Rooms To Go EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT

Rooms To Go EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT

2 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/freedom_of_expression http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/index.html The First Amendment reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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4 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Illegal Hiring Process 1.1 In business, you are supposed to hire people under equal terms. New hires and existing employees should be taken through a equal process per available job. From there you can determine which person is best for the available job. Not only is this fair, but it actually helps a company hire the best person for that available job. Rooms To Go does not hire you based on your experience. While working under the warehouse title, I mentioned to management that I would be interested in a job in the Customer Service department (since I had professional clerical experience). I actually spoke with the head of the department. Over the next few months, I noticed that people were being hired for positions in the department. No one ever came to me to mention available positions. Mysteriously it came to the point that all the Customer Service employees where young Hispanic women. It just so happened that the director of the department who did the actual hiring was a young Hispanic woman.

5 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Illegal Hiring Process 1.2 We see this all the time in business. Walk into a Mc Donald s restaurant and mysteriously all the employees are of the same class of people. During the Christmas season, the company has a Christmas party. The company set up the event and mentioned to everyone they had to attended in formal wear. No problem. I did not go personally because Rooms To Go does not pay the cost of living so you can t afford a dress suit. The next day at work, some of the employees mentioned that during the party (which was not official business time), the company offered a manager s job to one of the guys I worked with. I would like to repeat that: ROOMS TO GO OFFERED A MANAGER S JOB TO AN EMPLOYEE DURING OFF-BUSINESS HOURS. The job was not announced to other qualified employees. The company had to wait for the employee to give his answer. Many times people would apply for warehouse positions. The managers who are supposed to be professionally trained discriminated against certain applicants. One day (for example), an older Hispanic man came to the store to find out why Rooms To Go did not call him. He applied. There were available jobs but Rooms To Go did not bother to call the applicant. Other applicants were called and given the background check. I seen this too many times. Rooms To Go visually selects who they want to give a job to. The applicant who came to me was an older Hispanic male. He did not speak English. There were plenty of employees working there who did not speak English. These are discriminations which take place every single day in America. Rooms To Go I m afraid does it daily.

6 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Company Policy 2.1 Every company has its policy. Some companies like Sears refuses to give employees copies of the policy. Rooms To Go has a small enough policy that they hand them out. Rooms To Go does not have a Spanish edition of their policy. This means that Spanish speaking employees do not know what they are signing. I mentioned this to Rooms To Go and they had no plans on making a Spanish edition. In the policy Rooms To Go states that if any employee has a job at another furniture company, they automatically will be fired. This clearly means that Rooms To Go is not only controlling your own personal time, it means that they are pointing their fingers at these people for being spies. Rooms To Go (as you will soon see) has a reputation for accusing people under false terms. Rooms To Go claims that they enforce their policy. That they do not endure violations. In the policy employees cannot smoke in front of stores. Everyday managers permit this. While working there, managers would attempt to tweak the policy to their advantage. For many managers in any company, the illusion of power can be tempting. The district manager of the outlet stores during 2006-2007 would walk into the store and make his statements. Once he left, the store manager disowned what he said and ran the business the way he wanted. In the next section you will learn how Rooms To Go allowed a manager to work after he violated the company policy.

7 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Company Policy 2.2 I m not going to mention how the policy says managers must wear company issued clothing and how upper managers permitted this violation. You will be entertained with this following story instead: Rooms To Go s policy (like most company policies) mentions that you cannot use foul language towards another employee. One day the merchandising manager held a warehouse meeting. In that meeting he not only raised his voice at the associates, he actually used foul language. There are other things he did in that meeting but to save space, I will just mention this. Several employees were offended by this clear cut policy violation. Again, Rooms To Go claimed that they do not support policy violations which includes use of foul language against other employees. This also applied to the manager. Since employees must report policy violations, a few of us got together and practiced our right. We sent a fax to their HR department with the names of several Hispanic employees. These employees were there to see the violation take place. Rooms To Go stated that they would telephone every single person on the list as part of their investigation. Not a single Hispanic was telephoned. I do not need to mention that the manager who violated the policy is White. When we add things up, we can see that Rooms To Go decided to bypass the statements of several Hispanics in favor of keeping a White manager in post. In other words, Hispanics were discriminated against. It was later reported that one of the employees over heard one of the White managers speak foul language about Hispanic employees.

8 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT OSHA Violation Story 3.1 As a warehouse worker, I do not need to mention how important it is for a company to make certain the work environment is safe. In business, you can achieve your goals and still have a safe environment for your employees. Rooms To Go does not have a warehouse. If you go to the store I worked at on South Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando Florida, take a peak behind their plastic drapes. You will notice there is barely any space to work in. This is a basic diagram of that space: outdoors pick up door selling floor Each black box is a mattress stack. The white space between is the space Rooms To Go gives warehouse workers to work with. We are talking about merchandise in semi-truck load.

9 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT OSHA Violation Story 3.2 Rooms To Go orders 2-3 semi-truck loads of merchandise per day (frequently it is more). I want for you to imagine sofas, loveseats, chairs, dinning sets, rugs, dressers, bedroom sets, childrens furniture...all in these long giant trucks. Do you really think that white space is going to be enough space to work in? I am not going to mention the torn rugs on the floor which employees can trip over. Rooms To Go does not repair that. Worse, when you mention these saftey risks to the managers, they do nothing. Because of this I had three sofas fall on me. When Rooms To Go brings in their merchandise, we are talking about merchandise that not only is very heavy, it is also oversized. They stand up their sofas. If you go to the store, you will see that some of those sofas will stand 7 or 8 feet tall. I don t have to mention that some of those sofas are sleepers. Not only do these manager know these safety risks, I mentioned it to them repeatedly. Managers will see something fall on you and do nothing about it. I ve seen guys fight verbally and threaten each others lives and managers do nothing. The fire extinguishers are always blocked by furniture. The only time they care is when it is fire inspection time. As a result, because sofas kept falling on me and they did nothing about it; I had to practice my right to report them to OSHA. I had to pracitce my right. We even had corporate managers who would see obvious violations and did nothing.

