A woman has been fired from her barely above minimum wage job by a spa in Western PA for refusing to be Brazilian waxed by a coworker and has filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment, wrongful termination, gender discrimination and retaliation.
Ms. Finley, a 35-year-old Pine resident, filed a federal lawsuit last week against the Ross spa and its corporate owners, saying she was wrongly fired because she refused to allow a coworker to perform a pubic hair removal procedure on her during a training session.
"She is filing it because she thought that it was very unreasonable to be fired for declining to have her genitals viewed, touched and altered by her coworkers," said Janice Q. Russell, her Downtown-based attorney.
Using other coworkers as guinea pigs is not a reasonable way to perform 'training'. Hair salons and such typically offer heavily discounted rates to give trainees a chance to learn. Having coworkers perform this waxing on each other sets up a very strange dynamic between them, as is pointed out in the lawsuit.
The spa says new employees know they will be required to perform the waxing on other coworkers as part of their training. But nowhere was it specified that an employee must submit to being waxed in this fashion. Ms. Finley stated her objections and after a bit of an exchange, was fired on the spot.
On Oct. 1, Ms. Finley's first day of training for her new job, a corporate trainer announced that the following day Ms. Finley and her new co-workers were required to perform "Brazilian-style" waxes on each other. The procedure involves removing pubic hair using a heated adhesive wax.
Ms. Finley, who currently works as an aesthetician and a nail technician, has performed waxing procedures in the past as a spa employee and expected that part of the training in her new job would require practicing waxing.
"I knew that we would be practicing on each other, but I thought maybe for the Brazilian wax part of it, that we would be doing it to people who wanted a Brazilian wax," she said in a phone interview today.
Ms. Finley, who said she was due to begin menstruating the day of the training, thought it would be "embarrassing" to have the procedure performed in front of her new co-workers, and she told the corporate trainer she did not want to do it.
According to the lawsuit, the trainer told her she should "pop a fresh tampon, take some ibuprofen, and you'll be fine."
Ms. Finley repeated her objection to Ryan Glastein, owner of the spa, and was immediately fired.
In a world where legislators believe they have free will to force women to have unwanted transvaginal ultrasounds, I guess it is okay for a trainer to tell you how to handle your period, in a very dismissive way. None of this should be a topic of conversation in a professional, non-medical setting. And a trainer is not qualified to dispense medical advice and tell someone what medications they should take.
In searching for other sources of this story I found the NY Daily News' version, who helpfully changed the trainer's vocabulary for her and misquoted her:
The corporate trainer told her, "Put in a fresh tampon and take ibuprofen and you'll be fine," according to the complaint.
That’s when her boss fired her, she said.
"My boss seemed a little angry," she said. "He didn't ask me any reasons. He wasn't sympathetic at all."
Finley says she filed the lawsuit to send the message that women should not have to endure this kind of treatment.
So yeah, I guess there was something wrong with what the trainer said, if they felt the need to 'scrub' it.
Good for Ms. Finley and hopefully this does send a message. Only women are required to submit to this training treatment, men are not. In this day and age of the war on women and war on workers, every such battle has become more important.