Share Your Story: Have you faced pregnancy discrimination in the workplace?

I was hired at a family owned mobil gas station in May, everything was great and everyone seemed fun honestly very nice. I told them I was pregnant in June and then all of a sudden I was treated awefully. My manager would say rude comments under his breath towards me! I asked my manager if I could get a chair to sit in because my feet were swollen and in pain from standing for 8 hours a day. He denied my request and told me I couldn't handle the job. Then, one day I came into my shift to find two long lists of things to do (most of them I already do anyways) and at the bottom of one of the papers it said "don't stop moving." I'm sorry, but I need a break you know. I wasn't hired to be their maid, all shifts should be told to clean not just me. I talked to my manager about it and he said he knows he forgets to clean and he'll try to make more of an effort. I'm now 31 weeks pregnant and during my shift I felt terribly sick to my stomache and had to make trips to the bathroom (which is difficult when you work at a gas station, being the only one on shift.) so I texted my manager and told him I need him to come in for me or to get someone else to because I'm not feeling well. His response was "Shit, I'm nowhere near *the town mobil is located.*" an hour later I texted him saying I was going to leave. He texted me back telling me he was coming, he didn't get there til an hour after that. When he showed up he said to me "ya you don't feel good but I came as fast as I could don't threaten me saying you're leaving." I told him, I wasn't threatening I was being serious. The health of my daughter is way more important than anything else, he's blessed that I waited two hours for him feeling as sick as I did.

I work selling appliances for a major "big box" store.  I have worked here almost 3 years. Now that I am pregnant (currently 18 weeks in), I am experiencing major issues regarding the simplest requests for accomidating my pregnancy in the workplace.1) I announced I was pregnant end of may- in June, I began to ask to be able to keep a bottle of water with me on the sales floor (it was hot in store, and human beings- pregnant or not- need water). I was told I needed a doctors note for this, and that I could remove myself from the sales floor & go upstairs for a drink if I was thirsty. Now, I work as a commission only associate, so every time I take myself off the sales floor, I potentially loose money if a customer comes in & another associate gets them while I'm away. As a result, I was reluctant to leave the sales floor for this reason. The end on June, I was able to get the doctors note ( I went in for my appt., and was told I was severely dehydrated, and had just come from work,mwhich concerned my dr) which stated "please allow Roz to keep a bottle of water on or around her person at all times, including on the sales floor". after bringing in the note, my mgr. told me I could keep a bottle of water in the stock room instead of upstairs. Again, I brought up the note stating I could keep one on the floor, and a stock room was still removing myself from the floor, and was told " we only have to compromise with doctors notes, not follow them to the letter"2) I began keeping a chair in July around the sales floor, because standing on tile flooring over cement was hurting my back even at this stage of pregnancy (barely out of my 3rd trimester). I only sat in it when I wasn't dealing with customers, and there was no other work needing to be done. My manager continues to remove the chair from the floor, claiming my sitting down doesn't look good for the store. I am experiencing back pain, and  even occasional dizziness. Stranding for 6-8 hours straight was fine while I wasn't pregnant, I never asked to sit down before! Now, they're treating me like I'm lazy because I can't do that right now. I don't feel these are unreasonable requests. Apparently mgmt here disagrees.

I work at the target in woodhaven mi and I was told that since I hadn't been there a full year that I wasn't eligible for maternity leave. That's understandable, but I was told I could take a personal leave of absence. I was just informed that my personal leave of absence was denied and my only choice is to quit with no guarantee that I'd be rehired after the baby is born. They're forcing me to quit simply because I am pregnant. 

I'm an attorney. While a senior associate at a litigation firm in Miami, I was subjected to discrimination and eventually terminated because of pregnancy. Prior to revealing to the firm that I was pregnant, the managing shareholder praised and favored me. After I revealed that I was pregnant, his behavior changed. First, he ignored me. As the months progressed, he would interrogate me about my cases. Eventually, he would come into my office daily to rant and threaten me, often shouting from the open doorway so that everyone could hear. The partner to whom I was asssigned was sympathetic, but had no power or authority to stop it. Because I was 40 years old and it was my first pregnancy, my OB advised that I go on bed rest. The firm had no maternity leave policy. Rather, there was a gender neutral unpaid leave policy for up to 6 weeks. I went on leave 3 weeks before the baby was born. During those weeks, a non-equity partner spent considerable time going over my files, my time sheets, my billing, and my emails to find grounds to terminate me. He emailed me (to my personal email) accusations and demanded an immediate reply. It took me a week to respond as I was in the hospital giving birth via emergency cesearean. I responded to all the false accusations with evidence. He continued to dig. The firm even hired another law firm to review my casefiles to determine whether I had commited any ethical violations so that the firm could have me disbarred. He found nothing. As my leave was coming to an end, I asked the partner at a former law firm to help negotiate an exit for me. The law firm refused and on the day my leave ended, I received a ten-page termination letter from the firm citing as the cause for termination its suspicion that I had inflated my billable hours because I could not have billed those hours honestly while being pregnant. I guess a woman can't work hard while pregnant. The firm threatened me that if I sued them for discrimination, it would countersue me for fraud based on their unsupported suspicion that I had inflated my billing. I filed a complaint with the EEOC. Two months later, a paralegal at the firm was fired a few days after she announced that she was pregnant. She filed a complaint with the EEOC. The EEOC did nothing and gave us each our "right-to-sue" letters. I contacted several prominent employment discrimination attorneys. However, each time, after the attorney spoke with the partners at their firms, he or she called to tell me that they were unable to take my case because of the identity of the managing shareholder or because, at some time in the past, one of their partners worked at the same firm as one of the partners at my firm. I tried looking for an employment attorney in other cities, but eventually gave up. I didn't want to waste the precious months I had with my newborn trying to fight a losing battle. A few years later, I learned that the only female partner at my firm had taken my side with the managing partner and that led to her termination from the firm as well. She filed a lawsuit against the firm for her wrongful termination. While my name wasn't mentioned in the complaint, having been the only female associate, she had to have been referring to me. Sadly, she died a few months later and my former firm dodged a bullet. To date, the firm has not hired another female attorney.