A ‘Period Dignity Officer’ Seemed Like a Good Idea. Until a Man Was Named.
I was in the middle of a career change and was about to embark on a new chapter in my life, so I was pretty stoked. I had just been promoted to a position as a senior manager in the travel division at the global advertising agency where I previously worked. Working on the same team as my friends and colleagues, I was excited to finally move to the next level and be working on even more exciting projects.
One month later, though, I was walking through a department store and found myself in a conversation with “the person who was going to be the person who would run things”. I asked how she was doing and she looked at me and said, “I just fired an employee, because he was having a bad day at work and told me to do it. He told me he was going to fire me, that’s why I’m still here.”
My co-worker was a woman in her 50s, who had a high school education. She had worked for a few years in another industry, in which she managed to get promoted several times and made it to her current position without having to spend a single day in-class. She spoke with a thick Boston accent, which I noticed was pronounced by people she had just fired and her replacement. Her first name was Heather and she was in her late 20s or early 30s. She was a good person, and she seemed to be putting up a good show at the time of her firing. She was clearly upset by what had happened, but I didn’t get the sense that she had actually meant to do it.
The first question I asked her was, “You made the decision to fire the employee for what?”
That was a loaded question. I had no idea what she was talking about, nor did I care. I didn’t know who she was and wasn’t interested in interviewing her personally. I had just asked her to address the fact that she, as any good human being, would know that firing someone for doing something she didn’t like
