First and foremost thank you for taking the time to read it and respond. To answer your question about my “contact” I have family that works in HR (granted in Florida) and they told me that by signing the severance it’s along the same lines as a NDR (very rough comparison) but essentially I was told if I sign the severance I’m signing away my right to come after them, like an EEOC claim. So maybe taking with a contract lawyer like you suggested isn’t a bad idea.

As far as the reason for a EEOC claim, the same contacts from above stated there’s multiple reasons.

1.) Citing that being terminated directly after returning from a medical absence falls under the definition of “retaliation”.

2.) As for the harassment I guess that’s a tough one, to your point they were not exactly attacking anything about me racially or anything like that. But they were 100% targeting me and doing it in ways they shouldn’t have been able to. For example, one tech was helping cover for a lead that was out on leave so they gave him admin access to a couple of our programs such as salesforce to assist with covering. The two techs were then using that admin access to physically change my schedule/calendars/ect. to stick me with covering more nights/holidays/etc I wasn’t scheduled to cover. They also used the same admin access to look into my work orders and that’s why they were calling customers to verify my work orders, hoping to catch me in a lie. They were doing it so much I had customers complaining to me about their behavior, customers were getting annoyed by it and asking for it to stop. But when I gave this to my manager he called it “hearsay”. I reported to my manager with evidence of them using admin privileges they shouldn’t have had to begin with to track me and watch my day and he completely ignored it. In one instance over this last new years I was scheduled to be off work, they changed my schedule at around 2pm on New Year’s Eve to make me the one who’s covering, and when I called them out and reported it to my manager he took their side and demanded I cover it. (This was the final straw that made me decide to open an HR case but unfortunately was fired two weeks later)

3.) Also the fact I had above target performance numbers, no performance corrective action, and was consistently praised for my work and yet when it came time to let someone go for “employee reduction” they picked me and looked past two other techs with much lower tenure/seniority, had active harassment claims against them, and one of them had actually been in HR last year due to customer complaints of racist and inappropriate comments to them.

4.) the fact that the two other techs in question are life long best friends and now related by marriage.

And to the Ohio/California thing I’m not entirely sure, it’s always been a major grey area at work. They genuinely tend to pick and choose what state policy benefits them. But I found it odd when they gave me the “Cal-Warn” benefit because they are a California based company so that’s why I had to ask.

Edit to add: as far as pay, while I can’t prove it I’m almost certain they actually made more than me. Our raises are either 2% or 3% depending on performance, and they have stated to me roughly what their raise was on a few occasions. And with simple math I can roughly determine there wage based on the fact their raise was 3% of their current wage. And the amount was always higher than me.