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Whole Foods Employee: Manager Asked Me To Use Gaydar To Tell Who Was Gay

Jennifer Johnston also claims that her boss asked intrusive questions about her sex life.

In a discrimination lawsuit filed last Wednesday, a former Whole Foods employee claims that her supervisor created a "hostile and abusive" work environment by routinely asking her to use her "gaydar" to point out LGBT people in the store.

According to the suit, this was just a small example of the daily harassment Jennifer Johnston faced from her boss Tawny Duckworth at the Whole Foods store in Boulder where Johnston worked from December 2014 to July 2015.

Johnston alleges that the abuse began in February 2015 during "team member appreciation week," when Duckworth dressed like her three subordinates on the marketing team. When it came time for her to dress like Johnston, she wore “clothes aimed at negative lesbian stereotypes and biases—a sweatshirt, baggy jeans, old tennis shoes and a backward hat. This is not how plaintiff dressed,” the lawsuit says.

Duckworth then asked the team if she looked gay enough and questioned Johnston about butch stereotypes, such as whether she plucked her eyebrows or ever bothered to wash her hair.

As time went on, Duckworth began to ask Johnston (pictured left) invasive questions about her sex life—on one occasion, she wanted to know if she and her wife had "hotel sex" on vacation like straight couples.

Duckworth would also ask Johnston to use her gaydar to identify other gay people, saying, “Well, you are gay...Can’t you point out who else is gay?”

Johnston asked Duckworth repeatedly to stop making comments targeted at her sexuality and gender, but says her supervisor never relented.

In July 2015, Johnston lodged a formal complaint with the store's general manager, Omar Ruiz. He apologized and told her she could work a different shift to avoid contact with Duckworth and that he would launch a two-week investigation into the discrimination claim.

Two weeks later, Ruiz called Johnston into his office to tell her the results of his investigation. Surprisingly, he ended up reprimanding her for allegedly playing inappropriate music in the office. He also reneged on his promise to schedule her to a different shift.

In his official report, Ruiz wrote that Johnston's claim of being harassed by coworkers was baseless and labeled it as an attempt to be "manipulative and deceiving.”

In light of the store's response to the discriminatory abuse, Johnston resigned, an action that her suit says constitutes an "involuntary termination."

Johnston and her lawyers, Claire Munger and Shelby Woods, filed the federal employment discrimination lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Denver. The suit seeks damages in excess of $75,000 for emotional distress.

h/t: Denver Post

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