You love being a park ranger and spending so much time outdoors. You and your team spend a lot of time together driving and hiking to survey remote areas of parks. On several trips this year, you find yourself uncomfortable with the jokes your coworkers are telling. They always seem to be about being gay. You ask them to stop, but they just laugh and start to make the jokes about your life as a gay person and you get even more uncomfortable. You talk to your manager, but he doesn’t seem concerned. He tells you your coworkers are just joking and says they aren’t homophobic. He says maybe you are being too sensitive and a bit dramatic. After that conversation with your manager, you notice he’s selecting you for fewer and fewer surveying trips. Your manager says the no one wants to go with you because you ruin the fun.
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Yes, you are experiencing discrimination under the Code. Unwanted jokes about sexual orientation are not appropriate at work. Your experience is not taken seriously by your manager. He does not investigate your concerns or talk to your teammates about the respect he expects everyone to show in the workplace. You are starting to lose work because you have raised this concern. Your employer is responsible to stop this discrimination from happening so that you no longer experience unwanted jokes about your sexual orientation and have equal opportunity to participate in surveying trips.
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