Page 2 of 5 of the Settlement Agreement

Page 2 of the 5-page settlement is below. It is mostly a recitation of the purposes and effects of the stipulated Settlement Agreement entered by the ALJ on or around September 20, 2017, settling the matter which had its genesis in the improperly low evaluation I received on August 26, 2015, which I believed was fatally flawed due to age discrimination. The matter was concluded via settlement over two years later but by then I was out of my job of 25 years due to my involuntary retirement because of what I considered to be a hostile work environment, exemplified by the bogus evaluation I received and marked by the retaliation that I suffered, in my opinion, in May 2016.

The legacy I left behind when I was involuntarily retired in 2016 after more than a quarter century of dedicated and outstanding work in government service, which included two trials, both won, much litigation involving frequent travel, and selfless passing on of my expertise to those who came after me, just like my two mentors, Steve and Dave, had passed on to me their wisdom and experience, was a final rating of Satisfactory. Sad.

Below is a closer look at the top of page 2 of the Settlement. The matter was investigated for another six months based upon my allegations of retaliation. A few short weeks after I left involuntarily, the manager who in my opinion had done what I considered to be retaliation left my former agency suddenly and unexpectedly. Hmmm. Following my departure in May, during the summer of 2016 I received a call from the HR office in which it was discussed with me that I could receive a Commendable, or possibly even an Outstanding, rating if I withdrew my complaint. I said that things had changed because now I was out of a job. The caller concluded by saying that he would put down (in his notes I guess) that I was unwilling to discuss settlement. I replied that that was incorrect, I was happy to discuss settlement but the situation had changed, an appropriate rating would be insufficient now and there was a problem at my former agency that I hoped to address in any settlement. That was the last I heard from my former agency about any potential settlement for almost a year.

Below is a closer look at the bottom of page 2. In late November 2016, I received two boxes of reports and exhibits, the result of the HR office's investigation into my case. Many people were interviewed, myself included, and offered sworn testimony. Now I had a choice of submitting the report to the Director of my former agency's HR office for a resolution, or to submit it to the regional office of the EEOC to initiate an Administrative Law case, which could be a de novo review with further discovery and  extended litigation. Based in part upon my less-than-confidence-building interaction with the Director that I mentioned earlier, I chose the latter option and filed the case in court on December 27, 2016. Nine more months of silence from the court concerning my case followed, except that as related previously, I established contact with my former agency's GC's office in May 2017 and meaningful settlement discussions finally started, nineteen months after the occurrence that started the case actually happened, my improperly low evaluation.

Pay Attention

It took over two years, but I reached a Settlement with my former agency after I received a substandard performance appraisal at the at the hands of a cadre of managers all a generation younger who, in my opinion, are mostly interested in maintaining their own positions rather than in advancing the interests of the agency. I complained about my bogus and unjustified rating, Satisfactory, now corrected to Fully Outstanding, and I was forced by the hostile work environment there to precipitously and prematurely involuntarily retire less than a year after that. The Settlement Agreement I agreed to mandates in part, in Section VIII d, that "...the FTC will ensure that all current FTC employees, who are or were managers within the Division of Financial Practices between August 2015 and the present, will complete EEO and diversity training, including training addressing age discrimination." That training is today, and I hope that my former managers are attentive, take notes, pay heed and act accordingly.

The year in review, part 2 of 3.

At the end of May, after more than a quarter century on the job and after working hard all year doing more with less as people at work left to take new jobs or went out on maternity leave, I was suddenly forced to retire by the impossible demands of, in my opinion, a bullying manager acting as the point man for a group of in-it-for-themselves managers a generation younger.  I already had an active age-discrimination complaint going at the time but these people consider themselves to be bullet-proof and, in my opinion, do whatever they want, paying only lip service to rules put in place about retaliation and the like.

On the day after I was precipitously and prematurely forced to retire due to ageism, I bought new running shoes and ran five times a week during the month of June, mostly around Northern Virginia and sometimes in the District, taking on the task of running home from all of the furthest-out Silver Line Metro stops.  I also discovered from a neighbor that my youngest son had gotten married a year earlier to some girl named Laura.

In July I kept active by continuing running five times a week, sometimes in the District with friends from my former place of work.  I also did some hiking and bicycling on some of the many recreational venues available around the District, like here on the C&O Canal Towpath.

August was a most interesting month.  On the eleventh, out of the clear blue sky, I got friended and then unfriended within the hour by my daughter-in-law Laura, and then the next morning I underwent stomach surgery, which put me down harder and longer than I thought it would.

Our lives were about to change.

Thanks, Chris, for forcing my early retirement. Enjoy being corporate counsel after failing in government work (in my opinion).

Today I would have celebrated my 26th anniversary with the government, after spending nine years in police work and four years in restaurant work.  I was looking forward to working for a few more years yet for my agency because I was good at what I did and I freely and unselfishly imparted my expertise and wisdom to amenable younger lawyers, many of whom were eager to learn, grateful and are now lifelong friends.

But that's not suitable for the current breed of cut-throat managers.  They advance upon your work, demand that you do more with less because it reflects well upon them and their advancement, and they actively work to drive sexagenarians out of the work force (improperly if not illegally) because the older workers don't worship these less experienced managers and can see through their shenanigans and thus make them extremely uncomfortable.

Things changed three or four years ago when the current set of managers in my former shop became a closed system of friends and cronies who looked out only for themselves, could do no wrong, and started going after older workers by giving them sub-standard reviews, usually based upon writing discrepancies from their own perfect writing (you don't write exactly like I would and you're not in my circle of worshippers therefore you're downgraded on this extremely subjective application of a supposedly objective category).  A brand new manager named Chris, who did one case all his career there, became management's hatchet man, in my opinion, and he drove a fellow sexagenarian out of the division with bullying management, manifested in an outrageous, bogus out-of-proper-channels written review and perpetrating a stalking incident in retaliation when she fought back.

Then he set his sights on me as the next sexagenarian to go, by establishing an outrageous set of ridiculous pre textual deadlines of unimportant matters when real work was being done and needed to be done, as I informed him, and now we're both suddenly gone.  I left by premature retirement to escape an untenable hostile work environment based upon age discrimination by the agency, leaving behind a retaliation claim to go with my then-current formal ageism discrimination complaint, based upon Chris's bullying, ham handed and incompetent management style culminating in a list of pre textual demands upon me.  He himself left suddenly and unexpectedly two weeks later, obviously, in my opinion, having been told to look elsewhere as his rise through the ranks of management was stymied because his actions were drawing too much heat upon the current closed circle of managers.