A Black man has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against a hotel in Detroit, Michigan, alleging the hotel only offered him a job interview after he changed the name on his resume, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by CNN.
Dwight Jackson filed the lawsuit against the Shinola Hotel on July 3, alleging he was denied a job when he applied as “Dwight Jackson,” but later offered an interview when he changed his name to “John Jebrowski.”
The lawsuit alleges Jackson was denied a job in “violation of Michigan Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act.”
So hear me out. From time to time, I have applicants who repeatedly apply, but because they said something stupid to the person who took their application, or they were dressed inappropriate, or had poor hygiene, or whatever reason, I keep their resume in the ‘do not call’ pile.
If that person simply changes the name on the resume, It is likely that I would then give them a call, not knowing it was actually stinky Pete applying again, or whatever.
In this totally reasonable scenario, the names used had nothing to do with it.
Also, we are always advertising that we are hiring so that we have a fresh set of resumes to choose from if we need someone immediately. We may not be hiring for months while someone applies over and over. Then someone will quit or get fired and we will immediately begin calling resumes starting with the most recent. There is a good possibility that this whole thing is a coincidence… not everything has malicious intent.
I know racial discrimination in hiring definitely exists and is probably super prevalent, but there is a chance this is not one of those cases and there are other plausible explanations if the only evidence that exists is what is in this post.
So, you aren’t hiring then.
Louder for the moron publicly outing his own scummy industry practices.
SO, YOU AREN’T HIRING THEN?
Sir this is a Wendy’s, if you shout at the staff we will not hire you.
It’s called capitalism buddy, there are plenty of worse things to complain about then some small business trying to stay staffed up properly.
Found the shill
I will gladly shill for the sliver of small business left, against the mega corps who own everything else.
The problem is that this is a megacorp tactic designed to keep up with the massive turnover shit companies have. Mom and pop shops don’t have this problem when they treat employees with even basic levels of respect.
We have very low turnover, and we are a small mom and pop. Part of the low turnover is being prepared for the occasional open position so that while we are looking for a real good hire, we aren’t burdening the existing staff with picking up the slack… we have a stack of applicants and can get a solid replacement immediately. We are transparent about the process with the applicants, I don’t see the problem.
Correct, we advertise that we are hiring so that we have fresh resumes, and then when someone quits or gets fired, we call the resumes and hire someone. Most businesses do this.
And the prospect already got employed at a different business that had an open vacancy, congrats you’ve got NOTHING by hiring in advance and you also wasted the prospects time.
Just because there are other businesses that do this scummy tactic doesn’t mean it’s right or less scummy.
Also, hiring on advance because someone would quit or would be fired so you need to have a roster to replenish them, says A LOT about your business and its climate.
no no, you see, it’s ethical, because there’s always a revolving door of unemployed people, who somehow don’t have bad hygiene, and are always dressed appropriately, and this tactic works because they exist, and we’re just doing them a service, really. don’t ask questions as to why or how that revolving underclass of desperate unemployed people exist, that’s not allowed.
Having fresh resumes is a tactic that allows us to be more flexible with employee schedules. With a staff of 20 people, maybe two per year turn over. I don’t know what you mean about hiring in advance… We hire when we need someone and we have a good number of people to choose from, that way we aren’t stuck with hiring the first applicant that comes along, which inevitably causes more work for the rest of the employees when we don’t get a good hire.
We don’t have that problem because we keep a fresh stack of resumes.
Dude FFS those are actual people, not just resumes.
Yea I know, and when we hire them we take good care of them. What’s the problem?
so much good care that you need to prepare for them to spontaneously quit the job or have to fire them? Yeah sure…
The problem is that sending in a resume and applying for a job takes effort. If you invite people to spend time and effort and mental energy to get a thing (job) when you know you won’t give it to them, then you are wasting their time and effort and mental energy, which I can tell you as somebody who fucking hates looking for jobs, that mental energy can be in serious short supply for people looking for work.
