[seesaw]

Well, I spoke with Disability Rights Florida. They did an intake questionnaire over the phone and will determine if they want to investigate further and can provide us services.

They also recommend we contact JAN (Job Accommodation Network) which I have used many times, but every time I recommend them to the employer, they ignore me and bring in some general counsel who has no real clue about disability employment law.

I have finished all the forms and back up documents for my EEOC claim. I have had a couple of people review it to make sure it's just factual - I did a timeline and referenced Appendixed emails. I am also having an HR expert who is an old colleague of mine review it and advise me as well on his take as an HR manager (for a completely different organization in another state--and he has a disability too).

As soon as I get some feedback from him, I will print the claim and send it to the local EEOC office, which is all the way down in Miami, so I have to file by mail because it's like 500 miles away.

I really have no doubt that they won't, at the very least, do an investigation, and I find it quite hard to believe, based on the evidence, that they wouldn't move to take action against my employer. They don't take this stuff lightly.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

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[seesaw]

It's very sad that as I go into this process, I find out how many friends are willing to stand up for me. It's a good thing I have plenty of back up documentation, because I will get no backers from any of my colleagues, because they will be afraid of retaliation.

Lol, it's kind of funny, my CEO is like the Donald Trump of our industry, except no where near as rich and with nowhere near as beautiful a wife or kids. Hah!

Seesaw

Hang in there seesaw!

A few years ago during my graduate school program, I also filed an EEOC against the university where I obtained my graduate degree, due to harassment, bullying, and infringing on my right to obtain my graduate degree, along with academic retaliation from my graduate dept. chair and substitute teacher placement coordinator.

I even went before a board of 12 of the university's faculty to plead my case. I took all the steps that I could financially afford to (I couldn't find a pro bono education law lawyer to help me; not even a law student!!). I lost my case. I still got my degree but it came with a black mark on it, an "F" for student teaching ALTHOUGH I completed my student teaching. (The mentor teacher gave me high scores on her evaluations of my teaching, until she was threatened by the dept. chair that if she passed me, she wouldn't get her $1K that mentor teachers were awarded for taking on student teachers for an academic semester. Then I overheard my mentor teacher in a meeting with the high school principal -- they went to college together -- create a story about why she had to fail me. She was careless about privacy because I heard the whole conversation between them in the principal's office, while I waited in the hallway to talk to the principal. Then I got my advisor involved, who threw me under the bus because her job security was threatened, and I went from the highest scored student teacher to one who earned a masters degree with a big, fat "F" on her transcript that was done in retaliation for me calling a meeting with my program president and the dept. chair and student teacher placement coordinator. I held them both accountable, with email communication as evidence, and all they earned was a slap on the wrist from the program chair, and from the board I went before to plead my case with.

But, at least I tried. My only support system were three friends who lived out of town. I was shunned by my cohort members of my grad program to no end.

On the bright side, horrible situations like ours, shows us who our true friends are, reminds us of the inner strength we posses, and the resilience and tenacity we have within ourselves, that we can use to pursue justice for unjust situations.

And of course, as Yoda would say, "No! Try not! DO or DO NOT! There is no try."

Always better to try than not to try -- and that applies to everything in life.

[seesaw]

Originally Posted by cielpur

Hang in there seesaw!

A few years ago during my graduate school program, I also filed an EEOC against the university where I obtained my graduate degree, due to harassment, bullying, and infringing on my right to obtain my graduate degree, along with academic retaliation from my graduate dept. chair and substitute teacher placement coordinator.

I even went before a board of 12 of the university's faculty to plead my case. I took all the steps that I could financially afford to (I couldn't find a pro bono education law lawyer to help me; not even a law student!!). I lost my case. I still got my degree but it came with a black mark on it, an "F" for student teaching ALTHOUGH I completed my student teaching. (The mentor teacher gave me high scores on her evaluations of my teaching, until she was threatened by the dept. chair that if she passed me, she wouldn't get her $1K that mentor teachers were awarded for taking on student teachers for an academic semester. Then I overheard my mentor teacher in a meeting with the high school principal -- they went to college together -- create a story about why she had to fail me. She was careless about privacy because I heard the whole conversation between them in the principal's office, while I waited in the hallway to talk to the principal. Then I got my advisor involved, who threw me under the bus because her job security was threatened, and I went from the highest scored student teacher to one who earned a masters degree with a big, fat "F" on her transcript that was done in retaliation for me calling a meeting with my program president and the dept. chair and student teacher placement coordinator. I held them both accountable, with email communication as evidence, and all they earned was a slap on the wrist from the program chair, and from the board I went before to plead my case with.

