Hey!
As people who followed this thread know, I was fired from my day job back in February 2020 and that basically brought this refit to a hard stop. I filed three different claims against my former employer, the Pesticide office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and have been going slowly broke on lawyer fees ever since. My primary claims were: 1) sex-based discrimination, 2) hostile workplace, and 3) wrongful termination, in which 1 led to 2 and ended with 3.
I got a new supervisor in 2018. It was his first time as a supervisor, and he started abusing his power literally the second week. There were six staff in the branch, mostly young, attractive women. I was the only man. The male supervisor was extremely nice to his female staff, but he was a real jerk to me. He began piling on more and more work to the point that it was impossible to keep up, all while letting his harem of lady staffers take long lunches and spend work hours planning weddings and doing online shopping. Then he claimed my performance was unacceptable (I'd been rated Outstanding the previous six years before his arrival) and initiated the process that managers have to go through to fire federal employees.
The union was worse than useless. Other managers who were obligated to stop the discrimination claimed to see nothing wrong. Filing claims with the Office of Civil Rights started a long, drawn-out process that's still ongoing three years after it started. So that was it: I got fired. And because being fired from the government for unacceptable performance is extremely rare, it made me radioactive in the job market. So I was unemployed and unemployable since 2020, which made it virtually impossible to do anything on the Roamer refit. I eventually had to sell my other boat, a 1968 Chris Craft Commander 42, to help pay bills.
But last month we finally had the first trial before a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Administrative Law Judge. It was a 4-day trial. My attorney did his best, but he made it clear that EEOC ALJs work for the Executive Branch and in 99% of all cases they find for the agencies, which are also in the Executive Branch. The agency's attorney was also in the Executive Branch. My attorney warned that it could take up to a year for the judge to finally issue his decision, on the principle that he'd have his clerks dig deep into previous cases to find excuses for my supervisor doing what he did.
But within two weeks he issued a bench decision that gave a bare-butt spankin' to my previous supervisor, his immediate superiors, and the EPA generally for grossly violating anti-discrimination laws and policies. The judge decided in my favor on all of the substantive claims!
Per the judge's order, we're negotiating the settlement now and should wrap it up within the next couple of weeks. My life (and the Roamer refit) will very soon be back on track! In preparation, I went and washed the boat and started figuring out what I need to do to get the boat out of the tent and splashed.
Stay tuned!
1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: MAJORÂ NEWS!
