A recent lawsuit filed against Panda Express alleges humiliating rituals thinly disguised as team-building exercise, according to the Washington Post.

The plaintiff, a former cashier, said she signed up for a company "self-improvement seminar," but didn't expect that she'd have to strip down to her underwear in front of everyone and talk about her emotional vulnerabilities. She certainly did not expect to be ordered later to "hug it out" with a similarly stripped-down male employee who had broken down in tears during the ostensible trust exercise. And she most definitely did not expect people to be recording her on their phones when she did this. What's more, this was just one of many activities that she has described as humiliating, dehumanizing and abusive. For example, on the first day of the training, she was forced to sit in a room with blacked-out windows while a seminar supervisor loudly berated her for quite some time.

The plaintiff alleges that her manager told her that she would be considered for a promotion at the fast-food chain only if she signed up for the class. She also says that she borrowed hundreds of dollars from relatives to pay the admission fee.

Panda Express, for its part, is saying that it was unaware of the experiences that the plaintiff went through, and it blamed the company it had hired to put the seminar on for what happened. Further, it denied that taking the seminar was required for promotion. But the suit alleges that Panda Express knew exactly what was happening. Given the branded seminar materials at the event, as well as the requirement that participants present their company ID numbers to session leaders, she says that Panda Express had a closer relationship with the training company than it claims.