But, at least I tried. My only support system were three friends who lived out of town. I was shunned by my cohort members of my grad program to no end.

On the bright side, horrible situations like ours, shows us who our true friends are, reminds us of the inner strength we posses, and the resilience and tenacity we have within ourselves, that we can use to pursue justice for unjust situations.

And of course, as Yoda would say, "No! Try not! DO or DO NOT! There is no try."

Always better to try than not to try -- and that applies to everything in life.

Yes, I do not expect my co-workers to support me. But fortunately I have all sorts of evidence, and they do not. I even have complaints I have made against other workers in email and the response from HR to them. I'm going to continue to file any complaints necessary against coworkers to HR (even though there's only one coworker I would file a complaint against because she's rude, volatile, and hostile in the workplace), so at least there is a record that I can prove others' behaviors...where's their record of my transgressions other than a formal warning that mentions no specific situations nor any actions taken before the formal warning to remedy the problem.

Here's the thing: no, I didn't go to law school. But everyone who knows me knows I should have. Every career test I've taken says I should've been a lawyer, contract law, most likely, because I understand and can put together nuanced bulletproof language to protect a client. And I have done so for myself since day 1 of this job. Why? Because I learned the hard way that you have to cover your *** (CYA) from day one, no matter how nice the people seem. They all have their own agendas; they all will throw you under the bus if it means they will get ahead.

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[seesaw]

I'm still working on the complaint paperwork. But now have been in touch with another advocacy group. I can see why people give up on these complaints or other cases like rape. The process of going over it again and again and again and reliving the trauma and the stress is almost unbearable. But I will be strong. They will not win by wearing me down.

Seesaw

Originally Posted by seesaw

I'm still working on the complaint paperwork. But now have been in touch with another advocacy group. I can see why people give up on these complaints or other cases like rape. The process of going over it again and again and again and reliving the trauma and the stress is almost unbearable. But I will be strong. They will not win by wearing me down.

Seesaw

What I learned from my experiences of filing an EEOC is that the people who lie, get away with their wrong-doing. At least in my case the liars got away with their wrongdoings against me as a graduate student, and I have the "F" as an eternal reminder of a major life battle that I fought and lost, that derailed my path 100% and forced me to take an entirely new path.

That can be both good and bad. It all depends on what your long term goal is. At least that's how I'm coping with the trauma I went through with my grad school program. Turns out, I wasn't the only victim who experienced what I did. Grad school politics are notorious for sabotaging students' academic careers.

Unfortunately we can't control how other people treat us or what they do to us. We can take defense classes, learn the law, and educate ourselves. But, there will always be immoral, unethical people who get off on derailing good people from the path those good people are on, for no other reason than, just because they want to. It's both unfortunate and horrible.

Give yourself a limit seesaw. Decide when 'enough is enough' in this battle you currently find yourself. Know your limits. Know when to let it go. To maintain your sanity.

Maybe all of this is a sign you should enroll in law school. Maybe this is the universe' way of redirecting your path towards a life profession that you were meant for all along. Sometimes our path isn't presented to us in a nice, neat package. Sometimes, we have to go through a lot of HELL first, before our path presents itself to us. At least that's my life philosophy.

[seesaw]

I understand, Cielpur, but I have email documentation and now audio recordings that catch them in the middle of their lies. I hear what you're saying, it's hard to fight the system, but right now, I'm very hopeful.

All the people I know who've fought battles like this and won have said they had the same documentation I had, and it took a while and it was a hard fight, but they won and it produced change. And that they are glad they fought, even though it cost them energy and made their disability symptoms hard to manage at times. That standing up for their civil rights and not accepting the abuse was worth it.

I mean, don't you find that at least standing up for yourself was worth it, even if you couldn't win? At least you were able to stand up and speak the truth in public?

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I suppose I am proud of myself for speaking up. I've always been that way. If someone wrongs me somehow, I have no problem confronting that person in order to create change for the right reason. I can think of many other examples in my life, where a nasty, vile person's unethical agenda attempted to derail me from doing something that made me happy. But, not winning my grad school battle took a toll on me that lasted three years. I mean, I was devastated. I didn't have audio recordings of any of the encounters, which would have been my smoking gun. All I had was paperwork and email exchanges. But that wasn't enough, because these vile people LIED and enough of them banded against me, and the EEOC died in the wind; nothing was investigated because I was a grad student, and not in a corporate workplace environment. Even my university's ombudsman was zero help. I found out about EEOC on my own. Some ombudsman. Pfft. What did they get paid for? Doling out useless advice, that's what.

