Two more that are closely related:
They fired the admin in our training department, when she came in for her final check she had the following discussion with HR:
Fired: What about my other check
HR: What other check?
Fired: The one I get from HotelY for having customers stay there.
HR: (finally a smart one in our company) I'm not sure, tell me who else gets these checks and I'll find out for you.
They ended up firing our training manager.
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I work in a primarily male industry, it involves climbing around a lot of dirty industrial equipment, there just aren't a lot of women in the field.
We had one woman, Pam, in our services organization, and she went out of her way to try and be offended, she knew she was the only woman and really tried to take advantage of it. I had heard horror stories about her, she didn't show up at a customer site one day because "It was her time of the month and her steel toes didn't fit her swollen feet"; she didn't call anyone, she just didn't show up.
She was involved on a pretty major project with me, I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, ignoring everything I had heard. She shows up the first week on the project and instead of staying at the hotel the rest of team is staying at, where we had negotiated a really good rate, she stays at a nearby bed and breakfast. We would work 9 hours M-T and then a half day on Friday and drive home (300 miles for me). Pam decided that she didn't like the hours we were working, so instead came in 2 hours later, and left 2 hours later. We were working in a conference room do database development for the customer, there were 4 of us in the room, three of us were positioned with our backs to the center of the room, so you could see what we were doing. Pam was sitting at the edge of the table with her back to the corner of the room, so we couldn't see what she was doing on her computer. We were each given a portion of work we were expected to complete that week. Friday at 11:00, after, I kid you not, painting her fingernails, Pam announces she was only able to finish a portion of her work, looking at it, she pretty much did nothing.
The project manager (PM) is irate, I stay the weekend to keep the project on schedule, and the next week (Pam is not back, the PM made sure of that) the PM asks the customer for the access times of Pam, we all had electronic ID cards to access the plant. Even though Pam came in 2 hours after us, she would leave 15 minutes after we did.
All of this was rolled up and sent to our manager and Pam was not fired for another 6 months. Why? My boss explained it too me over a couple of beers one night. The aforementioned training manager was the only African American in our group and Pam was the only woman; he said that if in the first six months in his position he fired the only black and the only woman he would be crucified in our company.
