Wrobison

Terrible hotel for LGBT guests and employes

Starwood Corporation prides (no pun intended) itself on a policy of diversity and inclusiveness recognizing that a safe workplace improves worker happiness and efficiency. Or does it? While this may be Starwood's corporate policy, in the field at the Sheraton New Orleans, which is under the direction of John Jiminez, they have chosen to follow Louisiana's more Laissez-Faire work practices rather than the corporate path outlined by Starwood policies and supported by thousands of gay employees worldwide. In the case of Christopher Wood, a 40 year old food and beverage manager at Starwood's Sheraton New Orleans property. Mr. Wood, a long-term and highly respected manager at the property, found out in March that his husband's mother was dying of Ovarian cancer. A short trip home to say goodbye was transformed from something necessary and beautiful into an ugly beast with fangs set on his career. Upon returning to duty, he was called into his superior's office and berated for dereliction. After all this wasn't his mother, right? Then came the bombshell that brings everything into tight focus, Mr. Hamada asks Mr. Wood, "You think you are a doctor?", and pronounces that, "In my day, we would have been fired for this.' Fast forward one month: only three months after a particularly glowing employee review, Christopher Wood was fired. It should be noted by the reader that this family leave was approved in advance. The questions hang in the air all by themselves, don't they? The writer does not seek to answer these questions, but rather to turn a spotlight of integrity on this property, and calls Starwood to action in defense of it's gay employees and to live up to its policies of inclusion. It is just good business, after all.