[seesaw]

Even though I blocked a whole bunch of people from my Facebook account AND to find my Facebook profile you have to know that I don't use my father's last name on my account, I followed my mom's advice and went back and deleted a whole bunch of posts back from when I was dissociating last week where I was posting about the discrimination at work. I also made sure to make sure all the settings on certain posts were to the proper groups. I have mild stuff about my dogs and stuff that I share with friends and co-workers, then stuff I only share with my "close friends" group that know I struggle with PTSD and MDD and all this other stuff.

I know my CEO had seen a little bit of what I posted to Facebook, but I'm going to guess, based on his ability to use technology that he probably didn't screenshot any of it. And even if he did, I was justified in discussing the situation since I had been illegally terminated for my disability. So even if they did bring it up in court, it happened after the ADA violations and would have no bearing on the fact that they did break the ADA.

But like I said, hopefully deleting all that stuff helped. I doubt he had his attorneys do any work (since our attorneys are pro bono mostly anyways), so I am not too worried about that biting me in the ***, and even if it does, like I said, the timeline speaks for itself. They broke the ADA, then I spoke out about it. You cannot expect a terminated employee who was discriminated against to not speak out about systematic ADA violations. And then you don't get to reprimand me for it either when you reinstate me because you know you screwed up big time.

Cielpur, my last job sort of ended the same way, they violated the ADA and so I had to leave because they wouldn't accommodate me. I thought for a long time about filing a complaint. But they made sure I got my short term disability, which made me a shoe in to get SSDI. They screwed up, but I feel it was sort of honest, uneducated mistakes, and I also feel like, it was just also not a good fit there. They brought me in wanting me to institute all this change, but I couldn't make any headway because they hadn't made it a strategic goal that all the staff understood was a priority. So every little itty bitty change was a fight.

And some of the things they did were so backwards. They tracked PTO by the receptionist tracking a spreadsheet. So once she accidentally deducted PTO from my line that was someone else's and I had to go back with her over months of payroll to show that I hadn't taken that PTO. There were a lot of outdated systems like that. And also, they promised a lot of things when I started that job, and made things seem a LOT rosier than they were. When I got there, I found the database software was so outdated, and they had told me they had a robust system. They told me they had resources set up, and they didn't. As a Sr. Staff Member, my workspace was a desk in the middle of a hallway that was only partitioned by a bookshelf, which wouldn't have been a big deal if I didn't have a thing about people listening to my phone calls and the fact that myself and my "office mate" or "hall mate" as you could call her, were both on the phone all day and couldn't her our own phone calls. There was a lot messed up with the situation.

In the end, I said, you know, they offered to let me leave and pay me through the end of the month (like a severance), they made it easy for me to get the company disability which made it easy to get the SSDI, and even as much as I wanted to file the complaint, I also felt like it would have come down to education versus any real damages or anything. Whereas in my current case...this company will be lucky not to go bankrupt for what they've done.

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[seesaw]

And to be clear, no, this is not a pattern. This has been something with two jobs, but tow different scenarios. And my jobs all before this, I left with accolades and invitations to come back whenever I wanted.

With the first job I left because of MI, I was diagnosed with the PTSD while working there. The job itself and the hostile work environment brought up a lot of symptoms for me and became problematic in how I interacted with people, because I was so agitated, paranoid, and having panic attacks and flashbacks ALL the time. The work environment was hostile so I took a medical leave to seek treatment, but became disabled due to the PTSD, depression, etc. I had wanted to try and stay on, but they were right that the accommodations probably wouldn't have helped me anyhow.

In my current job, I took this job 18 months, 7 hospitalizations, 1 stay in a residential treatment facility for 30 days, 1 IOP, and 1 PHP, plus transcranial magnetic stimulation, and great CBT and DBT therapy after leaving the other job before accepting this position. I had come to a place where both my therapist, pdoc, and myself felt I could return to the workforce, with the right and reasonable accommodations. When I interviewed for this position, on both occasions, I had my service dog with me, so they knew right away, regardless of what it was, that I had a disability. And I felt encouraged that they made me an offer even knowing I had a disability (because if I have a service dog then obviously I have a disability). So I assumed (wrongly) that they understood the ADA.

