Transgender in Cincinnati: Ashton Dotson gets a job

One reason that William Mechley has successfully managed the Skyline Chili in Delhi rests on his skill in hiring. One day in November, a young man waited on a counter stool for a job interview while Mechley observed the candidate's joking, eager manner.

He invited Ashton Dotson past the coney-bun steamers and the bins of shredded cheddar cheese to a table in the restaurant. Mechley talked about the fast pace at the temple of Cincinnati comfort food not far from where the 55-year-old Skyline chain was born on the West Side. Dotson offered a resume of food-service jobs and said he could start that day and work any shift. Mechley said he had to run things past the restaurant's owner, but he hired Dotson. They shook hands.

Dotson then grabbed his wallet, pulled out his driver's license, dropped it on the table and pushed it toward Mechley. Dotson said, "I want you to know about this."

Mechley looked at where Dotson's index finger pointed on the license. In the box marked SEX, the letter read F.

As transgender people come out to family, friends and co-workers, Mechley and thousands of managers across the country in companies large and small now squarely face gender identity as a factor in the workplace. In three years, generational change and the federal government have spurred a dizzyingly rapid shift: Corporate America has realized that being civil to transgender people is good for business.

Since 2002, the Human Rights Campaign has tallied the Fortune 500 companies and the nation's biggest law firms that meet the group's workplace-equality benchmarks for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. In that first year, 12 companies cleared the bar.

But between 2013 and 2015, the Corporate Equality Index experienced a 45 percent increase in the number of companies and law firms that achieved a 100 percent rating, from 252 to 366.

There also was a 16 percent increase in companies with explicit anti-discrimination policies covering gender identity.

The military option also

may be opening

for transgender people. Last month, the new defense secretary, Ash Carter, said, "I don't think anything but their suitability for service should preclude them."

This is not to say that life is suddenly rosy all over for transgender men and women at work. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that unemployment among transgender Americans was double the national rate; for people of color, it was quadruple the national rate.

The survey's breakout of 194 transgender Ohioans found that 17 percent were unemployed. Twenty-eight percent reported losing a job at some point. Fifty percent said they had been fired, not hired or denied a promotion. A whopping 81 percent had experienced harassment or mistreatment on the job because of gender identity.

For more than 20 years, advocates have been pushing for federal passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a sweeping measure that would extend legal safeguards in the 29 states, including Ohio, that do not protect LGBT workers from job discrimination.

Lawsuits over gender identity discrimination are few – although 15 years ago, Cincinnati police officer Philecia Barnes's pioneering claim against the city went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and she won.

The change for transgender people in the American workplace has arrived thanks to decades of legal challenges from women, African-Americans and gay people to combat job discrimination. But change also is occurring because of the 75.3 million people in the millennial generation.

A national survey of 1,000 18-to-34-year-old millennials released last month showed that fully half believe gender exists on a spectrum, rather than the strict male-female binary.

"Millennials want to work in organizations where their LGBT friends can work," said Vanessa Sheridan, an Apple Valley, Minnesota, workplace consultant and author of "The Complete Guide to Transgender in the Workplace."

"You have to make your workplace more diverse, more affirming and welcoming. Millennials believe that's important," Sheridan said. "If you don't do that, you're not going to be able to recruit the best talent. And you certainly won't retain it."

A major goad to business, however, came in 2012 when the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced it would pursue legal redress for job discrimination based on gender identity under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Title VII is a significant weapon against workplace discrimination. In fiscal year 2014, the EEOC filed more than 63,500 charges under that law and negotiated settlements in other Title VII cases worth nearly $200 million. In September, the EEOC went to court with its first two Title VII cases based on gender identity.

In December, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department would also pursue Title VII cases.

With that stick overhead, American companies have opted for the carrot, evident in the spike in participating employers on the Human Right Campaign's Corporate Equality Index.

On the 2015 scorecard, two of Cincinnati's corporate titans got a zero ‑ American Financial Group and Western & Southern Financial Group. Fifth Third Bank hit 90. But others reached 100: Macy's; the 475-lawyer firm Frost Todd Brown; General Electric, the parent company of GE Aviation of Evendale; Caesars Entertainment Corp., the outgoing owner of the Horseshoe Casino in downtown Cincinnati.

