- Report: #58512
Complaint Review: Houston Marine Services - Baytown Texas
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Houston Marine Services
850 S. Lynchburg Rd Baytown, 77520 Texas, U.S.A.
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713-868-2000
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Houston Marine Services Rebecca Caplan - I filed a complaint with the EEOC. Unhealthy work conditions (high H2S) may bring on a class action suit too. Baytown Texas
I started as a temp on October 4, 2001 for Houston Marine Services under Assistant Manager Rebecca Caplan and was hired full-time on December 31, 2001. The first few months my main job was typing all of the companys manuals.
As the months went on, she piled more and more of her duties on me until I was doing nearly all of her work. Naturally, she would take all of the credit for my work. She kept the owner snowed, telling him she was up late working on the manuals, even though everybody at the facility in Baytown knew that I was solely the one doing all of the manuals.
She would come in at 10 or 11 in the morning, claiming that she had been in a meeting all morning. From her wet hair, you could tell that she hadnt been out of the shower for very long. I cannot count the number of times that somebody would come in asking for her, telling me that she had made an appointment with them for 8 or 9 in the morning (prospective employees, prospective clients, etc). I would always be stuck in the awkward position of apologizing to them for her not being there. I would try to get ahold of her on her cellphone and pager to no avail.
When I would call her at her house, she would answer and you could tell from her voice that I had awakened her. She would typically say, Oh, I completely forgot. Tell him that Im sorry, and he can either come back later or reschedule. I thought this was totally unprofessional and made the company look really bad.
I would come to Tony Sansing, the manager, and complain that I couldnt get ahold of her, but he would just tell me to keep trying. Once in awhile, he would try to get ahold of her himself if it didnt inconvenience him too much. Normally, I would see him browsing the internet for things unrelated to business (and, if the owner ever cared to look in the computer log archives, he would find that he also enjoyed sending out pornographic emails). It amazed me that he let her get away with so much, and I couldnt help but wonder if there was something going on.
I got so tired of her chronic tardiness that I began keeping a log of what time shed come in starting in August of 2002. Here are some of my many entries:
On September 12, 2002, Ms. Caplans scheduled appointment showed up at 10:30 a.m. I hadnt been able to get ahold of her via her cellphone or pager, as was the norm. When she finally did answer her cellphone, I told her that her appointment had been waiting for over an hour. She seemed very irritated at me. She told me that shed be there in a few minutes and hung up on me. She finally dragged in at 11:45 a.m. There were no meetings on her calendar to excuse her.
On September 16, 2002, she came in very early (9:10 a.m.). However, she took a very lengthy lunch. She had an appointment show up at 1:00 p.m., but she wasnt back yet. She had to be called and reminded of her appointment.
On September 18, she had an appointment show up at 9 a.m. She didnt make it in until 9:25 a.m.. The next day, September 19, it was back to a more normal schedule. She came in at 10:20 a.m. and, of course, no meetings were on her calendar. The next morning, September 20, she didnt show up until 11:30 a.m.
On September 23, she didnt show up for the day until 12:45 p.m., even though there was nothing showing on her calendar until 1 p.m.
On September 24, she called about 11:30 a.m. to tell me that she'd gotten off of a boat early that morning. She made no attempt to explain why she still hadnt made it in. She said that she would try to make it into the office later that day. She did end up showing up at nearly 1 p.m.
On September 25, she called to tell me that she had completely forgotten about semi-monthly payroll, which was supposed to be in by 10. I asked where she was, and she said, Just out running around. The only meeting showing on her calendar for the day wasnt until 2 p.m. She came in at noon.
On September 27, she took the entire day off to move on company time, even though the next two days were the weekend.
On September 30, she had a man show up for a 9 a.m. appointment. I couldnt get ahold of Ms. Caplan, so I appealed to Mr. Sansing. He was finally able to wake her up by using the walkie talkie. She said she had completely forgotten about it (as usual), and she told me to apologize to the man for her. She said that she would call him later that afternoon. The day continued to pass without her showing up. She finally called shortly before 4 p.m. and told me that thered been a change of plans and she wouldnt be coming in that day after all. No meetings were showing on her calendar.
On October 3, somebody from the Texas Workforce Commission called and told me that Ms. Caplan was supposed to be up there for a hearing on Sandra Salgado. I passed the call to Mr. Sansing. He got ahold of Ms. Caplan on the walkie talkie, and she said she had forgotten all about it. During the middle of October, Ms. Caplan was on one of her vacations (this one was to Cancun), so I couldnt keep a log on her arrival times.
