An ex-employee of a Panda Express in Santa Clarita, California, is suing the company for sexual battery, sexual harassment and more regarding a training seminar in which participants were verbally berated, required to take off items of clothing, and hug each other while partially clothed. The training sessions, which were required in order to be considered for promotions, were done in partnership with Alive Seminars and Coaching Academy. Alive is also named in the suit. The complaint says workers were put in a room where the windows had been blocked off with dark cloth, where a trainer yelled at them and made them strip down to their underwear as a supposed trust-building exercise. The trainers allegedly stood guard when participants went to the bathroom, not allowing them to leave. “The atmosphere resembled less a self-improvement seminar than a site for off-the-books interrogation of terrorist suspects,” the complaint says.
