ShareThisSACRAMENTO, Calif. - Michael Beaton worked security at Suzie's Adult Superstore and helped out on sales as needed at the sex shop.
But when he asked for a promotion to a full-time sales slot, Beaton claims, he was turned down because he isn't gay.
Now he's suing the store alleging discrimination.
"I was working steady in a full-time job and I'm thinking I'm doing good in life, and then, boom. I lost out on a substantial amount of income," Beaton, 30, said in an interview last Friday.
In his 13-page Sacramento Superior Court lawsuit filed April 15, Beaton charges that he was instructed to alter arcade stalls at the shop so its patrons could engage in illegal sex acts.
His suit also claims management forced him to pick up used hypodermic needles and condoms around the store.
"My client was tired of doing things that could endanger him and that he found out were illegal," said his attorney, Jordan T.L. Peters. "He refused to do it and we believe the environment became hostile to him after that."
David Battinger of Janra Enterprises, which owns Suzie's, declined comment.
Besides discrimination and retaliation, the suit accuses Suzie's and Janra of wrongful termination, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and assorted code violations.
Beaton is seeking general, punitive, compensatory and other damages.
In the suit, Beaton claims he was hired in March 2009 to work as a part-time security guard at Suzie's. He says he quickly moved up to full time and then covered for salespeople when they took lunch breaks. The suit claims that Beaton's supervisor told him he'd be good in a sales job. In the suit, Beaton says he scored high in a sales test, but didn't get the promotion.
A supervisor told him, "You're just not the gay boy that they're looking for," according to the lawsuit.
The suit states Beaton "learned that a gay man ... had been hired for the sales job."
The suit states that in October or November, Beaton was instructed by management to put doors on the video booths used by customers to view adult films, and later to further alter them to facilitate sexual activity. Arcade revenues then climbed from about $200 to $300 a day to more than $1,000, the suit claims.
Sacramento County sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Tim Curran said the booth sex is against the law and that there have been a lot of problems associated with Suzie's.
The suit claims Beaton was hurt on the job in January. In February, he told his boss he would no longer do cleaning or work on the booths to aid sexual activity.
The suit claims he was effectively fired in April when his boss told him "to go and clock out, that he was 'done,' " the suit states.
(E-mail reporter Andy Furillo at afurillo(at)sacbee.com. For other stories, visit www.scrippsnews.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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