Worker sues Honeywell alleging ethnicity, age slurs from supervisor

According to the filing, things turned almost immediately. The worker reported to a vice president and chief technology officer within the division, and the complaint alleges the supervisor began subjecting him to “severe and pervasive discriminatory behavior” based on his age and ethnicity shortly after his start date. The worker was born in 1978 and was over 40 at all relevant times.

The complaint details a string of alleged comments. According to the filing, the supervisor referred to the worker as a “buddhow” – a Hindi term for “old man” – and told him Honeywell should have hired one of the younger applicants because “[t]hey would have worked out much better than your sorry old ass.” The filing also alleges the supervisor said, “This is the problem with you Bengalis—you are just lazy assholes,” and openly called the worker “just an old, bald Bengali.”

A PIP five days after family leave

Over the Thanksgiving holiday in November 2025, the worker’s wife suffered a medical emergency requiring hospitalization and emergency surgery, the complaint says. The worker notified both his supervisor and an HR representative and was absent from December 1 to December 3, 2025. Management assured him there was no issue with taking time off, according to the filing.

Five days after his return, on December 8, 2025, the supervisor placed the worker on a performance improvement plan (PIP). The complaint alleges the PIP’s descriptions of performance deficiencies were “vague and often nonsensical” and gave the worker “limited information” about what the specific concerns or improvement metrics actually were.

On December 12, the worker submitted a written response to the PIP through the HR representative, flagging what the complaint describes as “numerous facts indicating that the PIP was motivated by underlying ethnicity and age based discriminatory animus” and that the performance concerns were pretextual – meaning they were a cover for the real motive. A week later, on December 19, he filed a formal ethics complaint with Honeywell’s HR department. The complaint alleges he then participated in an internal HR investigation interview on December 29 and provided additional supporting documents on January 5, 2026.