Recently, someone asked me if I ever felt discrimination in the workplace. The question sparked a very bitter memory of an experience I had. I thought I would share it with you.

Several years ago I started with a company and I was very optimistic about my future there. I had already served in management in the last few companies I had worked for, working my way up from entry level positions in each one. I had thought that this company was good and worth working my way up again. So, I took an entry level position.

The day I started, I also went on a diet. I weighed about 525 pounds and I was very unhealthy. I didn’t exercise and I did not eat healthy. So, in an effort to lose weight, I did was many tend to do and did a crash diet, I actually fasted…for 50 days. I consumed juice and water and supplemented with vitamins. In the 50 days I fasted I had lost about 90 pounds. After working for the company for 9 months, my supervisor was suddenly quitting, and I was chosen to be put into an “acting” supervisory role. I was there for 4 months. In that time, I started gaining weight, as people who do crash diets usually find. After the 4 months, I returned to my entry level position. I had also gained about 70 of the 90 pounds I had lost. My manager (who left the company soon after my stint) actually gave me an award for my performance and 5 of my 12 employees were promoted during or within a month of my temporary role.

I went back to my entry level position. I did apply for several supervisory roles; however, I did not even get selected for an interview. During this same time, I started looking into getting weight loss surgery. I thought that that might help my overall health. However, even tipping the scales at 600 pounds, the surgery was an “exclusion” under my company’s policy. Which is interesting seeing that the company had a self managed plan, so all appeals went back to the company. (Insurance stated they wanted to approve it, but they couldn’t because of the company).

After about a year, I got an interview, and I thought i did well. An old supervisor of mine actually was on the board. But I didn’t get it. New supervisors were chosen and I was put on one of the newbies team. Since she had never been a supervisor before, and I had, the manager asked me to show her the ropes. Being the “team player” I trained the woman that beat me out of the job (who incidentally had no management experience versus my 10 years with different companies in 3 different industries, including the industry I was applying for).

After about 2 months I was in one of my coaching meetings with her (she was coaching me as required by her job) and she was pointing out my strengths and “opportunities”. I finally told her that she didn’t need to do that with me and I finally addressed the 600 pound gorilla in the room: me. I told her what had happened, I also told her that in my estimation, since I wasn’t given more opportunity to increase my income through promotion, and that I was being denied an opportunity to get the surgery I needed that the company just didn’t care if I lived or died. And I know that no one is irreplaceable etc, but they touted high employee satisfaction and I just wasn’t seeing it. Keep in mind, this was a sedentary job.

She was nice about it, empathized and then tried to get me to see the company view and encouraged me to keep trying etc. Later on that day, she asked to meet with me again. She handed me a business card for a psychiatrist. She (possibly after consulting with her manager) thought that my statement was a sign of depression and that maybe I needed to seek help.

I am not knocking anyone with depression, as I did have a serious bout with it several years later. But at that time, I was not depressed. I was just beat up.  I never got the management position there. I wound up moving on.

The stigma of being fat is being lazy. When they put me in that acting supervisory role, I worked up to 14 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week. I made sure that all of my team was at minimum competent at their job, but most excelled because I worked with them and taught them what to do. I wasn’t lazy. I was fat.

So when you see me write about things like the Elliott-Larsen Act in Michigan and of anti-weight discrimination laws in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Washington, D. C., I don’t think that anyone should have to train the person that beat them out of a job because they were too fat.

That is my personal recollection of an instance I faced. Do you have any? Post it in comments below.