Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 857088.pdf

Citation: Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 857088.pdf
Jurisdiction: Washington (state)
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Original Source: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/857088.pdf ↗

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Immediately,” Fry listed,

1. Behaving impulsively and adding your commentary when it may
not be warranted or advisable. Know when to listen and keep
quiet.
2. Advising employees to seek legal advice.

According to Bittner, Fry made it clear to him that “if I did this again, I would be

fired.” Bittner also recalls that his direct supervisor, Tom Costello, “told me pretty

much I was going to get fired if I did it again.”

The day after Fry’s July 2018 meeting with Bittner, Costello began

documenting a list of performance issues with Bittner that would later “factor[] into”

Symetra’s decision to terminate him. Bittner soon began noticing “intense scrutiny

over just everything I did.” Bittner recalled that “I couldn’t be doing enough. . . .

[O]nce I hit goals they wanted me to hit, they asked me to do something different.”

-4-
For the current opinion, go to https://www.lexisnexis.com/clients/wareports/.
No. 85708-8-I

In February 2019, Bittner’s new skip-level manager, Freestone, put Bittner on a

60-day performance improvement plan (PIP) and told him that his “position is in

jeopardy” if he did not meet certain expectations relating to managing his sales

team, monitoring his sales metrics, and building his professional relationships.

Around this same time, Bittner’s managers were pressuring him to fire the

oldest member of his sales team, Chuck Jaggers. Freestone told Bittner that the

company “wanted to get younger members on the team in order to get more

production out of the market.” In early October 2019, Freestone and Costello

instructed Bittner to put Jaggers on a PIP and urge Jaggers to retire. Symetra

executives also moved a younger employee from Costello’s team to Bittner’s team