A long time ago in 2013 the office was in some turmoil as we were due to move buildings the next day. Whilst normal work duties continued, desks were empty and large boxes were everywhere. As was customary at the time, due to the slightest disruption of equilibrium everyone hit the pub that lunch time. It was also Thursday. It was also December. This meant it was basically Spring Break without the funnels and beer pong. If there was one thing you could say about the people who worked in the media side of adverting it was that they had a wonderful sense of occasion. Christmas (ie December and some of November), St Patricks Day, Friday, The Summer, Pancake Day and someone you’d never met before’s birthday, were all seen as perfectly good reasons to extend lunch (sometimes indefinitely) to celebrate properly.
Tom had asked to speak to me in private. I’d worked with him for years and sat opposite him but this had never happened before. He wasn’t the “quick chat” type.
Turns out someone from my team had made a complaint to him about someone in his team. This was not Tom’s world. A fantastic operator but with no interest in the softer side of management this was likely to be an irritating distraction for him. That said – he seemed oddly engaged with proceedings.
Turns out that a young woman in my team (who’s confidence and maturity completely defied her youth) had complained that a not young man in his team (who’s shyness and immaturity completely defied his years) had slapped her on the arse while she was putting something into a box. This took her by no little surprise because she was in an office, it wasn’t the 1970s and we weren’t in a Carry On film.
She had emailed me to let me know she wanted to speak to me but Tom had got there first.
Tom explained the crime. We sat together in puzzled silence.
“Was it a forehand or a backhand?” I eventually asked. I’m still not 100% sure why that was important but I was pleased to see Tom nodding grimly while confirming he didn’t know thus confirming it was a relevant detail. We decided the best thing we could do was cross-examine the defendant to establish the facts.
We summoned the slightly drunk accused in for a chat. He clearly had no idea what this was about even though the crime was committed less than 20 minutes ago.
We decided on bad cop bad cop and gave him the Sweeney treatment.
The first thing that became clear was that he had no intension of denying it or claiming it was an accident. His entire defence rested on two key points. One explained motive. One offered mitigation.
- (Motive) She was bent over.
- (Mitigation) He didn’t take a run up.
His defence needed work. While both points were left unchallenged the jury was still ready to convict. Confused he left the meeting wondering what had become of the world when women take offense at an unsolicited public arse slap. I mean she was bent over. She really was.
We still weren’t quite sure whether we needed to bollock him, fire him or slap him back so feeling more Judy than Dredd we rode back into Mega City One hoping that this shit would blow over. However the accused had another surprise for us.
His defence strategy moved from casual admission with a reliance on loopholes to an appeal for clemency. A bold switch and in a move that might of worked for a cannier operator he decided to email a cack-handed apology which was slightly more invasive than the slap itself. The surprisingly long email narrated the full story complete with motive (You were bent over) and mitigation (I didn’t take a run up) and was signed off with assurances it wouldn’t happen again. Weirdly and hilariously he had copied Tom and me. Weirdly and creepily he had written it while sat opposite his victim and trying to catch her eye with sloppy, can you forgive me, Benny Hill, grin.
Tom and I still had the challenge of coming up with a suitable punishment. We had a meeting with HR first thing the next day which afforded me the time to canvas opinion from several unconnected female friends I happened to be meeting that evening. This was not helpful as their hypothetical reactions to a similar offence ranged from “nothing” to “he’d be fired by the end of the day”. It also became clear from my female advisors that how attractive he was played quite a large role in assessing the severity of the crime. Sadly this loophole offered little in the way of hope for the accused.
HR couldn’t help. There was no precedent and he’d apologised. The expert’s view was that an official warning was disproportionate. That said, he had only been with the company a couple of weeks so he was completely fair game and we could fire him if we wanted to. Frustratingly this put the onus back on us to make a decision which was something we were desperate to avoid.
Pressure was mounting because the plaintiff who was not known for her discretion had told most of the English speaking world and only Benny was unaware of his new infamy. If news reached certain people at the top of our organisation, Tom and I could well be in just as much shit as he was due to the lack of public flogging. We’d actually considered that as some kind of restorative justice (with or without run up – plaintiff’s choice) but HR stepped in with the wise logic drop that that was probably not cool. Shitballs! Sentencing was due and the reluctant judges were well out of their comfort zone.
Time was short but an unlikely hero saved the day. Benny stepped in, bravely took one for the team and completely fucked up something else and Tom fired him for that. Everyone was a winner. Speaking of which, it was a forehand.
Diaries Of Media 