On October 25, Mr. Bryson arrived for a 10:30 a.m. appointment, but Ms. Caplan hadnt arrived yet. No meetings were showing on her calendar for that day. She arrived at 11:10 a.m. and didnt even try to make excuses.
On October 28, Ms. Caplan showed up for work at 10:10 a.m. (no meetings).
On October 29, she came in at 9:30 a.m. (no meetings).
On October 30, she came in at 10:35 a.m. (no meetings).
On October 31, she didnt show up for work until 3:10 p.m. (no meetings).
On November 1, she got in at 10:05 a.m.(no meetings).
On November 4, she arrived at 9:40 a.m. (no meetings).
On November 5, Ms. Caplan arrived at 9:30 a.m. and left for the day at 12:30 p.m. She claimed she had a meeting, although there was nothing on her calendar about it.
On November 7, she arrived at 9:10 a.m. (no meetings).
On November 8, she didnt arrive until 1:30 p.m. (no meetings). It was also common for her to leave early. She would talk about plans to go work out or meet her friends at Sherlocks (a bar in her neighborhood). She would always tell me, Buzz me if you need me. Well, there were plenty of times where I would need to get ahold of her after she left. I would try her cellphone, but I got her voice mail most of the time. If I left a message, more often than not she wouldnt call me back. We would frequently have oil spills, and I would watch the dispatchers grow increasingly frustrated when they couldnt get ahold of her. This was the rule more than the exception.
She also took frequent vacations, telling me that she had the right to take so many vacations because she made up the time. I have no idea how she could get away with it when she was only at the facility on average 5 hours or so per day. I thought it was totally unfair that the rest of us could only take one vacation per year while she took one about every two months. I saved a copy of her calendar that proves this.
On August 20, 2002, one of the new employees made sexual comments to me and tried to grab me. I was very upset about this, and I went to Ms. Caplan about it. She told me to write her a written statement explaining what happened so she could take care of it. I did as I was told, and she threw it on her desk. She wouldnt tell me anything regarding the results of my statement, and I found out that she had never reprimanded him about it. The last time I looked in his file was in late November. He had been written up for not filling out a DOI form correctly, but there was nothing in his file about the sexual harassment. Apparently, the DOI form was more important than what had happened to me. Also during this time, I had somebody try to kiss me as well as numerous sexual notes left on my desk. Ms. Caplan didnt care about any of it. I kept the notes as proof of ongoing sexual harassment.
On August 19th, 2002, I wore shorts to work. I had seen some of the men do it, and nobody seemed to have a problem with it. Ms. Caplan approached me and told me never to wear shorts to work again because it was an OSHA violation. Upon talking to some of the other men employed there who were familiar with OSHA regulations, they told me that she was lying. They said there was no reason shorts couldnt be worn in the office.
During my employment, Ms. Caplan told me that I was required to clock out for lunch. She said the only exception would be if I left for just a few minutes to run through a drive-thru to grab my lunch and come right back. Another female employee had been told the same thing. However, I noticed that none of the men had to clock out. They would take 1-2 hour lunches on the clock. Sometimes they would even leave for a doctors appointment and be gone for over 3 hours on the clock. Ms. Caplan was fine with all of this. However, when I attempted to take a couple of lunches on the clock (of no more than an hour), I got a very stern reprimand from her. Also, the men didnt necessarily have to stick to a schedule.
One fellow, who was scheduled for 12-hour days, regularly came in late and left early, causing him to have about a 10-hour day (not counting his long lunch breaks). He still got the same salary regardless. However, if I ever missed a couple of hours, I was docked. Another fellow, who was also scheduled for 12-hour days, regularly stayed for 15 hours and got huge amounts of overtime. He would come in and read his paper and not do any work during this time, since he wasnt needed for 2 or 3 hours. Ms. Caplan didnt have a problem with either of these gentlemen.
However, when I tried coming in a little early to get some overtime, I was chastised with "Stick to your schedule. With a little research into employment law, I confirmed that this was gender discrimination and very illegal. Naturally, I kept some copies of timesheets of these men as future evidence.
During a lot of the time I was working for this company, I was helping with payroll. I noticed that their drivers went well over their legal hours on a regular basis. The drivers would also tell me how they were being run ragged, sometimes working 16 hours straight. At one point, the head driver wrote a letter to management complaining about these conditions. He gave the letter to me, asking me to make him a copy for his records. I made two copies so I could have one for myself.
