Two private flight attendants who worked for the co-founder of the iconic home improvement retailer The Home Depot say they quit their jobs because they were overworked while covering for ‘inept’ coworkers who only kept their jobs because they were involved in romantic relationships with their bosses.
In an explosive lawsuit filed in an Atlanta district court last week, Adele Pearson and Samantha Carlisle describe how they sometimes worked 26 days per month, racking up around 90 hours of work time per week while working for AMBFO—the Arthur M. Blank Family Office.
Arthur M. Blank, 82, co-founded Home Depot in 1978, turning it into the largest home improvement retailer in the United States.
Originally from Queens, New York City, Blank has turned Atlanta into his home and has made significant investments in Georgia. In 2002, Blank purchased the NFL team, the Atlanta Falcons, and in the years since, he has made several other sports ownership purchases in the area.
Blank is estimated to have a net worth of around $7 billion, and he owns two private jets through his AMBFO business for use by Blank, his family members, and affiliated companies.
In 2021, Pearson joined AMBFO as its lead flight attendant, earning as much as $175,000 per year by the time she left the company in 2024. She says her move was prompted by being overworked and not being paid overtime.
Pearson and Carlisle were responsible for providing inflight service, creating menus for each flight, shopping for necessary provisions, performing personal errands for the Blank family, selecting hotels and restaurants, and booking travel-related activities.
Pearson estimates that all of these duties required five hours of work before they even arrived at the hangar. The flight attendants would then get to the hangar at least two hours before departure and spend around an hour and a half after each flight cleaning the plane and completing other post-flight activities.
Even when they were away from Atlanta, Pearson and Carlisle were allegedly required to assist the Blank family with ministerial tasks, and the pair were frequently required to remain ‘on call’ for last-minute trips.
During these ‘on call’ periods, the flight attendants had to stay within two hours of the hangar, meaning that they weren’t free to make plans on some of their days off. When they weren’t on call, the pair say they still frequently received calls from the office when they were trying to relax.
In 2023, Pearson and Carlisle say they were scheduled to work an average of 21 days per month, but in some months, they worked as many as 26 days. Duty records didn’t, however, document this high workload because, the lawsuit claims, company officials falsified time records.
In an attempt to address their high workload, Pearson and Carlisle requested that AMBFO hire additional personnel, but they claim this request just made matters worse.
One of two additional flight attendants hired to help out Pearson and Carlisle only remained engaged with AMBFO because she was in a ‘romantic relationship’ with Blank, the lawsuit alleges, while a second was “completely unqualified for the position.”
To make matters worse, a Flight Operations Coordinator who was in a romantic relationship with a company executive was “unable to perform basic tasks,” according to the civil complaint.
Pearson and Carlisle are suing AMBFO for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), claiming that they were not paid a premium for overtime hours despite being entitled.
AMBFO is yet to respond to the civil complaint which was filed by the Lee Meier Law Firm on October 18. The case has been filed under case number: 1:24-cv-04751
