Heads up, companies: when a woman makes a complaint about the misogynist behaviour of a male employee, take her seriously.
Sadly, this isn't what happened when a woman complained to a UK train company about the dismissive and patronising conduct of one of their train conductors. Instead, her complaint was met with a snarky and completely tone deaf response.
Emily Lucinda Cole tweeted a complaint to Virgin Trains East Coast that an older male train manager dismissed her in a "patronising" way, calling her "honey."
When virgin trains mess up and the older male train manager in the resulting conversation dismisses you with that hideously patronising word women shudder at in contexts such as these: "honey" @virgin_trainsEC.
— Emily Lucinda Cole (@EmilyLucindaRC) January 2, 2018
But, the social media manager behind the Virgin Trains Twitter account chose to respond with more patronising language.
"Sorry for the mess up Emily, would you prefer "pet" or "love" next time?" they wrote, before signing off with the initials "MS."
Sorry for the mess up Emily, would you prefer "pet" or "love" next time? ^MS
— Virgin Trains EC (@Virgin_TrainsEC) January 2, 2018
Cole tweeted a screenshot of the tweets, stating that she was "stunned" at the response.
"Wonderful to see that @virgin_trainsEC take complaints of rude and misogynistic behaviour seriously. Stunned," wrote Cole.
Wonderful to see that @virgin_trainsEC take complaints of rude and misogynistic behaviour seriously. Stunned. @EverydaySexism @VirginTrains pic.twitter.com/q26EdDoegR
— Emily Lucinda Cole (@EmilyLucindaRC) January 2, 2018
The tweet by "MS" was later deleted, and Virgin Trains posted an apology stating that they deleted the tweeted to "avoid causing more offence."
We apologise unreservedly for this tweet and any offence that it may have caused. To avoid causing more offence we have deleted the original post.
— Virgin Trains EC (@Virgin_TrainsEC) January 2, 2018
But the initial tone-deaf response didn't go unnoticed on Twitter.
Wow. Not sure old fashioned unfunny sexism is a smart way to reply to a customer complaint @Virgin_TrainsEC Especially when the taxpayer is going to have bail you out for being crap. Think an apology to @EmilyLucindaRC is in order. https://t.co/i75FhY7siS
— Ayesha Hazarika (@ayeshahazarika) January 2, 2018
There’s quirky social media customer service and then there’s condescending #everydaysexism customer service… @Virgin_TrainsEC pic.twitter.com/5Tht26nMtm
— Claire Phipps (@Claire_Phipps) January 2, 2018
Uh, @Virgin_TrainsEC, did you miss that bit of 2017 where tolerance for sexist shit reached an all time low? pic.twitter.com/HEWCyW1J4A
— Kate Devlin (@drkatedevlin) January 2, 2018
The thing that annoys me most about that response is the implication that we’re actually dumb enough not to know that’s what’s up, rather than to have made the calculation, given they screw us either way, not to be silent.
— Caroline Criado Perez (@CCriadoPerez) January 2, 2018
So instead of giving good customer service, you thought it would be best to mimick the behaviour being complained about? Does the whole company enjoy demeaning women or just you two?
— robyn (@nervous_onion) January 2, 2018
Holy Crap, really @Virgin_TrainsEC
Wow, just Wow!
I hope you let MS use the flux capacitor to go back to 1955 where their comments might be considered normal🤦🏼♀️
But seriously, I hope you have apologised and stopped MS tweeting!#wow #badcustomerservice https://t.co/zew8013OOs— Faye Foster (@lovelyFayFoster) January 2, 2018
Is sexism your default response to complaints?
— Helena Horton (@horton_official) January 2, 2018
Virgin Trains did not respond immediately to Mashable's request for comment.