Another practice Ms. Caplan had, which I thought was totally unfair, was letting the drivers stay on the clock when they would go on an overnight job. Also, if they were a tankerman short on one of their boats, she would let one of our dock guys clock in, go on the boat, and stay on the clock for days. Nobody else had the privilege of making scandalous amounts of overtime while they were sleeping in a company-paid hotel or while sleeping on the boat.
Typically, their overtime hours would be a lot higher than their regular hours. I know this was still going on when I left employment in January of this year.
One day, I decided to take a tour of the warehouse. One of the warehouse workers was repackaging some drums into pails. I was shown some pails of Exxon Mobil and Chevron product. Apparently, these two companies had an agreement that the drums they sold to Houston Marine wouldnt be repackaged, so they were doing it on the sly. In some cases, the repackaging could be considered illegal.
On November 11, everybody in the office seemed to be coming down with something. Upon talking to the others, it was discovered that everybody had felt fine in the morning before arriving at work, indicating that something on the premises was making us sick. I told Ms. Caplan that I suspected that mold might be the culprit, as you could see large patches of what appeared to be mold on the leaky ceiling tiles, but she blew me off.
On December 4, Ms. Caplan called me into the conference room. She told me that I had messed up an employees check and that this was inexcusable. I couldnt believe she had the gall to say that to me after she had a major screw-up with payroll where a bunch of checks were wrong and the people at the corporate office had to fix them all. She also told me shed noticed that I talked too much about non-work-oriented things and that it needed to stop. However, I talked less than a lot of people in the office, and they werent talking about business-related things either. I always got all of my work done, so I wasnt talking enough that it interfered with my job.
On December 10, I was searching for something in the piles of papers on Ms. Caplans desk when I came across a form that an employee had turned in several weeks earlier to change his 401k contribution amount. If I hadnt found it, he wouldnt have been able to change his contribution. During my employment, I noticed that she frequently lost papers on her desk.
Frequently, there were bad fumes on the property that would nearly make me gag. Unlike the other employees, I was never given any kind of hazmat training.
On December 11, it was particularly strong. After an hour or so, I became extremely ill with a severe headache, nausea and cough. I complained in writing to Ms. Caplan, but she wouldnt allow me to go home for the day. Two other employees informed me that they were feeling very poorly as well, but they were also not allowed to go home. The cough continued from that day forward, and it ended up lasting about a month and a half. When the cough hadnt subsided a week after the fumes, I went to the doctor. I told her about the working conditions, and she told me that I should quit. She prescribed albuterol to help open up my bronchials. I saved a copy of the prescription as well as the complaint Id written about the fumes for evidence.
On January 2nd ,2003, Ms. Caplan had me box up all of the 2002 files to send to storage. While I was boxing them up, I noticed a file that was entitled High H2S and became curious. When I looked inside, I found out that there was an ongoing problem with a tank leaking H2S. While 10 parts per million is considered very dangerous, my colleagues and I were exposed to as high as 1200 parts per million on the property. I wondered if that might explain the dizziness I was feeling on a regular basis by this point. I found it very hard to believe that every employees life was put in danger. They had the responsibility to inform us of this serious problem so that we could choose to protect ourselves, but they did nothing. Naturally, I made copies of this file as evidence.
On January 14, I quit. I felt like Id reached the end of my rope. I could no longer stand the sight of Ms. Caplan or deal with working for her. She came into the office in a bad mood that day, so naturally I was the person she chose to take it out on. I had decided I wasnt going to let her run me ragged and treat me like garbage anymore, so I walked out. I talked to several employees after I quit, and I found out that she was bad-mouthing me and was saying that she had fired me. I have the letter she sent me regarding my resignation, so I can prove that I wasnt fired.
On February 14, I filed a complaint with the EEOC for sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Houston Marines attorney contacted me, saying the owner wanted to settle without mediation. I presented a high request so there would be room for negotiation.
The attorney told me that the owner no longer wished to present any offers but, if I would be willing to accept $2,000, she would recommend this to him. I think its laughable that the highest theyll go after all Ive been through is $2,000, especially when the backpay that the EEOC says Im entitled to is well more than that by now. I decided I no longer wanted to deal with this lawyer, so I told her to deliberate with the EEOC. The EEOC has been unable to reach an agreement because they still refuse to settle. Now Im waiting for the EEOC to send me the right to sue letter.
