I am a victim of sexual orientation discrimination. I recently resigned from my job, not because of this, but because it was making my life a living hell due to poor management and I was tired of their biggest client's highly unethical business practices.
I'm going to tell my discrimination story. I've changed names to ensure privacy.
About four months ago, they had an opening for a team lead in the call center. I was one of the people they considered for the position. I didn't get the promotion. The person who did was Jane. Jane is a lesbian. She got promoted after working there less than two weeks. The project manager who got her promoted, Anna, is also a lesbian. They said Jane was promoted because she was good with computers. Of course, we found out the real reason through the grapevine. Anna's girlfriend was in prison and she wanted to have Jane to fool around with on the side. The only reasons I didn't get promoted was because I'm straight and I also heard that our operations manager (not Anna) thought that I'm "too nice". It's against company policy to discriminate based on sexual orientation, but they did it to me.
Earlier today I talked to Charlotte on her cell phone before she went to work. Charlotte is the evening team lead and she's a late middle-aged straight lady who's one of the few normal people at that company. She works at the call center at 6PM-Midnight Monday-Wednesday and sells insurance for another company during the day as a full-time job. She told me what had happened since I left. As I said, Anna just wanted someone to fool around with until her real girlfriend got out of prison. Jane, however, wanted a serious relationship so she started dating Rochelle, another lesbian who is a CSR. Anna didn't like this so she started making Jane's work life a living hell to try to get Jane to go out with her. Jane got fed up so she quit by simply walking out of the office in the middle of her shift.
I'd like to see if anyone on here has been a victim of sexual orientation discrimination. If so, please feel free to tell your story.
It seems to me that you weren't discriminated against based on your sexual orientation. You mention that you are straight and that is the reason that you weren't promoted. Do you think you would have been promoted if you were a homosexual? How would being a male homosexual help you with your female manager?
Or have I been wrong all this time and you are a female, and being a homosexual would have helped you?
Matthew, you ask all the tough questions. The lesbian manager did show favoritism to gay men. However, I suppose technically it's sex discrimination. I thought about that before I posted, but I said sexual orientation discrimination because it's more controversial.
Paul, sorry to hear you had to resign, I'm sure some new doors will open for you. I remember you saying at one time that they spoke highly of you and the quality of your work. It also sounds like you let your light shine there the best you could. I don't really have a story to share, but having worked in a few telemarketing jobs myself over the years and having family members working at a few of those places, your story about the behavior of the organization and management does not surprise me.
I think you said it best when describing your friend Charlotte as "one of the few normal people", be thankful your time is over there and move on to what God has in store for you next. :thumbsup:
By all accounts, I did perform well. At risk of derailing my own thread, I'm going to vent a little bit. The whole premise behind that call center is flawed. It's a multi-client call center. That's not crazy, but the fact that everyone answers for all clients is. There are many different clients- we had an online scam company which was the largest client, a pharmaceutical research firm, a women's clothing catalogue, a vitamin company, and an international check fraud outfit. The only thing they're selective about is who they put on the insurance clients. I did get put on insurance. I took first notice of loss for the insurance companies as well as the other ones, and some of them were very complicated. I was answering for twelve companies. I mostly did insurance, but also the other stuff if calls were in queue. I could handle that fairly well; it's the scams and management which led me to quit.
I could go on and on about the craziness in there. We had another gay love drama, except between two men. They hired this gay couple who planned to go to Massachusetts and get married. One night when they were at home, one of them got drunk and beat the other one up. They broke up, but had to share the same car whilst working different shifts. You can only imagine the drama that caused. Oh, and one of them had AIDS.
There was this one night team lead who would, after the management left, smoke pot in his car and drink liquor on the call center floor when he was the only team lead on duty. He would get tore up and leave me in charge while he was in a drunken/stoned stupor. He got fired after the third time he got caught doing drugs at work. Note- third time he was caught; he did it almost every night, and even then he only got fired after the owner of the company came from New York to investigate. He was in theory straight, but it turned out he got "serviced" by one of the aforementioned homos while drunk after work in the back seat of a car while one of the other employees was driving from a bar. This guy also sold drugs. He had this giant jar of weed in his car and he would sell to other employees. He was a nice person, and I hope he gets the help he needs.
Most of the managers, all women and half lesbos, would go around the call center screaming like nut cases. Once when I was doing the outbound project before I switched to inbound, Anna took us all into the break room and yelled at us for five minutes straight. I almost lost my temper. She came a hair away from being the first person I cussed out in about four years. That distinction would go to Alan, a CSR, but only after he cussed me out on three separate occasions.
It just got to the point that it wasn't worth the stress and I could no longer make the required ethical compromises to work there so a couple of weeks ago I went and handed in my resignation to the HR manager and told her why I wasn't coming back to work. :wavey: That was one of the best decisions I made in a long time.
Moving on, I've got enough money saved up to last for a while and I'm working on my 4-40 license to be a CSR for an insurance company. With the license I can do quotes and stuff and work for an actual agency, not a call center. I'll make more money and have a better work environment as licensed insurance CSRs are in (fairly) high demand around here.
Why? The CLA normally deal with situations where someone has been attacked or discriminated against because of their faith. I don't see that evident in Paul's post.
As in any such issue as this it is one sided. I am not suggesting you are flavoring the issue, but unless the other side can present their side this is fruitless. I suppose you could file with the feds under discrimination, but that is a difficult road to walk down.
I suggest that you earnestly pray for the women who are living godless lifestyles as well as any who you feel has mistreated you in this situation asking the Lord to bless them and that you move on and forget about it instead of seeking others who have been wronged for company to sooth your hurt. It has been my experience that if we do our jobs at a level that far exceeds our pay and expectation without grumbling then most companies will recognize what they have and promote the person. If not continue to work for the employer as for the Lord and be a blessing to those who received the promotions or move on without hard feelings.