Lee v. DFS Group CA1/4

I. BACKGROUND

DFS is a Hong Kong-based retailer that operates duty free stores in the United States and other countries. Plaintiff, who is of Chinese descent and was born in Asia, began working in the San Francisco office of DFS in 1998 as a data processor.1 She became a merchandise assistant in 2006 and worked in that role in the men’s leather department until 2008, when she transferred to the Polo department. Her responsibilities

1 She had previously worked for DFS’s Hong Kong office from 1971 until 1982 as a senior control clerk, before leaving the company to care for her children.

1 included following up on correspondence requests and projects as directed by the merchandise manager, communicating with divisions and vendors, updating “assortment plan files,” generating reports, maintaining files and records, assisting managers and the vice president with meeting preparations, and interpreting emails and correcting errors. She also had responsibility to create “SKU’s,” or stock-keeping unit numbers, for the products sold in DFS’s stores, and to maintain an accurate database of SKU’s. SKU’s specifically identified each product in the stores’ inventory. The SKU system allowed…