Abuse culture is still unfortunately alive & well in the workplace

Stories relating to inappropriate conduct demonstrated by those in power as well as the vilification & smearing of victims are some of the main reasons why the Me Too & Time’s Up movements were formed. As unfortunate as it is to see backfire against said movements due to bad actors using them for vindictive & malicious reasons, one cannot deny the importance they hold within our society. Because of them, numerous figures within the twisted world of Hollywood were finally being held to the fire in the way they should’ve been years ago & are continuing to be exposed til this day. However, there’s a major difference between reading up about them & living out those experiences for yourself. I happen to fit in both of these categories.

During March to July of 2024, I was a member of San Carlo, a restaurant located in Terminal 2 of Manchester Airport. In late July, I was punished for simply warning & venting to people about the misconduct of a former manager of mine, both alleged & confirmed, as well as cracking in a moment of weakness when told I couldn’t speak. This ranged from inappropriate comments relating to my body & sex life to being touchy feely—sometimes to the point of causing discomfort—& gaining gratification from it to taking pictures of certain parts of their body to allegedly having sex with employees to boost their ranks, the last of which was knowledge long before I became part of the business.

Now, were there things that I could’ve handled in a better way? Absolutely, but should that be held against me & used as an excuse to invalidate my own experiences? No. One can only hold onto confidentiality for a certain amount of time before the pressure becomes too much to deal with. Even though one of the newer managers tried to assure me that nothing would happen as long as he was there, my boundary of the offending manger not being in the same environment as me was being violated in a way that caused me great amounts of distress. On top of that, I also didn't felt comfortable lying about the circumstances surrounding a temporary transfer to a different location & the idea of people speculate on what was really going on. 

I expected the line manager to at least be understanding of my perspective & at first, it seemed to be that way. That was until there were some red flags in some of the questions she was asking, specifically about me witnessing sexual activity & making the insinuation that most of the things I was bringing light to were "all in my head". Then, I was confronted with a private message that admittedly, didn't look the best. This struck me as odd, as not only was it a month old, it was also a private message between myself & another colleague. Conversations between friends & colleagues are completely different to ones between employee & manager. Not only that, I made sure to use terms like "allegedly" & "apparently". Not once did I claim that what was being told to be was definitive fact.

At that moment, I realised that the idea of an "unbiased" investigation & me being able to finally lift all that dreaded weight off my chest through telling my side without judgement was a lie. From her increasingly aggressive intimidation tactics to the way she was attempting to gaslight & guilt-trip me to the ridiculous misusage of terms like "malicious", "gossip", "toxic", "vile", "bullying" & "harassing" to her extreme defensiveness over her competence, or lack there of, when it came to hiring people, I found out the hard way that this woman's supposed kindness was nothing short of a facade. It's made even worse that prior to this, I was made aware of the behaviour of a couple previous managers, one of whom has since been registered as a sex offender. She couldn't handle her reputation taking another hit hence why she she wasted no time with twisting the narrative & turning things on me whenever she saw the opportunity to do so. 

To make matters worse, I was informed s few days later from another manager through email about an online meeting that would take place between myself, them & another person. I knew based on the wording alone that they were only doing this to further their objective of smearing me as much as possible & low & behold, I was proven right. What disgusted me the most throughout the entire video call was how not only did the people who came to me about what was happening behind the scenes throw me under the bus in a sad attempt at saving their jobs, they also made it clear that didn't intend on looking into the grievances & told me it was all a "separate issue" even though it was the literal reason why this was even happening in the first place. The final nail in the coffin ultimately came in the form of my sacking. However, there was one detail during the final moments that stuck with me & that was how one of the managers involved “believed me” when it came to how I wasn’t the one who started the pair of initial claims, but had to terminate my contract due to “breaching confidentiality”.

It'd be an understatement to say that the way management chose to handle this was bad. This type of behaviour would get you fired. Never would anyone think that this acceptable, especially in a post-Me Too world, but much to my dismay, this type of mentality still exists. Everyone involved in this cover up has to live with themselves knowing what they were & continue to be complicit in. They know that the offending manager has been looking to be the head manager of a restaurant that's coincidentally opening next door to San Carlo & have allowed him the opportunity to target more people. On the flip side, 2 major incidents happened to occur shortly after I was fired. First, there was the worldwide IT incident that majorly impacted every scheduled flight. Secondly was a case of police brutality that resulted in widespread outrage, the dismissal of the offending officer & the victim being in critical condition. Some may call it a set of simple coincidences, I personally see it a hilariously twisted sense of irony.

In short, you can manipulate young people into shaping themselves in a way that acting _ to the point of unapproachability, you can be more hostile to people of colour than their white counterparts to the point of retention, you can refuse to deal with you anger problems in a healthy way & intimidate those around you, you can blow things way out of proportion because of a misunderstanding & make vile, misogynistic assumptions about you based on your side occupations, you can get away with direct racism towards a group of people with a slap on the wrist, you can be inappropriate towards your own employees & fellow managers, but don’t you dare speak out about abusive & predatory conduct to other people in a way that makes the company look bad.