Procter & Gamble also hit 100. Chief Diversity Officer William Gipson said in a statement, "Our belief in diversity as a business imperative results in our support of a wide range of people, cultures, beliefs and perspectives. This support is intended to be inclusive and broad, reflecting the diversity of our employees and the consumers we serve."

Another Cincinnati institution is working on its practices, with one of its employees leading the way.

At about the same time in November that William Mechley of Skyline studied the letter F on a driver's license, Reuben Shaffer walked into a packed 19th-floor conference room at the downtown headquarters of The Kroger Co.

Kroger's LGBT employee group had organized a "lunch and learn" session about transgender people. Though he is the chief diversity officer for the nation's largest traditional grocer, Shaffer did not know much about the topic. The standing-room-only turnout of 50 people surprised him – those in attendance were not just from Kroger but from Macy's, too.

At the front sat the presenters, among them an associate with a transgender spouse, and a transgender customer. Then the moderator turned to Britney McGannon and said: Tell us your story.

A child of Cincinnati's East Side, McGannon, 30, had worked for Kroger for a decade, winning promotion to general-merchandise manager at the sprawling 400-employee Anderson Township store on Beechmont Road.

Three years ago, grief from her grandmother's death led McGannon to the conclusion that she could no longer hide who she was. Fearful of seeing a doctor at first, she ordered estrogen pills online. She still wore the men's-cut Kroger-blue polo shirt, but at Halloween, under cover of costume, she dressed as a rock star, with black polish on her nails. After that, she kept painting her nails. She grew out her hair.

Finally, McGannon realized that she had to let her bosses know what was happening. She asked for a meeting with the store's human-resources manager. In an conference room, "I completely broke down in tears, tears of fear," McGannon said. The HR manager embraced her, saying: We'll make this work.

Store Manager David Wall then met with McGannon. "He didn't understand what it meant, for the store or anything. But he went out of his way to learn."

She remembered Wall saying that he had told his adult son in military service about having a transgender store employee. The son's response: Oh, that's cool. Wall told McGannon he realized then that it couldn't be that big of a deal.

McGannon came out to the other managers and the 18 store associates that she directly supervised. She invited questions: How long will this go on? Are you taking medications? Are you going to have surgery? What does this have to do with me? What can I do to help?

"Nothing bad happened. Nobody freaked out," McGannon said. "It was just exactly how I wanted it to be. It was just exactly how I thought it would be, given the people who worked there."

One co-worker did bother McGannon, which resulted in a little chat with the HR manager, "and after that, there was no problem."

Through the online employee portal, McGannon changed her preferred name, and a few days later, she got a new name badge that read BRITNEY.

"It was reinforcement," she said, "although, in those early stages, when I was still a little creepy looking, I got, 'Thanks, uh, ma'am, sir, whatever.' People called me 'it.' "

But in general, McGannon said, customers barely noticed her. "They're just there to buy groceries. It doesn't matter to them. Although I was putting up displays, men would constantly say, 'Be careful, honey.' Before I transitioned, I could work hours, and no one would say a thing."

McGannon's health insurance through her union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, covered estrogen treatments. Kroger's corporate health coverage, however, does not cover transgender medicine; that hurdle keeps the company at 85 on the Corporate Equality Index.

As time passed and her body changed, McGannon switched to the women's cut of Kroger polo shirt. But she grew uncomfortable using the men's restroom. The HR manager went to the chain of command for advice. The answer: McGannon had to use the facility that matched the gender marker on her driver's license.

She had been putting off that paperwork. Now it was urgent. She filled out and returned the one-page change-of-gender document from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Ten days later, on her birthday, she walked out of her local BMV office with a driver's license bearing her new name, new picture and new gender identifier.

Last fall, Kroger transferred McGannon to another store on the East Side. Before cutting the going-away cake, she thanked co-workers for their understanding through her transition. They gave her a card with words of cheer: "You go, girl!" "Go get 'em, girl!"

For McGannon, the new assignment was a fresh start. A couple of weeks later, she was invited to speak at the transgender "lunch and learn." She replied: absolutely.

In the 19th floor conference room, Reuben Shaffer sat through the program impressed. A week later, he arrived unannounced at the East Side store and found McGannon in an aisle helping customers find cough drops and toothpaste.

Because of her willingness to appear at the lunch and learn, Shaffer told McGannon, history was made that day, and he was proud of her.

