My Experience With Bolder Calls and PrimeSource

I often touch on my experience with Bolder Calls and PrimeSource back in 2008 and I would like to share my experience with Bolder Calls, a call centre to help generate insurance quote leads located at 32nd & Prarie in Boulder, Colorado. I was technically hired through an on-site temporary agency called PrimeSource, which has their main offices at 600 Grant Street in Denver, Colorado. This company has no interest in treating people equally and does not even abide by the rule of law, which has been a state law for a while now and was a Boulder County local ordinance for longer than the state has made it illegal. I do not recommend that people work for Bolder Calls because they can claim a number of awesome sounding benefits but in the end, that’s all it is, sound and nothing more. Even though they claim non-discrimination, my story proves that these are just meaningless words and they do not stand up for their minority/queer employees when they are being subjected to another person’s bigotry. And this is not speculative. This is 100% true, they have made their discrimination against me based on gender identity and my transsexuality and have told me as such. It’s only a shame that they did it so that they would not have any witnesses.

I had been phoned by PrimeSource and invited to come up to Boulder and fill out an application at their office because of my Monster.com profile and the fact that I had worked for TeleFund. Dane, the man who phoned me and worked for PrimeSource, informed me that they were interested in hiring me and asked if I wanted to go back into telephone sales. This is about the only time I’ve been dishonest with them and I said “Yes, I am” when I really meant, “Fuck no, but I’ll do it because it’s work”. So, I went up to Boulder, filled out an application and I was invited to come up to Boulder for the second part of the application process, a group interview. It just shows you how they care about who they are hiring, namely to choose out the stock that they want. Basically, they had us all read through things and introduced us to the company and we had to practice reciting some text. They also explained how we were technically hired by PrimeSource and would be hired on by Bolder Calls after 3 months, depending on our performance. After this time, they pulled a few people out, came in and announced that we were now hired by PrimeSource and are working for Bolder Calls.

Basically, after this point, we did about a week of training and on the first day, they got us all pizza, which I felt was a very nice thing of them as I was a starving transsexual woman who would rather have hormone replacement therapy than food (but I was on food stamps at the time). They basically went through the manual with us and we discussed the non-discriminatory policy and they made it very clear that their internal non-discriminatory policy did protect people based on gender identity discrimination. I felt as though that was the end of it and I really do wish that I had my packet of information from PrimeSource and Boulder Calls. The training was pretty uneventful and we basically got to do a little bit of training on the call floor and do a bit of the job after talking about our experiences. After the training, we all got a certificate of completion (which I wish I had kept) which had the entire management’s and trainer’s signatures on it.

On the first day after our training, I was called into the office after being on the call floor for a hour or two and I was dragged into the office of Deena Reeves by someone who was a higher up at PrimeSource. Basically, they pulled me into their private, enclosed office and told me that they knew that I am a transsexual (as if I keep it a secret) and let me know that I was not allowed to use the women’s restroom until I had sex reassignment surgery. This was back in 2008, after I went full time and got my complete legal changes but have not had my surgery yet. I have to admit, I was stunned and I was a zombie on the call room floor for 30 minutes until I got up, took my headset off and told the PrimeSource lady (not the higher management person) that I could not handle it – I could not work for a company that did not respect me as a person. She did not try to reassure me, she did not offer to talk even though I was visibly shaken and I left the building. She asked me if I wanted to pick my cheque up at Boulder Calls or the office down in Denver and I told her that I wanted to pick up my cheque at Boulder Calls.

When I went back to pick up my last cheque, I had went to the Boulder Calls office, and I thought that my cheque would be there simply because of the fact that my other cheque was there last week. It was not and I started to make a fuss, getting really loud and exclaiming about Boulder Calls and PrimeSource’s discriminatory policies. I was told to leave and I decided to do so because I did not want to be tied up all day with the police, I wanted to get my cheque. So I went down to their office in downtown Denver and they would initially refuse to give me my cheque, so I started to raise hell about this particular issue. I was telling my story very loudly and they were unwilling to address this issue, they were totally non-confront. The only thing I do regret is not having had filed a dispute with the Colorado Civil Rights Division because what they did IS illegal in Colorado. If you would like to let the people who committed these acts and their companies know what you feel about transsexual discrimination, you can phone PrimeSource Staffing at (303) 869-2990 and Deena Reeves from Bolder Calls at (303) 415-9830.

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Tags: Bolder Calls, call centre, discrimination, insurance quotes, job discrimination, on-the-job discrimination, PrimeSource, transsexual discrimination, transsexual work discrimination