Last week, all the employees in my department had their end of year meetings. All employees with over 1 year experience were promoted from Associate Scientist to Senior Associate Scientist. My boss had been out of office, so I didn't have my meeting until this week, and no one shared their promotions.
My boss said she tried to get me promoted but the department director denied it based on what she claimed were “performance issues”. I was angry, but didn't feel like fighting it.
Then I found out I was the only one who didn't get promoted. People with 3 or 4 months less experience, whose teams had seen a 6-month long lull in project load while I was in the lab nearly everyday got promoted over me.
I confronted the director yesterday. I told him to point out exactly where and how my performance was less satisfactory than my peers. Each time I debunked him he would come back to the fact that I sometimes leave early or take last minute PTO. I have already informed my direct supervisor that I have a diagnosed medical condition (anxiety), and despite this I have only ever once had to ask to have someone else take one of my tests in order to meet all my deadlines.
We went round and round, him calling me undependable, me saying “show me how”, him bringing up the PTO and pretending it had totally thrown everyone on my team into chaos, and me explaining once again that it is the result of a diagnosed medical condition and that it had only once warranted shifting one analysis to another member of my team.
After being run through this (and being scoffed at) probably 5 or 6 times I finally slammed my fist down on his desk and said, “two weeks”. He told me to leave (presumably so I wouldn't tell others). I spent the rest of the day gathering evidence of discrimination and texting my co-workers (who once they found out were all apalled that I hadn't been promoted) to let them know exactly how it went down.
My only regret is that I didn't record the conversation. Either way, I'm going to contact attorneys and see if I can sue for discrimination based on disability.