Retaliation and the Esco— Project Coordinator
Why I will Never Condemn People Who Choose to Work in the Adult Industry (3)
In September of 2019, I was hired as an IT Project Coordinator contractor by a third-party staffing company (RR), to work for a small company (SS), that was contracting with a larger company (TT), that was contracting with a government agency for the development of a health care system.
If that sounds confusing, it’s because it was, and it’s part of the reason I didn’t pursue legal action in the end.
This time, I wasn’t met with any weird racial comments in my first week, but I did end up in two obnoxious situations. The first occurred in the middle of the week. TT was phasing out its government-sanctioned equipment, and there was a mix of tech from different systems. I had two different emails and two different calendars. I had a meeting with the government client, so I went to that one. After I came out, I noticed missed calls on my phone. It turns out that my calendars were not synced, and there was another meeting in the time slot I had with the government. This was an introductory meeting with a man whom I later found out was the HR director at SS. This man, we’ll call him Grimm, was not the type of man who should ever be anywhere near power. I called him back and explained the situation with the calendars. He was angry and went on about how this was a “bad sign for my first week” and how I should have rescheduled. He wouldn’t accept any apology on my part, so I just went quiet. When he was done ranting, he asked if I had any questions. I just said “no”. He got angry about that, too. How dare I not have any questions for him? I just let him continue ranting until he was done, and I didn’t hear from him again for a while.
The second incident happened around lunchtime on the Friday of my first week. I was asked out to lunch by a male co-worker, Daryl. I politely declined, but it became evident that he had a one-sided interest that would become a nuisance.
Before we get to that nuisance, another few weeks pass. This other male coworker, Keith at the company TT, just got back from vacation. He came to sit with me in the middle of a large planning event and asked if I was “aloof or shy” and told me I “don’t look people in the eye”. This was really weird. I’m a project coordinator. I’m up to my arse in meetings, especially as a new hire. I had only been at the job three or four weeks at this point, and he hadn’t been around, so I don’t even know how he’d come to that conclusion.
I told him, “What are you talking about? I do talk to people and look them in the eye.” Needless to say, I sat and looked him in the eye the entire time he sat across from me, talking about himself, before he eventually made an awkward exit.
I posted online about this incident. Some people suggested he was attempting to flirt. This guy was not single; he had a girlfriend. At the next planning event, we had a 1920s flapper theme, so I dressed up and wore makeup (which no one had ever seen me in). He said, “I knew you’d kill it”. Weird thing to say to a woman you don’t know when you have a girlfriend.
At this same flapper-themed event, one of the program managers I regularly work with, Serena, wanted to take a picture of another program manager and me. The other program manager didn’t want to get into the picture with me and said, “I can’t compete with that”. We both look at her, and I’m thinking, “It’s not a competition,” but whatever. Serena just took a picture of me alone.
Getting back to Daryl, who asked me out to lunch…. At this point, I’m going about my business and just attending meetings. Except for my first week, my schedule is three days in the office. I spent most of my time on client sites for the government, so I wasn’t at TT’s offices very often. Well, Daryl took this personally and sent his IT support coworker over one day to ask me if I was mad at him. I was dumbstruck. I don’t know this guy. I’m focused on my job and all these damn meetings. I never think about him, but apparently, he has this one-sided infatuation, so he thinks I’m mad at him because I’m not entertaining his company. He later asks me this himself. I tell him that I’m always in meetings, so how could I possibly be upset? As a side note, I was having a lot of laptop issues. Daryl is in IT support. It crossed my mind, “What if this guy is tampering with my machine just so that I have to keep seeing him?” But that’s just speculation. Thankfully, he left the company.
I don’t know what it is, but these guys seem to think I exist to be their office escort, smiling and entertaining them. I also had a male government lead ask me why I wasn’t smiling in one of the meetings and if I was upset. It was just so irritating. Daryl, Keith, and now this government lead. I’m not getting this from the women, just the men. I’ve never concerned myself with what other people do with their facial expressions. I have a natural pout; my neutral face is never going to look like I’m smiling.
Moving on, we get to the part where I kept being referred to by my male coworker’s name during meetings. My project management team consists of three people. A white man, an Asian woman, and me, a mixed (B&W) woman. The other woman, Phyllis, was never credited with the work I do. But Avery, the guy, was. This happened often when I was facilitating a meeting. Zoom has my name. “So and so is sharing their screen”, yet I’m referred to as Avery. I eventually correct them after it keeps happening, and Avery, to his credit, steps in and reiterates that I’m the one facilitating the meeting.
I did end up frustrated enough that I contacted HR for advice. I knew HR was not there for advice or the worker. Certainly not a contractor. So I typed a vague email that just mentioned a concern I want to talk about, with no explicit details about what’s going on. But this was to TT’s HR when it was supposed to be company SS. Grimm. As we established before, Grimm at SS is not the type of guy who should be in a position of power. In an in-person lunch meet & greet with leadership at SS, Grimm introduced himself as the HR Director, and the entire time he was looking at me with this impish, Chucky-like smile as if to say, “Yep, if you wanted to complain about that inappropriate phone conversation we had during your first week, well, I’m the HR Director.”
So this vague email is pushed his way. He calls me. I immediately decline to speak about the issue and say that it’s not a concern anymore. Grimm, being Grimm, rants about my not wanting to speak to him and not trusting him. Like, gee, I wonder why. I just stay quiet and let him rant. The next time I spoke to him was after my contract position was dissolved.
Now, how did that happen?
