Dear Prudence: My Partner Thinks I’m a Monster for Getting My Building’s Maintenance Workers Fired

[minoanmiss]

All I did was speak up about an issue that affected me.

I live in a huge apartment complex with about 500 tenants. I happen to live on the back side of the complex, with a window facing the Dumpster in the alleyway. Many of the maintenance workers hang out in that alley when they’re not working. I’ve been working from home for six months now, meaning I spend way more time overhearing their conversations than I used to. They probably spend three to four hours a day just shooting the breeze. They laugh loudly, speak at a way higher volume than necessary, and tell an endless number of sexist jokes in Spanish (I speak Spanish fluently so I can understand every word). I hate having to listen to sexist vitriol for literally hours every day. I’ve tried headphones and a white noise machine but neither block out the sound.

I finally gave up and emailed management. Three of the guys were fired. They have been replaced with workers who spend significantly less time joking and hanging out in the back alley. I view this as a win: I don’t have to be subjected to this for hours every day, and the guys learned a valuable lesson about not going on sexist rants at work. My partner, on the other hand, is angry at me. They say I should’ve just talked to the men myself (which seems naïve, considering they clearly hate women) or, in my email to the complex, asked for the men not to be fired. I disagree. All I did was speak up about an issue that affected me—it’s not my responsibility how the complex chooses to handle it. My partner is basically saying I’m a monster for getting blue-collar workers fired. We cannot seem to move past this issue. Did I do the right thing? What can I do now to get my partner and I past this difference of opinion?


—Not Sorry They’re Gone

I’m not sure getting past this disagreement is the most important objective here. You two feel quite strongly about a serious difference in priorities, values, and objectives, and I don’t think you should rush to gloss over those differences in order to keep the peace. Your concern about being ignored or demeaned had you approached these men telling sexist jokes strikes me as legitimate, although I also take your partner’s point that you likely had more options in between wearing headphones and emailing their employer. To that end, I can’t agree that you had nothing to do with how the complex chose to handle your complaint. You’re not directly responsible for management’s decision to fire them, and your partner’s belief that ending your email with something like, “Hey, don’t fire these guys” seems comically naïve, but you cannot deny that your email and their firing are linked.

But I can’t simply make a ruling over whether you did the “right” thing. You don’t seem to regret what you did, so don’t pretend you do in order to placate your partner, nor should you pretend you’re not relieved they got fired by acting as if you had nothing to do with their getting fired in the first place. You did have something to do with it! Your partner seems to disagree with a choice you made, not with the type of person that you are, and that’s worth discussing more. Continue to have a conversation with your partner, with a couples counselor if you think that’s useful, as honestly and as carefully as you can, neither minimizing nor exaggerating each other’s position in order to score points, with an eye toward envisioning a possible future together. Good luck.

Comments

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[minoanmiss]

I think it's often an interesting interaction of privilege and disprivilege when on the one hand there's a man, or men, disprivileged by ethnicity and/or class but privileged by being male, and on the other there's a woman not disprivileged by ethnicity or class but dealing with being female in this society.

Also, I think if they got fired LW was probably not the only one who complained.

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[heavenscalyx]

We don't know whether LW is necessarily disprivileged by ethnicity -- she speaks Spanish fluently, which could mean any of a number of things. Partner sounds privileged -- the idea that the company would pay attention to the inclusion of "don't fire these guys" in an email or that the LW could talk to them her/theirself is so far beyond naive as to be approaching the ignorance-of-how-the-world-works horizon.

Partner would have appropriate grounds for outrage if LW had, for instance, called the cops on these guys. But emailing their management because they're creating a hostile workplace for LW is hardly on the same ground. As it is, partner sounds like they're trying to hold the moral high ground for some reason -- whether it's the make themself sound more progressive or what, I can't tell.

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[lilysea]

I feel like

- the workers could have chosen not to make sexist jokes in earshot of the residents

- the management could have chosen to say "hey guys, we'll give you a warning this time, but if you do it again, there will be consequences". Firing for a first offense seems extreme on the part of the management [and makes me wonder how many other complaints they'd received]

I don't think LW did anything wrong.

If people behaved badly here, it's

a) the workers and

b) management.

