Gay Walmart Employee Forced To Wear Identifying Clothes

[Wolfman1982]

http://prideinutah.com/?p=2040 (site can be unstable)

Gay Walmart Employee Forced To Wear Identifying Clothes

Las Vegas NV – A temp employee at Walmart was pushed into revealing his sexual orientation by his boss. After revealing that he is gay, he was stripped of all responsibilites and forced to wear a yellow vest to work while facing further harassment from his employers.
Back in March, 18-year-old Fernando Gallardo got a seasonal job at a Las Vegas Walmart, hoping to make a few extra dollars. But a few weeks into the job, Gallardo says, his immediate supervisor asked him “point-blank” in front of four of his coworkers if he was gay, and from then on alienated him from the 50 other associates at that location.

“I told her yes, and after that she was very rude and short with me,” he tells The Advocate.

Gallardo says that soon after the incident, he was stripped of many of his daily duties and asked to wear a yellow vest and walk around the store. By mid May his supervisor and two other managers stopped talking to him completely.

“I was completely ignored and shunned,” he wrote in a complaint to the Nevada Equal Rights Commission. “I had nothing to do all day but wander around the store wearing a yellow vest no one else had to wear, much like Jews had to wear a yellow star of David in Hitler’s Germany.”

Gallardo says he went to a human resources manager and filed a report, but to no avail. He also accuses the store’s management of attempting to bribe some of his temporary coworkers with permanent positions, in exchange for saying he volunteered the information about his sexual orientation. However, Gallardo says he felt pressured into telling his boss that he is gay, by the pointed way in which she asked.

“It shouldn’t even matter what my personal life is, but what was I supposed to say, other than the truth?” he says. “I didn’t want to lie. This is who I am.”

 

[John Doe]

Three things:

• Wal-Mart treats all of their "associates" like shit, not just the homosexual ones.
  
• I find his comparison of his experience to the Holocaust to be both laughable and offensive.
  
• Is he stupid or what? Telling the truth and lying are not the only options for responding to a question. He should've declined to answer, telling her that the question is inappropriate (and it's not only that, it's illegal).

 

[infinity706]

Well, asking a subbordinate if they're gay isn't inherently illegal. It's only illegal if it constitutes sexual harassment. It isn't even always illegal to fuck a subbordinate. It's just against a lot of companies' policies.

Oh, and Walmart doesn't treat all their associates like shit. Specific managers treat people like shit and take advantage of people to get a bigger bonus. People just generalize too much and demonize Walmart because they're huge and well known. I'm sure if you had 300+ stores, you'd have plenty of instances of stupid shit, too. I worked for Walmart for over a year and they aren't that bad overall. Seriously, they offer the best raises I've ever seen in retail, medical, dental, company paid life, vacation, personal days, accidental death and dismemberment, short term disability, long term disability, travel insurance, quarterly bonuses for hourly employees, 10% off anything besides food, alcohol, or tobacco, a special associate store in Arkansas, a free RN you can call for questions 24 hours a day, a counseling help line, a pregnancy counseling help line, scholarships, and a zillion retail partner discounts. Hell, Walmart corporate even pressures their stores to have people get insurance. They even give out special performance perks like the time they paid everyone in the company's medical and dental premiums for the last 3 months of the year one time because associates didn't spend as much on claims as expected.

Seriously, Walmart deserves a gold star in associate treatment when you compare them to the US Census Bureau. They don't even have permanent employees except in Washington, so they have to hire temporaries for every operation (not just the 10 year counting thing). Even if they're running serveral operations in a row, they lay everyone off and hire a whole new staff each time, including filling out the hiring information twice, since they destroy all the information on applicants before they even hire them and go to excessive lengths to hire women, minorities, and veterans by flatout giving them as much as 20 percentage points on the hiring exam. They pay the supervisors the same as everyone else and expect them to get all their shit done in 40 hours a week. They waste rediculous amounts of money in the name of information security and fire people for whatever the hell they feel like. Seriously, their answer is to just destroy everything with any kind of personally identifiable information, including brand new computers and redoing entire forms rather than marking through an error. If any privately owned company acted half as badly, they'd be out of business.

 

[TallOne]

Hear, hear.

Worked for wal-mart a couple years while in college. Everyone was treated well and it was actually an enjoyable place to work(in retail job terms anyway). They paid more than comparable stores and even had bonus pay for Sunday and 3rd shift. Benefits were offered which I didn't need at the time, but I did get in on the profit-sharing and picked up some wal-mart stock just being a cashier/stocker.

Overall a much better experience than when I worked at Kroger(which was unionized). Less pay, forced to pay union dues for a union that couldn't give a shit about part-time/seasonal employees. Rude employees/managers. Bitter experience overall there.

Don't judge a book by...the campaigns that attack it?

 

[al_Ussa]

Overall a much better experience than when I worked at Kroger(which was unionized). Less pay, forced to pay union dues for a union that couldn't give a shit about part-time/seasonal employees.

That's all BECAUSE of unions. Less pay because you have to give them YOUR money and you don't get a choice whether you want to be part of their union or not. Morever the people at the top are essentially parasites who are leeching off the workers and need to keep the system propped up to support themselves. To them part time employees are dangerous because you aren't comitted to their system. You are likely to leave and go off to better yourself.

 

[trishcd]

Worse than gay

Hear, hear.

Worked for wal-mart a couple years while in college. Everyone was treated well and it was actually an enjoyable place to work(in retail job terms anyway). They paid more than comparable stores and even had bonus pay for Sunday and 3rd shift. Benefits were offered which I didn't need at the time, but I did get in on the profit-sharing and picked up some wal-mart stock just being a cashier/stocker.

Overall a much better experience than when I worked at Kroger(which was unionized). Less pay, forced to pay union dues for a union that couldn't give a shit about part-time/seasonal employees. Rude employees/managers. Bitter experience overall there.

Don't judge a book by...the campaigns that attack it?

Compared to a union work place.......Walmart....and Cracker Barrel treat their workers like shit.... just mention union at one of these employers and see what happens. You wouldn't even get to wear a yellow vest, you'd be let go...for some bullshit reason..

 

[Balfour]

I spent a few years at Sam's Club and liked it. It was not the worse job I have ever had. I actually had one union job where I was treated more like shit that at Sam's. Having said that, he should sue Walmart. They are responsible for the things that their managers do. It is not moral, or acceptable to treat him that way. I did not find the Star of David comment offensive. They did mark them physically, as did his employer. Don't forget, german gays and lesbians died in the holocaust also. Hate is hate and the hate for a gay worker is the same sort of hate that brought the Nazis to power. It is the same kind of hate that says that all Muslims in the U.S. are terrorists and that has politicians trying to change the constitution, so that they can keep their babies from becoming citizens. We all need to be vigilant for bigotry. It is all of our problems. I am a Chrisian (really, really bad one anyway), American, white, straight male, but bigotry against a gay man endangers me also. What if one of my children turns out to be gay? Do I want him or her treated that way? What if my daughters marry Muslim men? Do I want my grandchildren profiled by the police and their neighbors? A slight against the freedom of one is a slight against the freedom of us all.

 

[suehprom]

chip chip and tallyhoe!

 

[YANKEE DAN]

“I had nothing to do all day but wander around the store wearing a yellow vest ”

Damn it I want that job!