Well, we got a new manager, and prior to my next position as an analyst, he was the worst boss I’d ever had. I’m on my 12th job at this point. I’ve liked most of my bosses and consider myself lucky in that regard, but most of my job experiences are based on part-time and seasonal work. This new boss, Peter, doesn’t really speak to Phyllis or me and mostly just associates with Avery. But he does give Avery trouble. Avery is in the Army Reserves; he has to step away from work if he gets called in. Peter makes an issue out of this and tells Avery that he needs to tell him in advance about taking time off as if he’s taking a vacation, when that simply isn’t how reserve duty works.
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There was also an instance where Peter told me to falsify my time sheet records. I don’t think he understood how my time sheets worked as a contractor, but instead of contacting someone for clarity, he just told me to change hours I had already worked. I sent an email to TT and copied RR about this concern. They resolved the issue. Six months pass with Peter, and he still doesn’t seem to understand the work, and asks questions as if it’s his first day. The government program managers are complaining about him. My teammates are complaining about him. For example, he had a meeting he was responsible for facilitating, yet for some reason, he didn’t want to own the calendar invite, so someone else owns his meeting invites for no apparent reason. Areas where he’s supposed to take responsibility, he leans on Avery instead. It’s like having a kid fresh out of high school as a boss versus a manager with the authority to lead.
One day, Avery tells Phyllis and me that Peter hired our newest team member because he thought “they’d get along with Serena since they’re the same ethnicity”(which they weren’t, but they’re both brown, so that was enough for him to assume).
To admit to this is flat-out illegal, but apparently, he’s untouchable. My two coworkers end up writing complaints against him. They urged me to do the same. Now, I’m a contractor; they aren’t. They were direct employees with company TT. In hindsight, I should have taken my concerns up with RR. Instead, I wrote to the same TT lead as Avery and Phyllis. All three of us were called into a Zoom meeting a few weeks later. We were told that the government liked Peter and that they were keeping him. Despite multiple instances of illegal behavior on his part. Despite constant Slack messages from Serena complaining about how incompetent he is. They kept him, for the time being.
After we were informed that he would stay on, he became more obnoxious. There was a moment where Peter tried his hand at tone policing. It was so absurd that I had forgotten about it entirely until I found the files on my computer:
Two weeks after the Zoom meeting, I was informed that my position was no longer needed. This was obvious retaliation since I made the complaint. My two (now former) co-workers were worried about their jobs and backed down. Avery’s wife said, “Who the hell does this guy know?”
Unlike my previous job, this time, I wanted to fight. Phyllis said her relative knew a legal company that could help me. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. I wrote up my complaint for a consultation meeting that cost several hundred dollars. My meeting with the legal consultant was on Thursday. They told me to give the information to them before then. I turned it in on Monday. When I met with the legal consultant, he admitted that he hadn’t read anything I provided. What followed was a frustrating recounting of what occurred throughout the job. During this, I realized that as a contractor with multiple companies in the barrel, I wasn’t entirely sure who I was up against. The government agency? TT? I didn’t know. The consultant wanted to pursue a racism claim. I was hesitant. For me, it was the sexism that was the worst. Still, it could have been the former or both. The thing is, sexism is widespread. Per the study I often cite, most people are biased against women. It’s normalized, so despite it being more truthful in my situation, it’s not as “strong” a case due to the general population’s attitude towards women. I quit pursuing a legal case.
I left a scathing review for the law firm. It received a large amount of affirmative reactions, as far as Google reviews go, which told me that a fair number of people felt screwed over by this law firm. After that, the air went out of me, and I no longer had the will to fight (and yeah, I know the injustice system depends on people giving up).
I got one last call from Grimm. As I’ve been recalling this work experience, I realized that, given my position had already been dissolved, Grimm was probably out of line making this last call to me. His company didn’t pay me. That was the staffing company RR. He had no reason to call me.
He yelled as usual, but this time, I didn’t stay quiet. I matched his tone and expressed my frustration over Peter’s incompetence and bigotry. Over his inappropriate behavior as an HR Director. The weirdest part was that while Grimm was yelling at me, he also paid me a compliment. He said, “You know you really impressed a lot of people,” albeit angrily.
It’s funny thinking about it now. I told my sister at the time, “I think he gets off on yelling at people”. One of the last things he said was “Who do you think you are?” As if to say, “How dare you expect basic human decency? How dare you not sit still as a quiet little contractor and just take my treatment? Take Peter’s treatment.”
I tried to leave a Glassdoor review for his company, not naming any names, but Grimm's company was small, so there were only so many leaders my review could apply to. They wouldn’t publish it.
Phyllis informed me eight months later via text that they got rid of Peter once the contract officially ended, but not before they got rid of me in retaliation for lodging a complaint.
Phyllis left three months after I did. When my position was dissolved in 2020, five days before Christmas, I had multiple government program managers texting me to ask what had happened. They had been completely blindsided. As Grimm said, I had impressed a lot of people, so they contacted me asking why I was no longer there. As a project coordinator, I focused on my work. I didn’t entertain work romance and just wanted to do a good job, be judged on my merit, and be treated with basic decency.
On a somewhat positive note, the recruiter from RR, who got me the project coordinator role, reached out in 2023 and asked if I needed a job. I told him that I was on the West Coast now, but he still offered to work with me if I wanted. I ended up referring him to my friend back on the East Coast. It was nice to find out that lodging the complaint against a bad boss didn’t completely burn a bridge.
…And so we circle back around to my analyst position, where the boss I ended up with turned out to be worse than Peter.
Thank you for reading. This is the third publication in the series, “Why I will Never Condemn People Who Choose to Work in the Adult Industry”.