10 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT OSHA Violation Story 3.3 The same day Karen Stone of Tampa FL (OSHA) called the manager of the store. Over the next two weeks, Rooms To Go finally gets on the safety ball. Suddenly all the managers see all these potential dangers. Why didn t they see them before? They got their team of corporate people to do a warehouse check. The entire place was checked and changed to meet OSHA regulations. OSHA was asking them for a report which included photos. Unfortunately the State OSHA posters that claim they will come down and do an inspection is not true. Regardless, Rooms To Go sends in their snapshot in time. After the smoke went away (so-to-speak), Rooms To Go gradually goes back into their violation mode. In less than two weeks the company was right back in their safety risks. Rooms To Go brings in more merchandise than they can handle. They do this of course because they are greedy for the high numbers managers are known for trying to obtain. Anyone reading this report knows what I mean. It s all about how high your numbers can go. Later in this report you will learn how my reporting them to OSHA turned into a form of discrimination.

11 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Inventory Blame 4.1 Every month Rooms To Go takes an inventory. No problem. The way you structure your business will result in your inventory output. Most companies will not produce the inventory results they expect. You are either over or under the expected amount. One month before I left the company, Rooms To Go s inventory efforts resulted in unexpected short numbers. They went ahead and did a second count. When the results came in, the company was short a few thousand dollars. Immediately the company blames the warehouse employees for stealing merchandise. It s not possible that your own inventory team is taking short cuts. I know people take short cuts in inventory count. I worked for Sears as a manager. The mangers told the employees that they were short thousands of dollars because employees where stealing merchandise. Now if we were stealing merchandise worth thousands, we are talking about walking out of the door with sofas, love seats, armoires, bedroom sets, dressers and so on. Now you tell me, with a security system in place; is it possible for me to walk out of the door with a dresser and mirror without anyone taking notice? Later we caught one of the managers scanning an armoire which was not originally counted in their inventory count. I should also mention that during one of the inventory seasons, I had to move several bed rails so that one of their corporate people could count each part in the inventory re-count. This means that your professional inventory team is taking short cuts.

12 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Pizza for Whites 5.1 In America there are many holidays to celebrate. Two particular holidays are Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. s birthday and of course Presidents Day. First there is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. s birthday. When this holiday came around, Rooms To Go had their doors opened for business. I understand you can t be closed for every holiday and this was one of their holidays to be open. It was a regular business day. Next we have Presidents Day which follows the one mentioned above. Myseriously on this holiday Rooms To Go buys pizza for all employees in celebration of the holiday. So you can buy pizza on a White holiday but you can t for a Black one?

13 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Employee Rights Violation 6.1 Many companies these days in order to regulate funds in a department will use an evaluation system. This way instead of giving out a fixed amount of money for raises per employee, they can control that by passing judgement on their performance. These are little tricks companies use to manipulate their employees. Rooms To Go gives a six month review to each employee. They can practice their regulations and it also give the employee a chance at getting the most money in a raise that they can. Everyone got a review except me. The manager of the warehouse Evans originally did not want to give me the review. It was not his intention. I had to mention to him that my review was due. He scheduled my review for the coming days. When the day arrived, he gave me the escuse that I had to wait for my direct supervisor Keith to be present. This way both of them would give me my review. I don t need to tell you that they never gave me my review and they were both present plenty of times. Obviously my right to a review was violated by Rooms To Go. The company still went ahead and processed my raise. I should mention that Rooms To Go typically makes employees wait weeks if not months just for a raise to be processed. In my case I had to wait months. This meant that they owed me retro active pay.

14 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Failure To Pay Employee 7.1 By this time I mentioned to Rooms To Go I was leaving. Here was a company that violated OSHA regulations willingly. After I mentioned it to OSHA s Karen Stone, they still engaged in these violations. I could not work for this company knowing heavy sleeper sofas could fall on me and rip my shoulder apart. I suffered enough in the World Trade attacks. When I left the company and came back to pick up my last paycheck, Rooms To Go still owed me over 230 hours in retro active pay. I opened my pay check and the hours were not there. I could tell that something was happening because the managers had funny faces. I planned on going back to New York in another 2 weeks. This gave the company plenty of time to pay me the money they owed me. I ended up going to New York without my due pay. During my wait time I repeatedly tried to contact the managers but they would not reply. No matter how much I tried, they refused to reply. Obviously Rooms To Go was not paying me my 230 hours of retro pay because I am the one who called OSHA.

15 ROOMS TO GO - EMPLOYEE DISCRIMINATION REPORT Final Word To this day, Rooms To Go fails to pay me the hours they owe me. I am a hard working person. I had to give a job performance of 100% while many other workers would sit down doing nothing. They sit down or talk on mobile phones and managers do nothing. In summary I feel that Rooms To Go has one of the poorest management structures of any company. I still have the emails of the managers I tried to contact with no responses. These managers do what they want to do, not what they are supposed to do. When we have a little power in our hands, we really think we can rule the world. Rooms To Go is one of these companies.

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