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 knitted monkey while other workers and a supervisor were once again present, saying, “Everyone meet Caleb.”
Ferguson demanded his supervisor do something, even telling him that the woman’s “public, open and discriminatory conduct was humiliating to him, i.e., mockingly being called a ‘monkey’—a well-known and disgusting racial slur.”
Ferguson claims the supervisor disregarded the incidents, stating in the suit that he didn’t apologize on behalf of the hospital or “provide a meaningful act of contrition for what he openly witnessed.”
Even after the supervisor said something along the lines of, “I’ll handle it,” the woman who knitted the monkey had faced no corrective action by April 2, 2023, Ferguson’s attorneys describe:
“[She] was still employed, she had moved on to creating a new doll and neither [the supervisor] nor anyone within [the] defendant’s enterprise had approached [the] plaintiff regarding the racial incidents.”
That same day, Ferguson got into a heated argument with a transport unit co-worker. Arguments like this “were commonplace” on the unit.
This time, however, Ferguson’s supervisor reacted to the argument “much differently” than previously had.
The supervisor “severely reprimand[ed]” Ferguson in his office, refused to hear him out and frequently talked over Ferguson as he tried to explain calmly that he believed the co-worker was the one who was the aggressor in the argument.
“At several points, it seemed clear that [the supervisor] was attempting to escalate the situation,” the attorneys wrote.
The complaint claims the supervisor then called the hospital’s security line and said he had “a male in the transport unit acting crazy who needed to be removed,” – leaving Ferguson in “utter disbelief.”
Ferguson left work for the rest of the day, and on April 3, 2023, he was told not to come in and that he was being suspended pending an investigation.
Three days later, the supervisor called Ferguson to tell him the investigation had ended and that he was being fired “effective immediately.”
The complaint states that Ferguson “has suffered not only tangible economic loss in the form of lost back pay and benefits and lost front pay and benefits, but also substantial emotional and physical distress, embarrassment and humiliation, pain and suffering, and is entitled to compensatory damages for these injuries, in addition to the tangible economic losses he suffered and will continue to suffer.”
Atlanta Black Star has reached out to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh for a comment.
