A Black man who says he was fired from a Pittsburgh hospital shortly after reporting his white co-worker for knitting a monkey doll on the job and naming it after him is now suing his former employer for racial discrimination.
Caleb Ferguson, who was 30 when the incident and subsequent firing happened last spring, also accuses the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center – Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of a hostile work environment and unlawful retaliation on the basis of race, according to the lawsuit filed March 5.
The timeline and narrative of facts below are taken directly from Ferguson’s complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Ferguson, who lives in Munhall, Pennsylvania, worked with the hospital’s transport unit from December 2022 through April 6, 2023 — the date he was fired.
Before last March, working at the hospital had gone smoothly, and Ferguson even received a raise and positive accolades in a January 2023 review.
Around March 20, 2023, a white female co-worker of Ferguson’s who also worked on the transport unit was knitting dolls, which is an activity the woman — described as in her late 50s or early 60s — often did on the job.
“An inquiry was made of [the woman] as to what she was currently working on in terms of her art delineated above. [She] replied, ‘I’m making a monkey’… She then held up the unfinished work and said, ‘Look, it’s Caleb.’”
The complaint says the co-worker made the comment in front of several other employees and that Ferguson’s supervisor “was either present or within a short period of time learned of it” from Ferguson and other workers.
A stunned Ferguson assumed someone would call the woman out “given how outrageous the conduct was” — but no one did.
Ferguson was left “horrified, extremely upset and shocked” a week later, on March 27, 2023, when the white coworker announced the completion of the…
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