Because she is a woman
The chief fire officer (CFO) and assistant chief fire officer (ACFO) of Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service both sent messages suggesting they wanted to kill or harm female colleagues. In the WhatsApp messages – which have been leaked to ITV News – the senior officers also use the words “lazy cow”, “bint” and “useless” to refer to women in the service.
Several of the messages target Area Manager Jan Morris, who resigned from the service this year after reading what had been said about her. “She does the square root of fuck all,” the now ACFO Adam Matthews messaged in February last year. “I’ve got no loyalty to the lazy cow,” he added in March 2023. He then shared a cartoon GIF of someone being thrown under a bus.
It could be true that she didn’t do much, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok for male colleagues to call her sexist names amongst themselves. What kind of idiot puts that sort of thing in writing? People at work don’t always like each other and sometimes talk smack about each other, but leaving a trail is a whole different thing.
When Jan posted on LinkedIn the same month asking for help finding a company which made uniforms for female firefighters, ACFO Matthews shared the post on WhatsApp and wrote: “She is having a whinge on LinkedIn again, that’s the reason this gender shit pisses me off, constantly rammed down our throats.”
Gee, I wonder why she would have any interest in this gender shit.
Jan alleges that the men – who were both promoted shortly after sending some of the messages – wanted her to leave the service because she is a woman, despite the fact that she has an unblemished career spanning 26 years. Speaking exclusively to ITV News, she said: “I’ve lost my career. I’m stepping away from the job I’ve loved for 26 years because I’ve been made to feel so devalued and unwelcome.
“I can’t do it anymore. I can’t work with people who think it’s ok to do things like that. They don’t deserve their jobs, don’t deserve to be in those positions. This is not how I wanted to end my career in the fire and rescue service. I should be stepping out the door proud as punch not through the back door because people have forced me into it.”
These bros talk about other female colleagues in similar terms, like “fucking bint” and wanting to throw them out of windows.
Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service recently conducted an independent review of its culture. Responding to the publication of the report just a few weeks ago, Mr Hardiman wrote: “It did not find a toxic culture and there was no evidence of current discriminatory practices and/or behaviours.”
At the time of his statement, ITV News understands that the CFO knew about most – if not all – of the message messages.
So he straight-up lied then. That’s interesting.
We shared our findings with the chairwoman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Dame Diana Johnson MP, who is currently conducting an inquiry into the culture of the fire and rescue sector, following investigations by ITV News into multiple fire services.
She said: “We know leadership is really important in the fire and rescue service and to see leaders writing things like that about female fire fighters is very shocking. The idea has been put forward that this is a ‘few bad apples’, but actually what this is pointing to is much more about the general culture of those in leadership positions. Reading those messages, I’m worried a great deal what the culture is like in that fire service.”
It ain’t cuddly.
Somewhat tangential, but:
Lawyers get to read some interesting stuff that gets produced in discovery, so I could tell you some stories. Except that I can’t.
Emails aren’t quite the gold mine that they were back in the 1990s and 2000s, when people would routinely write things that they would never dare put in an interoffice memo. A lot of that talk has moved to texts and messaging apps, as in this story.
Anyway, there’s a recent story that I have no involvement in that is a classic case of “what were these people thinking” by people who really, really, really should have known better. One part of the story is here, but I’ll try to summarize:
A couple of partners at a major Los Angeles firm — including one who headed its employment practice, i.e. a guy who spends his life advising and defending companies accused of discrimination and harassment and knows exactly how damaging stupid emails can be — for years made racist, sexist, and homophobic comments in their work emails to each other.
Of course, the immorality and stupidity isn’t confined to the two emailers. The reason this story came to light was because the two lawyers left the firm and started up a rival practice, taking many of the first firm’s attorneys (and, presumably, clients) with them. Original firm is of course pissed off at this, as they always are, and so elects to torch the departing attorneys’ reputations by releasing these emails. This does in fact succeed in sabotaging the infant splinter firm, but people began to ask the obvious questions like “wait, how long have you known about these assholes, and you only (pretended to) care when they LEFT your firm?” Original firm has since been dumped by multiple clients, and is being sued by several former employees for discrimination.
I don’t call that one bit tangential!
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What an absolute bitch, trying to find uniforms that actually fit women.