That “fresh pile of resumes” is definitely good for you when you want it, but the giant stale pile of resumes that you keep throwing away is not free for the people sending them in.
The people that are emailing us their resume each month know that it might be 6 months or a year before we call them, we are super transparent about that.
A lot of people want to work for us and we only have a limited number of positions which do not turn over very often.
We generally only accept emailed resumes, not paper resumes.
Wasted whose time? It’s not like we are constantly interviewing people. When people put their resume in we tell them that when a spot opens up we will call them. We encourage them to put a resume in once a month so that when we need someone they will likely get a call. I don’t understand your term ‘hiring in advance’.
How is accepting a resume when we aren’t actively hiring a scummy tactic? People ask to work here every day and we tell them that we aren’t actively hiring but we would be glad to accept a resume. The real persistent people who really want the job keep following back up and eventually they get hired and stay for years and years.
Saying that you’re hiring when you’re not hiring is the trick.
That’s not what we do
Sure just go ahead and be disrespectfully wasteful of everyone’s time. other people are just tools that exist to be used, after all.
disgusting behavior, given the number of people actively trying to find good work to survive. if I was looking for work and I found out someone was doing this with my resume I’d be livid if they ever dared to call me.
So you don’t want the job then?
What job? You’re not hiring remember?
When the job becomes available, you won’t get the call because your resume will be put in the ‘do not call’ pile.
Buddy, if you think for one second that any job candidate worth the paper their resume is written on is going to take a job from a place pulling the shenanigans you are, that would explain why you’re “struggling to make it” in this capitalist society. Your job listing went into the “don’t bother interviewing” pile months before you even pulled that resume out of the pile. Of course you’re going to start needing employees in a pinch when your hiring pool is only the most desperate suckers out there lol.
We have super low turnover. We accept resumes, how is that shenanigans? Y’all are a bunch of raging idiots
Oh yeah such low turnover you need a constant supply of resumes just to survive. Do you even hear yourself lol.
It’s more so that the constant supply of people who want to work for us have a system they can follow to have a chance to get hired. We hire about 1 out of every few hundred applicants. We hired two people in the last three years and accepted hundreds of emailed resumes.
The resumes come in regardless of the sign on the door because of the high demand, hanging the sign on the door directs people to email it rather than submit a paper copy.
It also directs people to talk directly with the staff so that they can understand that it’s very unlikely we will be calling them anytime soon.
When someone has to quit, it is usually because of extenuating circumstances, someone dying or some other major life event, so we want to be prepared to not ask the employee to have to work out the two weeks notice that they always want to offer. It’s nice to say, “thanks for your hours over the years, take your last two weeks as paid vacation, we have someone ready to replace you”
This happens maybe once per year and we haven’t fired someone in maybe 5 years.
You and the rest of the people I am talking with here have no idea how a good business operates and only want to assume the worst. I agree that capitalism = bad, but there is some nuance that should be understood before shouting your uninformed opinions from the rooftops.
Yes those could all be possible but the evidence has shown time and time again that people with minority sounding names get less call backs than average. So him filing suit over this is good cause either it was one of those and it will be proven in court pretty easily by company records or it’ll turn out it was race based and the company can be punished for it.
Fair enough, I just hope it’s a large company who deserves the court costs regardless of their intent in this case, and not some small business who can’t afford to go to court when they have done nothing wrong. The burden of proof should be on the person making the claim.
Why does your company waste people’s time saying they’re hiring when they’re not? That’s a whole other problem… called lying… but I guess it’s okay because everyone is being treated like shit equally?
You can get fresh resumes by putting up a listing on Indeed and get new ones almost immediately. There’s no excuse for lying to applicants.
I really hope your just a troll making shit up, even though I know companies do this frequently. Never thought I’d see someone almost proud of it and act as if it’s not problematic behavior.
In my state companies are required to take your application and keep it on file for a year whether they’re hiring or not
Which state is that?
Connecticut
The sign says ‘always accepting resumes - send resume to xxx @ xxx.com - see staff for details.
