Posted: May 20th, 2010 - 7:13am by Doug Powell

Don’t fire the messenger. Improve and enforce the message.

A Country Springs Hotel line cook claims he was wrongly terminated for “sanitation reasons” after dozens of people were sickened at a banquet at the Waukesha, Wis., hotel last week, adding,

"I'm the fall guy. I'm the scapegoat. There's been no proof that I was responsible for bringing a virus to work."

The cook told WTMJ he was getting over the flu and wasn't feeling 100 per cent the day he helped prepare the food for the banquet but he doesn't think he should have lost his job.

"The managers, they knew I was ill, they knew there were other people that were ill. They didn't send me home Sunday and Monday. They sent me home Tuesday. Sunday and Monday they needed me really bad. Tuesday it was not a busy day.”

The Wisconsin Food Code says kitchen employees must report if they have flu like symptoms. The Country Springs manager told Today's TMJ4 that's why they "fired one employee for failure to comply with the reporting requirement policies."