Silence is about the only thing no one has ever accused me of.
Age discrimination does happen.
When I was in my mid 40's, I had a female supervisor of about the same age. Some people collect baseball cards, some people collect stamps. She collected boy toys for her office. On one occasion, she put me on a particularly odious job instead of one of her 20-something pets. She told me right to my face, "that's no job for a young guy".
Maybe I should have sued the b***h.
kent state = good start.
This 20 something was a loose cannon and a Hostile Work Environment Lawsuit waiting to happen. Her superiors should have seen her for the liability she became. She may have had the fire in the belly, but she had no wisdom behind it and no tact. The 55 yr old women strikes me as the type that kept the company running smoothly, an unsung hero.
I'm not big on how statist most baby boomers are, but being rude to someone like that isn't right.
My boomer parents taught me that!
Why is a government agency empowered to assess fines? An agency has been given some of the powers of the court system. This is wrong.
Ha! At least I ain't a Boomer!
Just another young babe doing what some women typically get away with in the workplace.
Good for the secretary for sticking it to her.
If Carolyn Arzino, the former longtime 55-year-old accounting secretary exhibited poor performance, than that should have been the focus of the young female supervisor's comments.
Because the female manager instead chose to focus on Arzino's age as she tried to deal with Arzino's performance, she only ended up giving Arzino ample evidence for an Age Discrimination Complaint.
Arzino's performance may, in fact, have been substandard, and may in fact have been so bad that she should have been fired.
But by making comments that Arzino should take ginkgo biloba and turn up the volume on her Miracle Ear, the young femal supervisor provided a third party with evidence that her firing of Arzino might have been based upon Arzino's age.
This wasn't very nice, but I'm not sure it was worthy of a suit (as I think there are too many suits anyway).
OK, maybe it was age discrimination based on the firing?
Because while the comments are brazen and cruel, they're just not any more worthy of lawsuit than any other insult. And this article seems to hang its hat on the insults.
I tangled with a “Female” manager once. She wasn’t directly over me, but I had to interface with her. She claimed to have been a DBA yet wanted to do things that just aren’t possible (a relational database without unique keys…) I called her on it in a meeting, and she threw markers and an eraser at me and ran out of the room crying (I am NOT making this up)
She came to my cubicle later that day (I had been “At Work for over 36 hours) and wanted to “Talk to me” privately. I guess I was just too tired or too fed up, when she asked me why no one seemed to like her, I told her she used gender to her advantage and no one is going to respect her for it. We discussed her behavior in the meeting. I told her no male could get away with what she did. She wound up charging me with sexual harassment, she thought she had won and I would be cowed.
I was called to HR, listened to what they had to say, and said, OK, so now I never have to meet with her alone; I no longer have to talk to her directly if I can avoid it; I will never be on one of her projects; how do I lose? They did not appreciate my attitude. (Grin) so I asked them, how many people in the company has she accused of this (to which they looked surprised, but it was obvious I was not the first.) I then told them they should find out if she had charged others at the companies she had worked at before ours, because that would prove a pattern, to which they looked thoughtful. And then I said “I will not Back Down if sued this will go to court, and her past will be examined for this pattern with the power of discovery that I will then have, you can tell her that for me.” The HR director told me I was not to discuss this with anyone, especially her.
When I left HR, she was waiting in the hall; she held out her hand and said, “No hard feelings, OK?” I responded “about what?” She tried to get me to talk about it, I feigned Ignorance to the point of obnoxiousness. She kept trying to get me alone for meetings. (I assume so she could say I had harassed her) I kept bringing her VP.
She kept coming over and talking to me about it, in vague terms, I gave her “legally correct” answers yet was purposefully obtuse so she was saying way more than she intended to. After two days a bunch of the “guys” came over and stated that they thought she must have reported me to HR for harassment. I responded that I could neither confirm, nor deny their assertion. When she heard (through the grape vine), she blew her top and was came over to my cube, screaming at me in front of everyone telling me how she was going to take me and the company apart in court. HR came and took her away. They called me in later and the “Mood” was way more comfortable. They told me that her lawyer had come in and told her “Now they can get away with anything” and “you blew it” he told her my answer was acceptable before any court, and blowing her top and letting everyone in on the “Secret” was just dumb. She quit two months later.
Women can be great in the work place as long as they play fair, and Men need to play fair too. The problem is with the 1% who don’t play fair.