout to the r/antiwork subreddit, adding that they used to work at the store, which is owned by a private company, and “there have been other instances over personal selfishes [sic] but THIS has by far been the worst.”

Commenters on both the Facebook and Reddit posts were outraged, with many encouraging the man’s daughter to contact the media. They also discussed whether the store owner is actually responsible for salting the sidewalks or not. The most upvoted comment reads, “If the restaurant is on its own lot then yea; it’s responsible for salting and snow removal. If it’s in a public owned plaza, the plaza management is responsible, not the restaurant,” with the commenter following up that people should try to be more aware of their surroundings.

Most people agreed that salting the sidewalk is just the decent thing to do, regardless of who is legally responsible, although legal responsibility would definitely be a factor if the man decides to sue. The store owner pretending not to know about the situation in an effort to avoid being held liable does make it all look fairly shady, however. Some free legal advice for the store owner: Avoid having potentially damning conversations with your employees.