Back from hand surgery for one day before termination - and she says the reason doesn't add up
A Wayfair worker says the company fired her a day after she returned from medical leave - then blamed calls from before her surgery.
The lawsuit, filed July 5, 2026 in the US District Court for the Western District of Michigan, turns almost entirely on timing. The employee had been with the online retailer for more than five years when, according to her complaint, she was terminated on February 21, 2025 - roughly 24 hours after she came back from approved leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, and while she was still on approved intermittent FMLA.
She joined Wayfair in February 2020 and, by 2022, was a Service Specialist II supporting the company's supply chain and customer-resolution teams, the filing states. She says her performance reviews were consistently good, that managers told her she worked above expectations, and that she earned two internal awards during her time there. She also says she often worked well beyond full time - more than 60 hours a week for months at a stretch, and sometimes more than 80.
According to the complaint, the worker has bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome, a condition she says was aggravated by the repetitive motions her role required. She told her manager about it in early 2022, the filing says. In January 2025, she began approved FMLA leave for a trigger-finger release on her right hand. She returned on February 20, 2025, and asked for a single accommodation recommended by her doctor: an additional 15-minute break during her first week back. Wayfair approved it as intermittent FMLA through February 27, 2025, the complaint says.
One day after her return, the filing says, an operations manager ended her employment. The stated reason, according to the complaint, was "work avoidance" - specifically, that she had allegedly miscoded 80 calls as "Miscellaneous/Dropped Call" before she went on leave.
The worker disputes that reason in her filing. She says the call data had been available since December 2024, that it would normally have come up in her routine one-on-ones, that no concerns were raised in her December or early-January meetings, and that 80 such calls was typical for her workload. The conduct cited, she alleges, "occurred, if at all, prior to Plaintiff's FMLA leave" - yet no action followed until she came back. She also says she believes the company "routinely seeks to terminate employees while they are out or just returning from FMLA leave."
Her complaint brings three claims: FMLA retaliation, disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and disability discrimination under Michigan's Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act. She says she received an EEOC Notice of Right to Sue on or around April 7, 2026. She is seeking lost wages, out-of-pocket medical costs, emotional-distress damages, punitive and exemplary damages, and attorneys' fees.
For HR leaders, the shape of the case is the lesson. When an adverse action lands right after protected leave - and leans on conduct that predates the leave but was never flagged at the time - the timing itself can support a retaliation claim under the law. The usual question is whether the employer can point to a legitimate, consistently applied reason that would have produced the same result even if no leave had been taken. Contemporaneous performance notes, a call-coding policy that is written down and enforced evenly, and a clear record of why the employer acted when it did are the details that carry weight when a termination is second-guessed. Timing you cannot explain is timing a plaintiff will.
None of the allegations have been tested in court, and no judge has ruled on any of the claims.
