I enjoy blogging about employment law. But occasionally, perhaps after a long day, I wish some of these blog posts would write themselves.
Last night, I got my wish.
As an email subscriber to the press releases from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I’ve noticed an unusual amount of litigation activity over the past few weeks. So, I checked out the newsroom to see if there were any quirky new lawsuits to write about.
Sure enough.
Last Friday, on the same day that the EEOC released its proposed workplace harassment guidance, the EEOC announced that it had sued a company that does business as “Bark If You’re Dirty,” a pet store with locations in the southwest, alleging that it discriminated against employees because of sex, failed to prevent and remedy sexual harassment in its stores, and retaliated against employees who opposed the discriminatory and harassing conduct.
Here’s more from the press release:
According to EEOC’s lawsuit, a male manager and a male employee at Bark If You’re Dirty subjected female employees to constant sexual harassment, including making inappropriate sexual comments about female customers and employees, physically touching female employees without their consent, showing female employees naked photos, and sexually propositioning female employees. Female employees complained about this harassment to management on multiple occasions, only for management to ignore the complaints and fail to take corrective action. Bark If You’re Dirty also retaliated against some female employees by terminating them after they complained about sexual harassment.
I pulled a copy of the federal complaint to read the details. Usually, EEOC federal complaints are streamlined and short. This one was 22 pages.
Apparently, it got so bad for one of the employees that she obtained something called an “Injunction Against, Harassment, Workplace Harassment” from a local court because she did not believe the company was taking her complaints of harassment seriously enough.
But get this.
According to the EEOC, the injunction prohibited her harasser, a co-worker, from contacting her or going near her workplace, and the victim’s supervisor was present when the injunction was served on her co-worker. However, the EEOC further claimed that the supervisor informed the victim a few days later that her “final option” was to come into the store to meet with her harasser, among others. The supervisor supposedly also texted the victim and asked the victim to stop contacting her.
A new client for whom I’ll be training employees and supervisors in a few weeks asked me to include a topic called “Don’t be a dumb*ss.” I’d been fretting about how to fill that time slot in the presentation.
But we’re good now, thanks to the EEOC’s new workplace guidance and lawsuits like this.