West Siders so love the Skyline Chili on Delhi Avenue that they take photographs of themselves wearing Skyline-Delhi T-shirts to Reds games, to the beach, to Europe, and blowups decorate the walls. William Mechley, 29, has managed the restaurant for two years, and for him, a perplexing day usually means opening a box of coney buns to find that they haven't been properly sliced.

So when he first met Ashton Dotson in November, Mechley figured he'd scored another good employee: "I got somebody that's going to care."

Then Dotson presented his driver's license, and Mechley stared at the F, confused. The only transgender person Mechley knew was an African-American with long pink nails who once worked the McDonald's drive-through nearby on Delhi Avenue. "Nicest person working there," Meckley remembered.

Dotson put away his driver's license and rubbed his hairless chin. He explained that once he was on the job and able to pay for treatment again, he would grow a beard, and his voice would deepen.

Mechley said he didn't think there would be a problem, and he'd call Dotson back with a start date. But Mechley wanted to talk to the owner first.

The job interview over, Dotson hopped into his aging minivan and pulled onto Delhi Avenue. He had grown up out West working with horses and doing other odd jobs. But he always was aware of the profound split between his body and his mind. The despair drove him close to suicide a dozen times.

During a brief try at college, Dotson discovered the word that explained why he had felt so different from others all his life.

"I started to call and talk to people about being transgender," said Dotson, 23. "I called my mother. 'Am I more like a daughter or a son?' She said, 'Both. Why?'"

Dotson started seeing a therapist, wearing a breast binder and taking testosterone. But spotty paychecks sometimes meant going without hormones for periods of time.

A little more than a year ago, hostility from relatives pushed Dotson to leave the West and join his mother and stepfather in Cincinnati. He first worked at a Frisch's, but a co-worker guessed Dotson's secret and got a little fixated, repeatedly asking: Did you grow a penis?

Dotson walked away from that job, lapsed on his hormones again. He couldn't scrape together enough money to change his name and the gender marker on his driver's license. He needed work. A friend pointed him to the Skyline in Delhi.

A few hours after Dotson left the job interview, Meckley called the store's owner. He explained that he had a great prospect for a hire, but he wanted to make sure it was OK.

Joey Lambrinides, 27, listened to his store manager wondering, what could this be?

Lambrinides is the great-grandson of Nicholas Lambrinides, the Greek immigrant who marketed the chili recipe and turned Skyline into a Cincinnati signature. Joey Lambrinides, who eats chili at least once a day, is taking over the Delhi restaurant from his father Joe.

Mechley explained to Lambrinides that the guy he'd just interviewed for a job was smart, quick and very polite. And ... he was transgender.

Lambrinides thought for a minute. "I finally said that I didn't think I needed to know the transgender part. I just needed to know that my manager was satisfied with the kind of person that Ashton was."

But since Lambrinides had never been in the situation before, he wanted to run the matter past his dad. Joe Sr.'s response: If he works hard and he's a good person, that's all that matters.

A week later, Ashton Dotson started at Skyline. At first, he kept his gender identity quiet. He felt the lingering gazes of employees and customers. He did not care. He had a job.

Then in late December, a transgender teenager in Warren County ran into traffic on Interstate 71, killing herself. Leelah Alcorn's social-media suicide note went global. But for Dotson, the pain was personal. If he hadn't moved to Cincinnati, he felt sure he would have died by his own hand.

On the evening of Saturday Jan. 10, Dotson joined about 500 people at a vigil for Alcorn at the Woodward Theater in Over-the-Rhine. He left the event with a purpose.

The next time he went to Skyline, he came out to his co-workers. No one was shocked or horrified. A few thanked him for saying something.

Then Dotson put on his Skyline-Delhi T-shirt, settled into the drive-through window, took a deep breath, toggled the foot pedal for the outside speaker and said to the next customer, "Welcome to Skyline, what can I get for you today?"

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

This chapter of the Civil Rights Act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce its provisions:

"It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."

The bars set by the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index

Surveying the Fortune 500, the Human Rights Campaign compiles responses and bases its grading on a company's position on these issues:

• Sexual orientation in non-discrimination policy

• Gender identity in non-discrimination policy

• Domestic partner health benefits

• Transgender-inclusive benefits

• Organizational competency practices

• Public commitment to the LGBT community