I made lists and plans with my therapist about how to deal with triggering situations and what I needed to do to be successful in the workplace while I manage my MI. I requested reasonable accommodations, and they were granted. I disclosed my disabilities on my first day of work, and have written acknowledgement of those requests for reasonable accommodation and the letter from my doctor from HR. The first 6 months were hell, not because of anyone at work, just because of the transition, dealing with my depression and fatigue level, and my ****-retentive roommate. I experimented bringing Astro and not bringing Astro, my SD, to work, just because of the environment and seeing how best to navigate it. I also felt intimidated, maybe in my own head, not to bring him. I have since said F that. But I worked really hard to be able to successfully return to work after my serious illness, and my disability is in a stable place now, where, while still a disability according to the ADA, it's not a disability according to SSDI, which are two different definitions. Many people don't understand that.

In almost 15 months of working at this place, I've had 5 mild cases of episodes that I confirmed with either HR, my co-workers, or if my interim boss was in town, that I was going to work the rest of the day from home. Because we didn't have a department head that whole time, it was unclear who to clear it with, so I always made sure that someone knew I was experiencing symptoms (in email) and knew I had gone home to work for the day without distraction and in a calm environment.

With the stress of the new VP (my new supervisor) starting, and changes the CEO was starting to implement in his traditional way of doing so without educating staff and letting them find out on the fly, I had a mild attack on the second day of my new VP's week, and informed HR that I was going home to finish my work. And then the next day, not surprisingly, had the serious dissociative attack in which I had to go home and miss a meeting because of it.

I don't think having one bad attack in nearly 15 months means I'm not able to complete my job duties. In fact, it doesn't, because I just come home, calm myself, take some meds and rest if I need to, then log back in and get work done. I still work 50-60 hours a week even when I have an episode. I think this is a sign that reasonable accommodations need to be spelled out more clearly now that there is a direct supervisor, but in no way do I see this as a pattern of me with employment.

The previous job I left because that's when I got sick. This job, I don't need to leave. I'm not too sick to work. And even though there were ADA violations at the last job, I didn't sue because I knew it was an educational situation, not a discriminatory one. This one is very discriminatory. You know, I thought at first it was about education, but after the CEO's comments and mocking people with MI and PTSD...it's discriminatory point blank.

So, I guess, I don't know if anyone was thinking I have a pattern of this. I kept questioning myself if it was a pattern, but I don't believe it is. But I also believe it is a sign that I don't do well working in these mid-size organizations that don't have established HR departments. I know HR isn't here to protect me, but I know that a real HR manager knows the rules, and that when I disclose and we agree on accommodations, I am protected. So I am hoping to move into a larger organization that has a professional and well-established and knowledgeable HR staff that knows how to handle employee discipline, supervision, etc.

I mean, the formal reprimand in writing that I got from my CEO...he's going to be embarrassed when that gets read aloud in court. That's not the way you write a formal reprimand to an employee. I had to give my direct report a formal notice, and I gave her specific details on things she had underperformed and what was needed for improvement. The reprimand I have is all vague mentions of people notice this or we have noticed that...but no specific mentions of an email that was insubordinate or something I did in a meeting, or something I said to a board member, nothing specific that I can actually resolve. So it sets me up for failure. And that is an HR tactic. To give you a vague reprimand that you can't possibly resolve because you don't actually know what you did. The only thing specific I did, which is a lie, is that I "walked off the job on Wednesday" which was the day I had the dissociative episode and checked in with HR and the Executive Assistant before going home. They really don't want to see a full on dissociative episode. Really.

The other two specific things were about a grant that we had been graded low on, which I had taken responsibility for but we had also agreed together there were outlying factors, and then he mentions a grant we didn't get that we didn't apply for because I"ve been bugging him for the whole year for a viable program to submit to that foundation and he could not come up with anything competitive. So that is a complete lie. There is another grant we didn't get, because he gave me an uncompetitive program, and I told him at the time it wasn't very competitive, but my job is not to create programs, it's to write the proposals to get them funded. So if he and his program staff can't come up with innovative programming WITH enough lead time for me to secure funding, there is nothing I can do. Literally. The turnaround time on a grant is 12-18 months. So I need to know all the details that far in advance. And he hasn't been able to provide anything. I've even gone above and beyond and taken his vague ideas, worked with program managers to try and work it into a proposal, and submit it, but it's just not competitive. I really am not going to take responsibility for that, when that's not what my job is. And frankly, even my new VP, who I'm not best buds with, understands that. Because she questioned some of the projects I was working on that had nothing to do with our mission. And I had to explain that the CEO allowed mission-drift in order to secure the funds, which in the end always costs us more.

Anyways, I digress.

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