Black man fired after reporting co-worker named a monkey doll after him, lawsuit says

A Pennsylvania man is suing his former employer after he says he was fired after reporting racial discrimination.

Caleb Ferguson filed a federal lawsuit against UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh on March 5.

The lawsuit stems from an incident that began around March 20, 2023.

“This situation could’ve been a trap for a younger black male or even a black male my age who just was at their wits end. It’s 2024 and everyone needs to be a little bit more careful about the things they say,” Ferguson told McClatchy News.

McClatchy News reached out to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh on March 12 for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Ferguson was working in the transport unit of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospital. One of his co-workers, a white woman in her late 50s to early 60s, would often knit while at work, according to the lawsuit.

The woman was asked what she was currently working on, and she replied, “I’m making a monkey,” the lawsuit said.

The woman then held up the unfinished knitted monkey and said, “Look, it’s Caleb,” according to the lawsuit.

The comment was made in front of other workers, the lawsuit said. Ferguson was “stunned” when he heard it. He thought someone would reprimand the woman, according to the lawsuit, but he was wrong.

“I felt very disrespected when my co-worker made the comments. I felt even worse when she doubled down on them,” Ferguson said.

On March 27, the woman announced to her co-workers that she finished knitting the monkey. She held it up and said, “everyone meet Caleb,” the lawsuit said.

Ferguson said in the lawsuit that the comments were made in front of his supervisor. He went to his supervisor and demanded action be taken against the woman, telling his supervisor that her comments were “humiliating” and that the term “monkey” was a “well-known and disgusting racial slur,” the lawsuit said.

According to the lawsuit, his supervisor responded by saying, “I’ll handle it.” However, the lawsuit said the supervisor didn’t take any action against the woman.

Ferguson said his employer told him he “didn’t think she meant anything bad by it.”

The woman went on to work on a new doll and was not disciplined over the comments, the lawsuit said.

Weeks later, on April 2, Ferguson got into a “heated disagreement” with another co-worker over a workplace issue, the lawsuit said.

“Arguments of this type were commonplace in ‘transport unit,’” according to the court documents.

Ferguson tried to explain his side of the story to his supervisor and believed the co-worker was the aggressor in the argument, the lawsuit said. But the court documents said the supervisor talked over him and escalated the situation.

The supervisor called security and said there was a “male in the transport unit acting crazy who needed to be removed,” according to the lawsuit.

Ferguson was removed from the hospital for the day. On April 3, he was told he was under suspension, then on April 6 he was told he was fired, the lawsuit said.

“I’ve struggled with bullying in school and in other parts of my life. I’m 31 now and after a bunch of therapy and other self work I’ve grown to be able to deal with some things, but this moment last year could’ve made me react adversely had I not done the work to learn to control my emotions and reactions,” Ferguson said.

Now, Ferguson says he’s been looking for work since losing his position at the hospital.

“It’s been a struggle to find a good job that I enjoyed as much as that one,” he said.

Ferguson believes his termination was retaliation for him reporting the racial comments made by his co-worker.

“They used that rule to fire me without a real reason so it wouldn’t look retaliatory, but I reported the incident to HR on a Friday (this was after I reported the incident to my supervisor multiple weeks prior) and was fired the following Monday,” he said.

The lawsuit is asking for an undetermined amount in damages.

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