Story 71
My manager at Citi (very visible MD in the U.S. within a critical professional advisory global function) would often call my peer female colleagues b!#che$ and c@nt$. Those exact words. And basically rip them constantly. On ZOOM calls. I never make waves. Never. I’m a senior, experienced professional myself who has been in the trenches for a long time, too. Nothing fazes me. But even I finally got uncomfortable. And I felt terrible because these ladies had no clue he was dragging them like this. He was their manager, as well. He’d smile and laugh with them, and then turn around and basically roll his eyes and complain viciously. They were good, hard workers. So was I. Strong performance reviews routinely, etc. I finally said something to him. Told him to ease off on the language. He giggled. Literally. And just kept it up. I went to the Ethics group. Anonymity promises were made. Again, never done that in my life. Nothing happened. Except he stopped talking to me almost overnight, and after that I was very obviously cut off from any management discussions, basically quarantined and sidelined by him. He took all my projects away almost immediately. Got very frosty in our rare dealings. Overnight. It was so obvious. Literally the worst outcome: his behavior continued, I got added to his attack perimeter. I left his team 6 mths later for another role at Citi….he, of course, got promoted further from there. And recently again I heard. Classic.