The website for GDS International, an “events and publishing company” headquartered on Wall Street, contains a highly energetic and entertaining recruitment video, in which staff effusively praise the company for providing “continuing support” to employees through their “really innovative” training techniques. And those techniques are innovative indeed, a lawsuit filed by 26-year-old former GDS employee Lobna Abdelrehim reveals.
From the Post:
One was entitled “Using your SEX to Sell and the Boulevard to Bombshell Bitchiness,” which included tips such as “flirt to get what [you] want” and how they “can get away with being aggressive because its sexy,” the suit says. Salespeople were also often given “pep talk chants” by their managers, such as, “Stop being a f—ing p—-y” and, “Close the deal you c—” on the open sales floor, the suit says.
Now, okay. We get why that might be offensive to some people. But this company is headquartered in Wales. Those people drop the word “cunt” as often as Americans use the word “the”! The company has yet to respond to our calls for comment, but we have to wonder: Is it possible that they weren’t being sexist, they were just being British? And Lobna Abdelrehim, an American, didn’t understand them? Like, for instance, when she says she received a mass e-mail from her boss that wasn’t “respectful towards women” because it was entitled, “There’s Grass on the Wicket — It’s Time to Play Cricket”? Doesn’t she know that cricket is a — wait. Oh.
Publishing firm’s sexist environment ‘unfathomable’: lawsuit [NYP]