I am also thinking about contacting other employees about the high H2S to see if I might be able to get a class action suit going. If any current or former HMS employees (who would be interested in joining a suit) happen to be reading this, feel free to contact me about it.
Cassandra
Channelview, Texas
U.S.A.
As the months went on, she piled more and more of her duties on me until I was doing nearly all of her work. Naturally, she would take all of the credit for my work. She kept the owner snowed, telling him she was up late working on the manuals, even though everybody at the facility in Baytown knew that I was solely the one doing all of the manuals.
She would come in at 10 or 11 in the morning, claiming that she had been in a meeting all morning. From her wet hair, you could tell that she hadnt been out of the shower for very long. I cannot count the number of times that somebody would come in asking for her, telling me that she had made an appointment with them for 8 or 9 in the morning (prospective employees, prospective clients, etc). I would always be stuck in the awkward position of apologizing to them for her not being there. I would try to get ahold of her on her cellphone and pager to no avail.
When I would call her at her house, she would answer and you could tell from her voice that I had awakened her. She would typically say, Oh, I completely forgot. Tell him that Im sorry, and he can either come back later or reschedule. I thought this was totally unprofessional and made the company look really bad.
I would come to Tony Sansing, the manager, and complain that I couldnt get ahold of her, but he would just tell me to keep trying. Once in awhile, he would try to get ahold of her himself if it didnt inconvenience him too much. Normally, I would see him browsing the internet for things unrelated to business (and, if the owner ever cared to look in the computer log archives, he would find that he also enjoyed sending out pornographic emails). It amazed me that he let her get away with so much, and I couldnt help but wonder if there was something going on.
I got so tired of her chronic tardiness that I began keeping a log of what time shed come in starting in August of 2002. Here are some of my many entries:
On September 12, 2002, Ms. Caplans scheduled appointment showed up at 10:30 a.m. I hadnt been able to get ahold of her via her cellphone or pager, as was the norm. When she finally did answer her cellphone, I told her that her appointment had been waiting for over an hour. She seemed very irritated at me. She told me that shed be there in a few minutes and hung up on me. She finally dragged in at 11:45 a.m. There were no meetings on her calendar to excuse her.
On September 16, 2002, she came in very early (9:10 a.m.). However, she took a very lengthy lunch. She had an appointment show up at 1:00 p.m., but she wasnt back yet. She had to be called and reminded of her appointment.
On September 18, she had an appointment show up at 9 a.m. She didnt make it in until 9:25 a.m.. The next day, September 19, it was back to a more normal schedule. She came in at 10:20 a.m. and, of course, no meetings were on her calendar. The next morning, September 20, she didnt show up until 11:30 a.m.
On September 23, she didnt show up for the day until 12:45 p.m., even though there was nothing showing on her calendar until 1 p.m.
On September 24, she called about 11:30 a.m. to tell me that she'd gotten off of a boat early that morning. She made no attempt to explain why she still hadnt made it in. She said that she would try to make it into the office later that day. She did end up showing up at nearly 1 p.m.
On September 25, she called to tell me that she had completely forgotten about semi-monthly payroll, which was supposed to be in by 10. I asked where she was, and she said, Just out running around. The only meeting showing on her calendar for the day wasnt until 2 p.m. She came in at noon.
On September 27, she took the entire day off to move on company time, even though the next two days were the weekend.
On September 30, she had a man show up for a 9 a.m. appointment. I couldnt get ahold of Ms. Caplan, so I appealed to Mr. Sansing. He was finally able to wake her up by using the walkie talkie. She said she had completely forgotten about it (as usual), and she told me to apologize to the man for her. She said that she would call him later that afternoon. The day continued to pass without her showing up. She finally called shortly before 4 p.m. and told me that thered been a change of plans and she wouldnt be coming in that day after all. No meetings were showing on her calendar.
On October 3, somebody from the Texas Workforce Commission called and told me that Ms. Caplan was supposed to be up there for a hearing on Sandra Salgado. I passed the call to Mr. Sansing. He got ahold of Ms. Caplan on the walkie talkie, and she said she had forgotten all about it. During the middle of October, Ms. Caplan was on one of her vacations (this one was to Cancun), so I couldnt keep a log on her arrival times.
On October 25, Mr. Bryson arrived for a 10:30 a.m. appointment, but Ms. Caplan hadnt arrived yet. No meetings were showing on her calendar for that day. She arrived at 11:10 a.m. and didnt even try to make excuses.
