Jos. A. Bank Clothiers Sexual Harrassment, Discrimination of All Protected Classes, Gender Discrimination, Slander and Libel, Verbal Abuse Peoria Illinois

I am an employee of Jos A Bank in Peoria,IL. I have been employed by them since October of 2007 and my last day with this company is Thursday August 14th, 2008.
I am writing this report to thwart anyone thinking about applying for employment at ANY Jos A Bank location.
I was repeatedly victimized by Disability Discrimination (I am pregnant), Gender Discrimination (obviously I am a woman), Sexual Harrassment (lewd comments, "accidental" brush ups, unwanted touching) Verbal Abuse (being called worthless, lazy, stupid, fat) and just general incompetance by all levels of management of the company.
Up until May of 2008 I had no problem with the company. There were some minor issues, mainly the low pay and less than ideal hours, but they were liveable. Then in May of 2008, the store manager that I had been working with since the start of my employment got "demoted" and a new store manager stepped in. Kerry Ballard took over as resident store manager.
Mr. Ballard (as far as I know) had worked in retail and customer service for many years before and should have been well versed in the practices of professionalism.
The first week or so was fine, Kerry seemed a little off but he was receptive to criticism and training practices.
In the coming weeks, a problem began to develop. Kerry showed his true colors more and more as time went on. As our relationship developed, he started calling the other female employee (Erin) lazy, fat, and worthless behind her back. One day he even threw a box at her. She called the Regional Manager for Southern Illinois Indiana and Kentucky region (SLINKY), Justin Vessley, to complain and he (more or less) said that no matter what Kerry Ballard did, our Regional Manager was going to turn his back and side with the new employee. That was her first attempt to contact upper management (the first of many) and the problem not addressed.
At that time, I had no issues with Kerry other than Erin's poor treatment. The following week after Erin contacted Justin, Kerry retaliated against Erin by cutting down her hours for the week because she was a whistle-blower for his bad behavior. He started berating her for going above his head (after she tried talking to him but all he did was yell) and told her that she was worthless. She called Justin again, and he (again) told her that he was going to do nothing. She left that day and came back a couple days later on the busiest business day of the year and Kerry started in on her and told her that she should just quit, so she turned in her keys to the store and quit.
After Erin left, Kerry automatically switched his abuse in my direction. I tried to talk to Justin at once and like Erin, I was ignored because Kerry brought in better sales figures, which is only a direct result to me running the store because I was the only employee that was there that had more than a weeks experiance (he treated everyone else so poorly that they quit).
I was 7 months pregnant when Kerry started and I worked just as hard, if not harder, than any other employees there. I trained all the new employees, including the store manager, to the standards that was expected of me.
As time went on, it got increasingly harder for me to work the long hours I had been so when another manager was trained (Zeena) I requested that my hours be bumped to part time. At first, Kerry was okay with it but as time went on he started calling me lazy to all the other employees.
The name-calling never happend to me, just behind my back. He continued to bad-mouth me to other employees and undermine my authority as the acting Assistant Manager. He also started telling everyone that he would have fired me if I wasnt pregnant because of my need to take breaks every once in a while to rest my ridiculously swollen feet. Keep in mind, I never got scolded for anything outright to my face and he never said anything to me about my behavior or breaks. The other employees started telling me about all the malicious and slanderous names I had been called over time, and I confronted him about it. He said everyone was lying and that I was unprofessional for talking to him about it. (The next day he confronted the same employees that told me about the name-calling and gave them verbal warnings that if he heard that what he said got back to me again he was going to write them up).
After that, it only got worse. I then tried to contact Justin for the second time and he maintained that nothing was wrong with the way he was treating me and said that he would do nothing.
The other employees would come and tell me everyday about something new that he had said about me.
The last straw came when one day kerry literally said "If she wasnt pregnant, I would choke the life out of her". Zeena felt that she had been sexually harrassed to the point of contacting upper management (Justin) and made the same phone call I had made twice before, except when she called Justin launched a full out investigation into Kerry Ballard's behavior. I called Justin again (for the third time) and left him a message that I wanted to talk to him, and never got a call back. Two days later, Justin came to the store (on a morning that I wasnt working) and interviewed Zeena about her sexual harrassment, another employee named Ricky about his sexual orientation discrimination, and Susie about her age discrimination, all at the hands of Kerry Ballard. I arrived at the store while Justin was interviewing Susie and after he was done interviewing everyone but me, he left and said he didnt want to talk about it anymore. That was four days ago and he has made numerous phone calls to Zeena and has not once tried to talk to me about my treatment.
I was blatantly ignored after numerous attempts to contact my regional manager about Kerry's bad behavior. I think this exhibits discrimination and failure to handle a very bad situation of abuse and harassment. I plan on filing a complaint with the EEOC and contacting a lawyer about my case. I hope this goes to the right people and dissuades anyone from applying to a company that not only ignores merited complaints but condones unlawful treatment of protected classes. Thank You and sorry for the lengthiness of this report.

Ariel
Peoria, Illinois
U.S.A.