Did an Airport Eavesdropper Save a Texas Roadhouse Employee From "Wrongful Termination"?

A woman on TikTok named Tara Rule (@pogsyy) claims that while she was waiting at the Reagan airport in Washington, D.C., during her layover from New York back to LA, she overheard a corporate agent from Texas Roadhouse speaking on the phone in a common area. But what the agent allegedly said left Tara in shock.

In a series of videos, Tara explained what she apparently heard, and what happened after she tried to find the people who the corporate agent supposedly discussed.

Let's break it all down...

Did a TikToker's accidental eavesdropping at an airport save a Texas Roadhouse employee's job?

In her first video from Aug. 22, Tara sits quietly while eating. Her text overlay reads: "Sitting and listening to a corporate agent discuss how they're going to terminate a girl who is fighting for her life in the hospital because it's been a few days and she hasn't called in and they haven't been able to contact her (husband) emergency contact because she's in the ICU and they found out through FACEBOOK and they're trying to send her a fake benefits package or something from corporate certified mail so that the husband will have to sign for it so it'll show she received the termination agreement in a sneaky way."

"She keeps saying 'we have to make sure they don't know what it is' so they can yank her 401K because she didn't disclose she had a health condition prior," Tara continues in her text overlay. "And it's for TEXAS ROADHOUSE OF ALL THINGS. So dystopian."

"So if you know someone in the hospital who works for Texas Roadhouse and has for a while, don't sign for that benefits package," she concludes.

Two days later, Tara posted another video saying that she was trying to verify that she'd found the husband and wife in question, but that in the meantime, Texas Roadhouse had apparently responded to some comments on Facebook about her TikTok video.

Tara showed a screenshot where Texas Roadhouse's response to another Facebook user reads: "Thank you for reaching out regarding the TikTok video that secretly recorded part of a conversation she wasn't a part of about one of our employees. The allegations in the TikTok are false — we are not canceling a 401K or sending information to an employee about 'fake' benefits. Rather, the conversation was related to our staff attempting to reach out to an employee's family members."

Their comment continued: "Recording and sharing false information on TikTok about a conversation to which this person was not a party was entirely inappropriate and misleading. Texas Roadhouse is a people-first company and we do entirely support our Roadies."

Tara then showed a screenshot in which she replied to the restaurant's comment with her own comment. Tara wrote:

"Hey, that's my video! Happy to post more documentation if you'd like — you could alternatively have reached out personally to me instead of making inappropriate and rather odd comments regarding this situation. Or you could have even sent me a cease and desist if it wasn't true, but you can't send a cease and desist if it is true, so perhaps that's why."

"Anyway, I was filming myself eating because there were birds flying around the airport and happened to catch the conversation," her comment continued. "No expectation of privacy in public!"

Speaking to the camera, Tara said that "at the end of the day, I don't really give a s--t if Texas Roadhouse is pissed off. If this is potentially going to save someone [from] wrongful termination due to a health condition, then it's worth it to me."

That same day, Tara posted another video, this time saying that she found the husband and wife in question and had been in touch with them.

She also said she noticed Texas Roadhouse kept using the same "stock comment" when replying to people on social media. Tara said she thought it was telling that the company was being "defensive" rather than conducting an investigation. She also said she "welcomed" any litigation from the company, because she knew it would be a "PR nightmare" for them if they even tried, and that she hadn't done anything wrong. She said that the company could reach out to her, and that "we can have a very demure, very mindful conversation."

In another video that day, Tara said she and other people online had noticed that Texas Roadhouse had supposedly been deleting comments on social media. Tara insisted that the restaurant needed a PR team.

On Aug. 26, Tara saids he had a "huge" update coming about the situation, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.