On October 28, Ms. Caplan showed up for work at 10:10 a.m. (no meetings).
On October 29, she came in at 9:30 a.m. (no meetings).
On October 30, she came in at 10:35 a.m. (no meetings).
On October 31, she didnt show up for work until 3:10 p.m. (no meetings).
On November 1, she got in at 10:05 a.m.(no meetings).
On November 4, she arrived at 9:40 a.m. (no meetings).
On November 5, Ms. Caplan arrived at 9:30 a.m. and left for the day at 12:30 p.m. She claimed she had a meeting, although there was nothing on her calendar about it.
On November 7, she arrived at 9:10 a.m. (no meetings).
On November 8, she didnt arrive until 1:30 p.m. (no meetings). It was also common for her to leave early. She would talk about plans to go work out or meet her friends at Sherlocks (a bar in her neighborhood). She would always tell me, Buzz me if you need me. Well, there were plenty of times where I would need to get ahold of her after she left. I would try her cellphone, but I got her voice mail most of the time. If I left a message, more often than not she wouldnt call me back. We would frequently have oil spills, and I would watch the dispatchers grow increasingly frustrated when they couldnt get ahold of her. This was the rule more than the exception.
She also took frequent vacations, telling me that she had the right to take so many vacations because she made up the time. I have no idea how she could get away with it when she was only at the facility on average 5 hours or so per day. I thought it was totally unfair that the rest of us could only take one vacation per year while she took one about every two months. I saved a copy of her calendar that proves this.
On August 20, 2002, one of the new employees made sexual comments to me and tried to grab me. I was very upset about this, and I went to Ms. Caplan about it. She told me to write her a written statement explaining what happened so she could take care of it. I did as I was told, and she threw it on her desk. She wouldnt tell me anything regarding the results of my statement, and I found out that she had never reprimanded him about it. The last time I looked in his file was in late November. He had been written up for not filling out a DOI form correctly, but there was nothing in his file about the sexual harassment. Apparently, the DOI form was more important than what had happened to me. Also during this time, I had somebody try to kiss me as well as numerous sexual notes left on my desk. Ms. Caplan didnt care about any of it. I kept the notes as proof of ongoing sexual harassment.
On August 19th, 2002, I wore shorts to work. I had seen some of the men do it, and nobody seemed to have a problem with it. Ms. Caplan approached me and told me never to wear shorts to work again because it was an OSHA violation. Upon talking to some of the other men employed there who were familiar with OSHA regulations, they told me that she was lying. They said there was no reason shorts couldnt be worn in the office.
During my employment, Ms. Caplan told me that I was required to clock out for lunch. She said the only exception would be if I left for just a few minutes to run through a drive-thru to grab my lunch and come right back. Another female employee had been told the same thing. However, I noticed that none of the men had to clock out. They would take 1-2 hour lunches on the clock. Sometimes they would even leave for a doctors appointment and be gone for over 3 hours on the clock. Ms. Caplan was fine with all of this. However, when I attempted to take a couple of lunches on the clock (of no more than an hour), I got a very stern reprimand from her. Also, the men didnt necessarily have to stick to a schedule.
One fellow, who was scheduled for 12-hour days, regularly came in late and left early, causing him to have about a 10-hour day (not counting his long lunch breaks). He still got the same salary regardless. However, if I ever missed a couple of hours, I was docked. Another fellow, who was also scheduled for 12-hour days, regularly stayed for 15 hours and got huge amounts of overtime. He would come in and read his paper and not do any work during this time, since he wasnt needed for 2 or 3 hours. Ms. Caplan didnt have a problem with either of these gentlemen.
However, when I tried coming in a little early to get some overtime, I was chastised with "Stick to your schedule. With a little research into employment law, I confirmed that this was gender discrimination and very illegal. Naturally, I kept some copies of timesheets of these men as future evidence.
During a lot of the time I was working for this company, I was helping with payroll. I noticed that their drivers went well over their legal hours on a regular basis. The drivers would also tell me how they were being run ragged, sometimes working 16 hours straight. At one point, the head driver wrote a letter to management complaining about these conditions. He gave the letter to me, asking me to make him a copy for his records. I made two copies so I could have one for myself.