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[katiedid717]

Linking another comment I made based on my professional experience in residential property management

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[katiedid717]

Also, I think if they got fired LW was probably not the only one who complained.

I came here to say exactly this - I've worked in residential property management for over a decade, and barring extreme circumstances it takes more than one complaint for someone to be fired. Chances are that there were other complaint or an investigation into this complaint revealed other areas where they were slacking off. It could also be a situation where there's an escalating scale of disciplinary action and where the employees who were fired had this happen because there were no other actions to be taken based on past performance.

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[beable]

Right?

I think I may have once gotten someone fired for extreme circumstances (or maybe transferred) although I didn't quite mean to complain.

My car transponder had stopped working at night(when it couldn't get replaced until the next morning when the property management office was open) which meant I had to call our security office to open the garage when I was going in or out. I had gone to a midnight showing of the Avengers and returned home around 3:30am, called the security office and the subsequent chain of events involved:
- me having to walk over a block in poorly lit construction at said hour to get into the security office
- the security guard threatening to "lock me out until morning and I could just sleep on the street" (again middle of the freaking night downtown) because I had had the temerity to seem a little impatient that he wasn't buzzing me in
- said threat had occured AFTER I had already shown him my driver's license which clearly indicated that I lived in the building
- I had called the security office to be buzzed in following the instructions of the guard on duty earlier in the evening when we had realized that my transponder had died.

So in the morning I go in to the security office to get my new transponder and I ask the day guard (who was totally competent and likeable) about overnight guy while I was waiting. The property manager heard us talking and asked me for more details, so I explained.

I was most definitely NOT sad not to see that particular guard on duty again in my building!

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[katiedid717]

We had two times where live-in superintendents started displaying odd and concerning behavior, to the point in both cases where multiple tenants called in to say "I don't want to make a big deal out of this, but..." about being asked for diaper/grocery money, being asked to fund new business ventures, overhearing arguments with other employees or tenants, etc. In one case the employee was fired after being arrested for domestic violence; the the other case the employee had a mental breakdown and was no longer able to do his job.

With the second case, the employee and his family were still living at the building so we sent a memo saying "So-and-so is no longer working for us but still lives in the building, please respect his privacy and remember that all service requests should be placed with the office." A couple of the tenants who had called in about his behavior in the two weeks leading up to that memo called us to say "I hope he wasn't fired because of what I said" - no, you're not directly to blame, you were a piece in a much larger puzzle.

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[minoanmiss]

Hey, thnk you for providing your informed perspective. :)

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[conuly]

Also, I think if they got fired LW was probably not the only one who complained.

Agreed.

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[lemonsharks]

I'm with you on "this letter just feels like White Feminism" even though the LW didn't state her ethnicity directly

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[minoanmiss]

On the one hand yeah, but on the other I'm pretty unfond of men who say vile things about women. (That's part of what makes such cases interesting for me, being both a woman and of color.) If I'd been her I think I would have found a window in the building that wasn't in my apartment to call to them from, so I wasn't in arm's reach when I told them off. OTOH, it's easy to Monday-morning quarterback someone else's actions.

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[lemonsharks]

Assuming the LW is white, there's an element of "is she uncomfortable because these are brown men making sexist jokes? would she be so quick to report white men for the same conduct? or so reluctant to approach them?"

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[minoanmiss]

That is definitely true. I am provisionally giving her the benefit of the doubt here (fwiw I find White men more frightening becsuse of the steeply reduced likelihood they'll face any consequences), but only provisionally.

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[lemonsharks]

That definitely tracks. White girls are taught, that white men will protect them (erroneously) but men of color will harm them (also erroneously). Deprogramming such an insidious message takes more self-awareness than a lot of white feminists (and White Feminists) possess--and no small amount of sitting with their own discomfort as they pick through it.

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[lilysea]

I think being uncomfortable approaching a group of people during a pandemic is reasonable...

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[oursin]

It strikes me that management probably did not care that much about the sexist banter but about the 'three to four hours a day just shooting the breeze' and that the time element when they were presumably supposed to be doing what they were paid for was why they were fired and 'replaced with workers who spend significantly less time joking and hanging out in the back alley'. Plus, the disruptive noisiness may well have been complained about by others now more of them are having to work at home.

