The 4th nominee for the Worst Employer of 2026 is … The Disability Turkey

A longtime employee tells her employer she has breast cancer. She needs time off—intermittent leave—to undergo chemotherapy and recover. The company sends her to a third-party benefits administrator. She and her daughter try to navigate the system. They file a claim. They call. They follow up.

Nothing happens.

Instead, the absences pile up. The attendance points accrue. Even with doctor's notes.

She shows up to work, scans her badge at the door... and it doesn't open.

That's how she learns she's been fired—for missing work to treat her cancer.

If the EEOC's allegations are true, this case isn't just about a failure to accommodate. It's about an employer that checked out entirely.

According to the complaint, Marie Marc worked for Butterball for more than a decade, starting in 2013. She speaks almost exclusively Haitian Creole and often relied on her daughter to communicate with the company.

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2023, she did what the law expects. She notified her employer. She asked for leave for treatment. The company's response? Call Voya.

So she did. With her daughter's help, she tried to request leave. Voya pushed her to an online system. She filed what she was told to file.

And—according to the EEOC—no leave request was ever opened.

Meanwhile, Butterball did exactly what the ADA forbids: it treated cancer-related absences like ordinary attendance violations. It assessed points. It issued a final warning. And when chemotherapy forced her to miss additional shifts, it terminated her for exceeding the policy limits.

It gets worse.

The company didn't even tell her she was fired. It removed her from the schedule, terminated her, and left her to figure it out when her badge stopped working.

And when she finally met with HR—after showing up and being locked out—she brought yet another doctor's note and again asked for leave.

The answer was still no.

This is ADA 101. Cancer is a disability. Time off for chemotherapy is a textbook reasonable accommodation. Attendance policies must bend when the law requires it.

What should have happened here? A simple, good-faith interactive process: What do you need? When? For how long? How can we make this work?

Instead—if these allegations prove true—Butterball chose bureaucracy over humanity, rigidity over compliance, and termination over accommodation.

That's how you end up with an EEOC lawsuit alleging not just liability, but reckless indifference to federally protected rights.

And that's how you earn a nomination as the Worst Employer of 2026.