When people ask about the ‘accepting resumes’ sign, we tell them that the best way to get a job with us is to put in a resume about once a month and if/when we need someone we will call all the recent resumes.
A ton of people want to work for us because we pay way above the industry standard, we pay for good healthcare and retirement, paid vacations, unlimited sick pay, good bonuses, and flexible scheduling… completely unheard of in the service industry.
There is no lying, we are super transparent. And turnover is low, because only the best applicants make it through to the hiring stage.
Believe it or not, indeed provides a very slow and small number of shit applicants, nothing more. To get good hires, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the community.
You are so blinded by rage against the machine that you fail to see the difference between the dying small business and the mega corps, to you it’s all the same, and that attitude is a part of the problem.
I work for a small business. And I’m not blinded by rage. But when I was looking for a job companies that pull this sort of “always hiring” thing are pretty frustrating.
Also, it’s not my fault if you misrepresented your companies policy. “Always accepting resumes” and “always hiring” are similar but different enough for you to switch when it was convenient for your argument. Not falling for your faux high road and trying to mischaracterize my argument.
Have a good day sir or madam.
I changed the phrasing to be more accurate, not to fit any argument. I don’t see any problem with having the sign up.
Theres a difference between lying and not lying. For someone hell-bent on taking the moral high ground, you sure seemed to miss this detail
What lie? We tell all applicants that we aren’t actively hiring but we will reach out to the most recent resumes if/when we need someone.
There is high demand to work for us, so we have a system for all the people who keep asking for a job.
We have tried it without a sign on the door as well and we still get a ton of applicants. We just would rather people email the resumes instead of leaving a physical copy.
In a previous comment, you said you indicated you were “now hiring” as a ploy to collect resumes. later, in a different post, you reveal that you actually say “accepting applications” which, critically, does not directly state that you are hiring. Lying about lying about hiring, I guess. It was an effective tactic to stir shit, but you outright misrepresented your situation.
As I said in a previous comment, I used the phrase ‘now hiring’ for brevity because the point I was making was not particularly about this method of managing the constant inflow of applicants.
After that inaccuracy proved to cause a half dozen of you to freak out, I specified the full verbiage ‘always accepting resumes, see staff for details’
I understand the difference but I didn’t foresee that being a catalyst for this detraction from the original point I was trying to make.
My intention, believe it or not, was not to stir shit. I had a point originally that had nothing to do with our now hiring, excuse me, accepting resumes sign. People here just latched on to that one detail and picked it a part without addressing my original point and the conversation went pear shaped.
“I lied for brevity why is everyone mad at me” lmao
Not meticulously including every minute detail is not lying. Call it a lie by omission if you want to, but you and everyone else here so far has completely missed the point.
If I knew my original point was going to be ignored and everyone was going to swoop down on this one detail which was not even relevant to the point I was making, I would have used a completely different example altogether.
I may not have been specific enough for you on my companies hiring practices, but you have completely ignored my point and everyone here picking apart the sign on the door has strawmaned my point so hard that I haven’t once yet engaged with someone on the original point.
“It’s not malicious intent”
Explains how his companies entire hiring strategy it openly malicious, lol
How is ‘always accepting resumes’ malicious? Put your resume in and move on, I’ll call you if I need you, the world doesn’t owe you anything.
If you really wanted a job, be persistent and eventually someone will hire you, but not if you walk around with a huge chip on your shoulder hating on every small business trying to make it in the late stages of capitalism.
I bet you’d bitch if you went through the effort of setting up an interview with somebody and then you never hear from them again because they’re not actually looking for a job right now. Don’t hide your clown show behind legitimate small businesses who don’t play games.
I don’t understand… do you think we are interviewing with no intent of hiring? How would that make any sense?
All we are doing is accepting resumes and letting people know that when we need someone we will call the resumes. We tell people when they put the applicant in that we aren’t actively hiring.
Why is it that the best way is to submit a resume each month?
If they really want to work there, basically they have to get in line. It may be 6 months or a year before we call because we don’t have very much turnover.