Banker Fired for Being Too Sexy?

An ex-banker for Citibank claims she was fired for being too sexy.

At 5 foot 6 and 125 pounds, with a well defined figure, Debrahlee Lorenzana is a beautiful woman, reports the Village Voice. Beauty may have initially worked in her favour, scoring the stunning Puerto Rican/Italian a $70,000 a year banker's position with Citibank during the recession. (Lorenzana says a colleague told her the Citibank branch in New York City she worked at was "pretty much known for hiring pretty girls.")

But the once-positive comments soon turned into harassment, Lorenzana says.

After two months on the job things started going downhill, states the sexual harassment lawsuit Lorenzana launched against Citibank.

Around that time, the business banker's bosses informed her the way she dressed was too distracting for the workplace. She was banned from wearing turtle necks, pencil skirts, three-inch heels or fitted suits. Lorenzana pointed out to her managers that tellers at the bank frequently wore mini skirts and dresses more revealing than her outfits -- their response: "They said their body shapes were different from mine, and I drew too much attention," she told the Village Voice.

The 33-year-old single mom was furious. "Are you saying that just because I look this way genetically, that this should be a curse for me?"

Lorenzana admits she likes buying nice clothes, but says she does the majority of her shopping "where everyone else shops -- at Zara!" and couldn't afford to buy a completely new set of dowdier attire to satisfy the branch's top brass.

Her problems did not stop there, according to her lawsuit. Bankers need to complete training courses for tasks like filling in a loan application or opening a chequing account. In her lawsuit, Lorenzana says that despite frequently requesting these courses from her managers she was never given the training, forcing her to handover clients to other colleagues. Eventually her bosses told her to focus on bringing in new clients to the bank, which she said she did, but they were all passed onto her male colleagues.


Lorenzana soon received a letter stating she was on six months probation because she was behind on sales targets.

According to her lawsuit, Lorenzana contacted human resources to complain about her situation. She says she phoned HR representatives three or four times a day before an email she sent eventually elicited a response and a representative visited the branch. But after the visit, things only got worse.

Frustration came to a peak for Lorenzana when she and a male colleague were instructed to move some heavy files. Both the colleague and Lorenzana wore flip-flops for the day of lifting, but Lorenzana's suit alleges she was told by managers to remove hers and wear high heels while carting around the heavy boxes.

An angry email to a senior manager eventually got Lorenzana transferred to a different Citibank branch, but not as a business banker, she was now a telemarketer. Lorenzana began to complain about her demotion and after six months was called into her manager's office and fired. Lorenzana claims the manager brought up the wardrobe dispute at the other branch during her dismissal, but never her work ethic. In the end she says she was told she had to leave because she didn't fit into the culture at Citibank.

Because Lorenzana signed a mandatory-arbitration clause when she was employed, her case will be determined by an arbitrator.

Citibank has issued a statement on the lawsuit via Citi Public Affairs coordinator Natalie Riper, saying: "Ms. Lorenzana has chosen to make numerous unfounded accusations and inaccurate statements against Citibank and several of our employees. While we will not discuss the details of her case, we can say that her termination was solely performance-based and not at all related to her appearance or attire. We are confident that when all of the facts and documentation are presented, the claim will be dismissed."