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[edenfalling]

Yeah, management tends not to look kindly on employees hanging out instead of working, regardless of what they're doing during that hang-out time. The sexist remarks would just have been icing on an already pretty thick cake.

Also, speaking as someone who actually works in the apartment rental business, I will bet you cash money that at least one other tenant also complained about the noise.

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[beable]

Also, speaking as someone who actually works in the apartment rental business, I will bet you cash money that at least one other tenant also complained about the noise.

I live in a condo high-rise and I will not take that bet. Hell, I still remember the time that somebody complained about one of my neighbours "showering too loudly" (and my building has decent soundproofing and is reasonably quiet unless I have the windows open in which case downtown street noise)

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[lemonsharks]

Man, if this had been my partner we would be having a serious talk about breaking up right now.

We're in the middle of a pandemic. You don't fuck with someone else's livelihood in general but especially not in the middle of a pandemic, where it's already hard enough to find work without the added awfulness of being "let go without a reference".

(Both location and that they were speaking Spanish and not English speaks to a [deeply naïve] expectation of privacy on the workers' parts.).

TLDR Capitalism also sucks and while LW doesn't state her ethnicity, several things about this letter scream "white feminism" to me:

1) BIPOC tend to specify their race in letters to advice columnists
2) Specification that she speaks "fluent Spanish" implies that she expects an assumption she does not speak Spanish
3a) LW's stated fear of talking to the janitorial staff and statement that "[these men of color]clearly hate women"
3b) Anecdotes do not make data, but: most Latinas of my acquaintance would walk downstairs and let the janitorial staff know, in Spanish, they can be heard. Also, that if their mothers knew they were talking that way she'd throw a shoe at them.

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[lilysea]

She may have been afraid to speak to them in person for fear of catching COVID - during a pandemic, it's not exactly smart to get close to a group of people, regardless of those people's sex/race/ethnicity.

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[lilysea]

Man, if this had been my partner we would be having a serious talk about breaking up right now.

We're in the middle of a pandemic. You don't fuck with someone else's livelihood in general but especially not in the middle of a pandemic, where it's already hard enough to find work without the added awfulness of being "let go without a reference".

If anyone cost the workers their jobs it was the workers themselves:

they chose to make sexist jokes / sexist remarks within earshot of residents

the residents should not be expected to just put up with sexist jokes / sexist remarks day-in day-out

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[lemonsharks]

I firmly disagree.

I do not think there is a way for us to have a productive discussion on this.

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[cereta]

Can you be specific about what part you disagree with? That the workers cost themselves their jobs through their actions? That residents should not have to listen to sexist remarks? I really am serious, here. When someone says there's no productive discussion to be had, it generally means there's some foundational principle that can't be agreed upon enough to argue the specifics, and I can't really tell what it is here.

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[minoanmiss]

I think... I tried to allude to this in my first comment, but from my perspective I think the central conflict of this letter is an intersectional issue, which may well mean there are no actual good answers. If we end up trying to weigh disprivileges against each other I think it has a high probability of going nowhere good.

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[lemonsharks]

It means that I can't reply to lilysea about this in manner befitting an adult.

To answer *you*, however: The janitorial staff speaking spanish, not english, indicated they had an expectation of privacy. LW was never intended to have understood their jokes.

Further, she included unnecessary information in her report (standing around not-working, something that literally everyone who can do, does) which is what ultimately caused the janitorial staff to be fired. She could have taken any number of actions including only asking the management company to remind them that *other people in the building speak spanish*.

The LW *chose to get them fired* rather than let them know that they were attracting attention, citing "fear" because they "obviously hate women" rather than oh I don't know move her desk or close the window.

Not because of potential contagion. Specifically because they "obviously hate women".

Anyway, *I* think LW is a terrible person and if she was *my* partner, *I* would be breaking up with her.

And that's about as good as I can do with speaking in a non-aggressive manner.

Actually, one more thing: anyone speaking for the LW who has personally experienced anti-latino racism or watched a loved one experience it for a protracted period of time, is welcome to explain why they think the LW is doing anything other than swatting a fly with a tactical nuke.

I challenge non-BIPOC and non-Latine people in particular, to sit back and think about why they're so very invested in the LW being in the right here. Privately. Without replying to me about it. Because my Latina-self is so freakin done with this.