I will try to make this as short and to the point as possible. I am posting because I would like some feed back as to whether or not I have a legal leg to stand on - or if I should not even fight this situation....

I started working for a company and 2 days into it was FIRED! I have never been fired in my life! I have held several small and large postions. This particular job was not the hardest or most demanding position I have ever held. I was a recruiter for an advertising company.

ISSUES
1. asked to role play as part of our training.... I pulled my manager aside and let him know that something about role playing in small groups like that caused me to be physically ill. I also assured him that presenting to a large group of strangers (which I would do daily in that job) did not bother me at all...and as a matter of fact I had done it thousands of times previously and been very successful. This conversation was not taken seriously - he laughed and told me to get over it that I had to do it. Our conversation ended when my direct supervisor (the guy one level below the first guy I mentioned) walked in because I was embarrassed about my disorder. So I went to my desk and emailed the head guy and let him know the severity of my feelings and asked him for a compromise so long as my job standing would not be affected. To which he replied - your among friends it’s just us 3 take a deep breath and give it a try. I told him I would see how I felt when it came to my turn, but that I had not been able to overcome this in 20 yrs.
He did not respond to the last email. SO training came and the other two went first... then they asked me if I wanted to go... and my boss looked at me - to which I said no I will pass thanks. He then called me out in front of everyone and said I told you you have to do this... and I said you cannot force me - this is why we had the emails etc... And calling me out on personal issues in front t of my coworkers is very unprofessional and inconsiderate since I shared my feelings in confidentiality. HE backed off and said your right - let’s move n with the training. So I felt as though everything was ok and we continued. (Note - I was deeply involved with training- this was 10% of all we did that afternoon. 6 hours later they called my coworker in to a meeting. When she finished she told me that we were going home early and it was my turn to go in their office. When I went in the direct manager was very rude and told me it was not going to work out for me to be with the company that I needed to leave. (His rudeness will be discussed in another issue.)

2. He made several sexist comments to me and my coworker - which even she said she was not comfortable with. This guy behaved like he wanted to control us because we were less than him since we were female. Then he found out I was gay and refused to talk to me and gave me bad looks when we passed.

3. When they terminated me they did not have my final check ready - I had to fight them for it and I got it 24 hours later.

4.I talked to the big top manager guy outside after this went down and he said it was not just me refusing to role play but there was more - when I asked him to be specific he turned red and stumbled on his words - and ultimately said well I cant be specific.

(His rudeness will be discussed in another issue.)

Keep it all in one post, please.

While I'm not a big fan of role-playing exercises and respect that they make some people acutely uncomfortable, nothing that your boss did with regards to that -- including firing you -- is illegal.

They can fire you for refusing to participate in training.

If you think you have a sexist complaint, call the EEOC. However, most complaints require a pattern of events to be considered. You were only there two days... unless nothing else was done either than the comments, it is going to be tough to establish the pattern.

Most people don't much like role-playing in training activities. It would have been nice if the boss was more considerate of your feelings but given that you had only been there two days, you didn't have any "history" with this employer that might have resulted in them cutting you some slack. I don't see that anything illegal took place.

While I agree with the above posters, CA is very sensitive toward discrimination against employees because of sexual orientation and takes complaints very seriously. If you feel you were terminated because of that, even though you only worked there 2 days, it may be worth filing a report.

Link: http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToFileLinkCodeSections.htm

While I agree with the above posters, CA is very sensitive toward discrimination against employees because of sexual orientation and takes complaints very seriously. If you feel you were terminated because of that, even though you only worked there 2 days, it may be worth filing a report.

Link: http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToFileLinkCodeSections.htm

Reading through the original post, even the part about the sexist comments did not particularly bother me (I assume that the company has a harassment policy in place and an effective complaint mechanism that was not used, which would lessen the validity of the complaint), but the part about sexual orientation, coupled with the description that the big manager declined to be specific about the details other than the role playing makes me wonder.

Contact an attorney.