Another practice Ms. Caplan had, which I thought was totally unfair, was letting the drivers stay on the clock when they would go on an overnight job. Also, if they were a tankerman short on one of their boats, she would let one of our dock guys clock in, go on the boat, and stay on the clock for days. Nobody else had the privilege of making scandalous amounts of overtime while they were sleeping in a company-paid hotel or while sleeping on the boat.
Typically, their overtime hours would be a lot higher than their regular hours. I know this was still going on when I left employment in January of this year.
One day, I decided to take a tour of the warehouse. One of the warehouse workers was repackaging some drums into pails. I was shown some pails of Exxon Mobil and Chevron product. Apparently, these two companies had an agreement that the drums they sold to Houston Marine wouldnt be repackaged, so they were doing it on the sly. In some cases, the repackaging could be considered illegal.
On November 11, everybody in the office seemed to be coming down with something. Upon talking to the others, it was discovered that everybody had felt fine in the morning before arriving at work, indicating that something on the premises was making us sick. I told Ms. Caplan that I suspected that mold might be the culprit, as you could see large patches of what appeared to be mold on the leaky ceiling tiles, but she blew me off.
On December 4, Ms. Caplan called me into the conference room. She told me that I had messed up an employees check and that this was inexcusable. I couldnt believe she had the gall to say that to me after she had a major screw-up with payroll where a bunch of checks were wrong and the people at the corporate office had to fix them all. She also told me shed noticed that I talked too much about non-work-oriented things and that it needed to stop. However, I talked less than a lot of people in the office, and they werent talking about business-related things either. I always got all of my work done, so I wasnt talking enough that it interfered with my job.
On December 10, I was searching for something in the piles of papers on Ms. Caplans desk when I came across a form that an employee had turned in several weeks earlier to change his 401k contribution amount. If I hadnt found it, he wouldnt have been able to change his contribution. During my employment, I noticed that she frequently lost papers on her desk.
Frequently, there were bad fumes on the property that would nearly make me gag. Unlike the other employees, I was never given any kind of hazmat training.
On December 11, it was particularly strong. After an hour or so, I became extremely ill with a severe headache, nausea and cough. I complained in writing to Ms. Caplan, but she wouldnt allow me to go home for the day. Two other employees informed me that they were feeling very poorly as well, but they were also not allowed to go home. The cough continued from that day forward, and it ended up lasting about a month and a half. When the cough hadnt subsided a week after the fumes, I went to the doctor. I told her about the working conditions, and she told me that I should quit. She prescribed albuterol to help open up my bronchials. I saved a copy of the prescription as well as the complaint Id written about the fumes for evidence.
On January 2nd ,2003, Ms. Caplan had me box up all of the 2002 files to send to storage. While I was boxing them up, I noticed a file that was entitled High H2S and became curious. When I looked inside, I found out that there was an ongoing problem with a tank leaking H2S. While 10 parts per million is considered very dangerous, my colleagues and I were exposed to as high as 1200 parts per million on the property. I wondered if that might explain the dizziness I was feeling on a regular basis by this point. I found it very hard to believe that every employees life was put in danger. They had the responsibility to inform us of this serious problem so that we could choose to protect ourselves, but they did nothing. Naturally, I made copies of this file as evidence.
On January 14, I quit. I felt like Id reached the end of my rope. I could no longer stand the sight of Ms. Caplan or deal with working for her. She came into the office in a bad mood that day, so naturally I was the person she chose to take it out on. I had decided I wasnt going to let her run me ragged and treat me like garbage anymore, so I walked out. I talked to several employees after I quit, and I found out that she was bad-mouthing me and was saying that she had fired me. I have the letter she sent me regarding my resignation, so I can prove that I wasnt fired.
On February 14, I filed a complaint with the EEOC for sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Houston Marines attorney contacted me, saying the owner wanted to settle without mediation. I presented a high request so there would be room for negotiation.
The attorney told me that the owner no longer wished to present any offers but, if I would be willing to accept $2,000, she would recommend this to him. I think its laughable that the highest theyll go after all Ive been through is $2,000, especially when the backpay that the EEOC says Im entitled to is well more than that by now. I decided I no longer wanted to deal with this lawyer, so I told her to deliberate with the EEOC. The EEOC has been unable to reach an agreement because they still refuse to settle. Now Im waiting for the EEOC to send me the right to sue letter.
I am also thinking about contacting other employees about the high H2S to see if I might be able to get a class action suit going. If any current or former HMS employees (who would be interested in joining a suit) happen to be reading this, feel free to contact me about it.
Cassandra
Channelview, Texas
U.S.A.
