After two or three phone interviews with Walmart, they hired me for a clerical position at a distribution center. It would have paid about $19 an hour. I got an offer letter, and the company’s career center showed I’d been scheduled for orientation a couple of weeks later. But before that date came, I got a notification that they’d be moving forward with other candidates. I’d “failed” the background check.
I live in Georgia, which like most states prohibits hiring managers from asking about your criminal-legal history until after they’ve given you a job offer. That offer can be conditional on the results of a background check, or a drug test, or what have you. I’d told the Walmart interviewers that I’d been convicted of a felony and that I was on the sex offender registry. And they were the first of many to reply that it’d be fine.
Some were slick about it. A Hyundai dealership, for example, didn’t send me an offer letter, but told me I’d get one as soon as the background check came back, and that my record would be no problem. Then they ghosted me. But at others, the process got a lot further along.
TTEC, a third-party tech support company, hired me as a luxury retail customer support specialist. I made sure they knew in no uncertain terms that I had done sex work, been in prison and was in compliance with the restrictions currently imposed on me by the sex offender registry.
I was told that would be no problem, they wanted to move forward even though the background check hadn’t come in yet. I was given my schedule, system log-ins, training guides, everything, but before I even started I was again terminated for “failing” the background check. Then for the next two weeks I kept getting emails about my onboarding.
Conditional job offers are common, and employers are allowed to rescind those offers based solely on the results. But this position was remote; my only contact with customers would have been over the phone. I’m bilingual with sparkling interpersonal skills. If the registry disqualifies me from working from home, where am I supposed to work from?
I started the job on Monday. I “failed” the background check on Tuesday.
A friend told me his wife, a Sally Beauty store manager, had recently lost her assistant store manager and was looking to hire a new one. That interview went great. She and I hit it off, we had things in common, we even had a personal moment where we both teared up about the political attacks on trans people. When I explained my criminal-legal history she said as long as I didn’t have any convictions for shoplifting or fraud or things like that, it’d be no problem.
The next round interview with a different manager went similarly. When I got my offer letter, I reminded them they were going to see complications on the background check. Even though it hadn’t come through yet, they wanted to move forward. They’d said that I wouldn’t even show up in the scheduling system until the background check cleared, so a few days later when I did show up in the system, they asked if I could start Monday. None of us had gotten any update on the background check itself, but they said we should think positive and get going in the meantime. So I did start the job on Monday. I “failed” the background check on Tuesday.
After a notice of adverse action like this you have a week to contest the findings if they’re inaccurate, or contextualize them with evidence of your rehabilitation. This job had a lot of potential for advancement, and it felt like a path forward was finally opening up for me. So I sent letters of support and links to my professional work, explained every detail of my conviction and basically asked them not to judge me for being on the registry. And for the next week I kept going to work.
But the following Tuesday, when I got to the store that morning nobody said a word to me. After I clocked in the store manager came over and said I had to leave the premises; I’d been terminated, effective immediately. But she still sat with me for a moment and let me cry. I hate to say it, but honestly in that moment I missed prison.
This company was willing to disregard the background check—when the district attorney stepped in.
When someone runs a background check on you, you’re entitled to a copy. I’ve read all of mine, and none of them have mentioned my actual conviction. They always just say that a database showed I’m registered as a sex offender, and that the source used for the search was my name and my address. No one even needed confirmation that my felony record had nothing to do with shoplifting or fraud in order to fire me from a retail job; only that I’m on the sex offender registry.
It’s hard to make an argument that the system truly wants people on the registry to rejoin society after prison. The Sally Beauty managers even did a phone call with HR where they went to bat for me. They wanted me to work there, I wanted me to work there, I was already doing the job that my record supposedly made me unfit to do, but none of that mattered.
Surge Staffing hired me as a workforce manager position based just across the Alabama state line. During the first interview I didn’t get into all the details—I just said that I’d gotten into trouble when I was younger, and it was kind of serious, and it had been creating hurdles for me in my professional trajectory.
But when I got my offer letter, I called the woman who’d sent it and laid it all out—how I’d grown up in the sex work industry, how I was arrested at 19, that I’d spent most of my adult life in prison, that I was on parole, that I was on the registry, and that I really wanted this job but needed to know if my background was going to be a problem. And for a moment it seemed like it wouldn’t be.
They escalated the issue to a national HR manager, and at that level agreed to disregard the background check—when the district attorney stepped in to notify them that my employment would be in violation of the registry distance restrictions.
My contact at the company said they’d find me something in the district where I currently live, and it probably wouldn’t pay as well but I’d be able to work my way up; they’d get back to me with the details in a day or so. And that was the last I heard from them.
Image via City of Philadelphia
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