I awoke the next Monday morning, rolled over in bed and thought, "Thank God I don't have to go into work today." My relief was so great over the next two weeks that I noticed a drastic improvement in my depression/oppression and anxiety. I was getting back to being myself again. My laughter returned. My optimism returned. My hands stopped trembling. People even told me that the sparkle in my eyes was back.
I was also blessed to have the words pour out of me effortlessly as I wrote column after column for the local paper. Parts of my ordeal had already been relayed to an audience of approximately ten thousand readers. During the last six months of my employment, I'd written about the lack of respect and honesty in society and about extroverts thinking they were somehow better than introverts. In early December, I'd written about the significance of Human Rights Day and boldly stated that my employer could not discriminate against me because of my gender, religious and/or political affiliation (or lack thereof) age, race, or marital status. Another column delved into the irrational loathing some people feel and express when faced with someone else’s tears.
Immediately after leaving the company, I penned columns on the topics of job burnout, competitive work environments, back-stabbing coworkers, and "Mean Girls." These columns can all be traced back to my experiences at Buddy's. If nothing else, surviving a job from hell gave me a great deal of fodder and inspiration at the keyboard.
Writing wasn’t just a way of finding closure; it was my only means of income, and a column a week could scarcely meet my financial needs. So, after two weeks of lazing about, relishing my freedom and trying to detoxify myself from recent events, I began looking for a job.
But as the weeks passed without even so much as an interview, my optimism turned introspective. Suddenly finding myself unemployed after years of being in the workforce, I had a great deal of time to mull over the situation that caused me to become unemployed. I also had time to think about what mattered to me most. And a part of me wanted to move-on, pursing other goals and dreams without a reminder of my previous experiences. But another part wanted to fight back -- to seek justice, to right a wrong that my employer allowed me to endure.
Lest anyone assumes I am a quick-to-judge person, I do not make accusations lightly. I had given weeks of thought before writing the first letter in which I’d alluded to the gender discrimination in the call center. It would take additional weeks of forethought before I complained of my manager’s retaliation in a second letter.
So it’s not surprising that would take weeks to decide that reporting my experiences to the E.E.O.C. was the right thing to do. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. States have a statute of limitations for filing discrimination complaints - either 180 or 300 days from the day of the alleged discrimination. Thanks to working the development plan, I was already past being able to file a charge against Buddy’s for the discrimination I’d experienced before complaining about the situation to the director. I was already past the point where I could complain about the retaliation I believed I’d experienced when Sissy was given the only promotion in our group. And I wasn’t sure there was enough evidence to warrant an investigation without the consideration of these two events.
What kept eating at me was the timing factor in the more recent events. The pro positions had been approved in January, and I’d completed the development plan the same month. So why weren’t these positions posted sooner? Why wait until the middle of March to post them -- exactly the day after they decided I would not be considered for either position? It was just too convenient to be a coincidence. It was as if they’d deliberately held off on posting the positions until they thought they had found a reason to hold me back.
Then there was that comment Abner had made -- the one about my causing him a lot of trouble in September, and this was the very month I’d handed him a letter, complaining of discrimination in the department. Abner had, by his own admission, revealed that he was holding a grudge about the past, and I’d done enough research to know that his remark was not going to look favorably on him in a court of law.
Although I was beginning to consider taking legal action, I wasn’t ready to commit myself to the undertaking. Prior to my call center experiences, I’d always considered myself “not the suing kind”. In fact, I had a somewhat biased opinion of those who did sue. And here I was, toying with the idea of filing a lawsuit myself.
If I had an ulterior motive in keeping in touch with Tess and Sissy after leaving the company, it was purely at a sub-conscious level. Maybe I was missing them, or maybe I was craving interaction with other adults in general, but for whatever reason, I invited them over for a home-cooked luncheon.
While seated around the dining room table with my guests, I learned Tess had gotten chewed out and accused of being disruptive in a recent meeting at work. And her only crime was that she had said something Lonnie hadn’t liked and he had retaliated in return.
I cannot tell you how livid this made me. While I might be guilty of not seeing when I am being treated wrongly, I see it vividly when it is happening to someone else. “What did you say that ticked him off?” I asked with frustration in my tone.
“I said that our QA scores would determine our chances of being promoted.”
“And?”
“That’s all,” Tess replied. “Lonnie spoke up and said I was wrong. I told him that I was not wrong. And I guess he got mad at me.”
“The jackass,” I muttered, relieved I could finally say what I really wanted without worrying about getting fired.
“I went to Stephen,” Sissy said. “And I told him that I was in the class, and that I didn’t think Tess had said anything wrong."
“And?” I prompted.
“What do you think?” Sissy answered with a shrug. “He didn’t care, not even when I told him that I’d noticed Isaac and another guy whispering and making fun of Tess during the class.”
If I’d had any doubts that my manager and supervisor did have a bias against women, I was certain of it now. These latest actions clearly demonstrated that they valued their male employees more than they did their females.
On a personal level, I also recalled how the director had accused me of berating Isaac for the simple teasing remark I’d made at our desks. But here was Isaac, the only male associate, being allowed to laugh and make fun of a female colleague and no one says a single word about it?
And despite being promoted, Sissy was beginning to realize that she was not regarded as highly as her male counterparts. And how did she arrive at this conclusion? Her not-so-bright supervisor told her so.
“Guess what he had the nerve to tell me?” she asked as I sliced into the spice cake I’d prepared for our dessert. “Lonnie said that anyone could do my job -- and that they, he said, pointing at the guys, were the real pros.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I said, passing her a slice of cake.
“I wish. He also told me that most of the pros had maxed out their salaries. Then he told me not to worry about maxing out of mine -- that it would take years for me to earn what the other pros earned.”
“So, essentially, he just admitted that the men were getting paid a lot more money than you.” I shook my head in amazement.
“Exactly,” Sissy said before slipping a bite of cake into her mouth.
Later that week, I learned that a certain phone agent (one who was a mutual friend of Sissy’s and Tess’s) had approached Reggie Scott with a verbal complaint about Lonnie’s recent behavior toward females on the team.
According to Sissy and Tess both, Reggie was quoted as telling the phone associate: “This had better not be another complaint coming out of Stephen Alexander’s group.”
Yes! This was pure and sweet information to hear. No longer could management write me off as a flake or a trouble-maker, because I was no longer the only person who had complained to HR about the discrimination in the department.
This opened a door for me. I spent the next two days writing a detailed letter that I mailed to the nearest EEOC office. I told them about this. I told them about that. But I couldn’t tell them about everything because the letter had to be kept fairly short. To report everything, I would have to submit a novella.
A week after mailing the letter, an EEOC representative called and scheduled an interview for the following Monday. Based on my verbal replies to the investigator’s questions, I was told the office would file the charge and conduct an investigation on my behalf. Almost giddy, I went home and began a long obsession with the charge and employment rights in general.
As for Tess, she said that Lonnie had gotten down on one knee in her cube before apologizing for his severe reprimand. I agree with Tess’s assessment that his apology was a direct result of the phone agent’s complaint. Reggie hadn’t listened to me all that much, but maybe hearing the complaint from another employee had made him realize that men were still receiving preferential treatment in the department.