this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
1738 points (99.0% liked)

News

28237 readers
4699 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Summary

Walmart fired Dani Davis, a 6'4" cisgender woman, after a man who mistook her for transgender verbally threatened her in a women’s restroom at a Florida store.

Davis, visibly shaken, reported the March 14 incident to her immediate supervisor but was fired for not informing salaried management, allegedly creating a “security risk.”

Davis called the firing discriminatory. After viral backlash, Walmart offered to reinstate her with back pay.

Davis, a longtime employee, is uncertain about returning, citing fears of a hostile work environment.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] chetradley@lemm.ee 31 points 7 hours ago

When you're so committed to "protecting women's spaces" that you go into a women's restroom to harass a woman.

[–] callyral@pawb.social 67 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

a man who mistook her for transgender verbally threatened her in a women’s restroom

[–] Enfors@lemm.ee 2 points 4 hours ago

I'm assuming he threatened her as she was going into or coming out of the restroom.

[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 19 points 21 hours ago

Self-righteousness and reasoning are often mutually exclusive

[–] uberdroog@lemmy.world 43 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

WTF. For not informing salaried management? GTFO. She has a job to do and your bullshit corporate structure is dumb. Its a management failure for adding complexity where there shouldnt be any. Instead of any 360 introspection, they took what they thought was the easy way out. Salaried employee? Yeah, where was the manager when all this was happening? Great question. Not a brain cell fired, no pause at sanctioning harassment of employees. Walmart can suck it. Cheap disposable shit anyway. Leaches created the environment that requires their teet. Do all you can to shop direct and local.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

For a while now I've been paying attention to the way customers are treated, and noticed a kind of symmetry with how the employees of a given business/institution are treated. If you're seeing one kind of abuse/neglect, the other is very likely to also be the case, because it all comes from the same place.

In the case of Walmart: employees under a rather heavy yoke of part-time-no-benefits-never-unions labor, and customers are given a dis-compassionate choice between poorly made and barely viable goods from dubious origins. It's not that management/ownership doesn't care about this or that, it's that they generally don't care about people and are grotesque about it. It's all here.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 39 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

How the fuck can you reprimand someone for not reporting an incident properly when they report it to their supervisor? The supervisor's responsibility at that point is to either inform the employee of the proper way to report it or report it on their behalf. If the report doesn't come through properly then the supervisor has failed to fulfill their duties, not the other employee.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 18 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

They know all this. They didn't fire her out of ignorance.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 points 15 hours ago

Why retaliate at all though?

[–] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 46 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Why did Walmart fire her for being attacked? Isn't that one if the easiest wrongful termination lawsuits ever?

[–] psion1369@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Walmart made sure they were specific about the reason being reporting to the wrong supervisor and creating a security risk. Can't call it wrong that way.

[–] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 hours ago

She created the security risk, not the guy attacking her, riiiiiight?

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 22 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Most people who are wrongfully terminated don't take it to court. It might now be remedied since the press jumped on it but the remedy usually involved rehiring which is probably not ideal at this point.

[–] RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 28 points 22 hours ago (5 children)

Zero surprise Walmart did the wrong thing

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 89 points 1 day ago (5 children)

So, she was fired because… some dude was wrong?

Our society really likes to shit on women all the time, doesn't it?

[–] GlendatheGayWitch@lemmy.world 55 points 1 day ago (1 children)

She was fired because a man (without affiliation with walmart) entered the women's restroom and verbally assaulted her. He wasn't just factually wrong assuming that a woman can't be tall, he entered a space that he knew he wasnt supposed to enter.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Men entering women's restrooms to use the restroom: Nightmarishly immoral

Men entering women's restrooms to harm a woman: Laudable and in the spirit of their Dear Leader

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Amy Dorris alleged that Trump accosted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the tournament in New York on 5 September 1997.

[–] InputZero@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago

And low wage employees. It's cheaper and easier to fire an employee than to confront a customer about their mistake. Remember kids, your job is only one crazy person's ranting away from being taken away.

[–] luce@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 day ago

To a lot of people, trans women are just women they can still abuse.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.ee 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, John Marshall Harlan cited one of his objections to Louisiana's public transit segregation law as being that it effectively left the execution of policy to railroad porters. Homer Plessy was a light-skinned Creole man whose family was free before the Civil War. He would have enjoyed roughly equal rights to Whites up until the first generation of Jim Crow laws in the 1870s. Harlan pointed out that the criteria for "White" and "Black" for the purposes of segregation was not solid, just being whoever was in charge of the segregated facilities looking at them and determining what they are.

There is nothing new under the Sun.

[–] jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 22 hours ago

history doesn’t repeat but it sure does rhyme, as once said

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 28 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Walmart should have "fired" that customer, ie trespass him. WTF was this goon doing in the women's restroom anyway?

[–] RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 13 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Is that trespassing? I would think it qualifies as a sex crime since a man followed someone into the woman’s bathroom.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

"Trespassing" someone, in a Walmart context, means the person is banned from a store and if they return they will legally be trespassing and may be arrested.

[–] veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 9 points 22 hours ago

Asking the real question

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 68 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As people predicted, transphobia has affected cis people.

[–] rustydomino@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago

It always has. See: Olympics women’s boxing.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I would boycott Walmart but I already started boycotting them over a decade ago. I understand some people in tight financial situations need the lower prices they can get from places like Walmart. And therefore they cannot so freely boycott such a place but if you're somebody who can avoid it I would advise steering clear of that shit hole. Their policies are trash and the family that owns it are oligarchical douche bags.

[–] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

This falls under "suffer on my own terms" for me. I won't go to Walmart, so we're going without extras. There's no cheese in my house right now because none was on sale at my local grocery store. So instead of going to Walmart, or paying $4 for a block of Cabot cheddar at my grocer, the choice is go without cheese for the time being.

Used to shop minimally at Walmart anyway, now I refuse to go. I go to my local co-op 2ce a week now though.

Bulk spices are cheap y'all.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 69 points 1 day ago

These are the men threatening your daughters and wives on women's restrooms

[–] HalfSalesman@lemm.ee 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (10 children)

Let me just state the obvious: They fired her due to the current US administration. She got harassed in the first place because of the current US administration.

Trump is effecting corporate decisions without even making in specific executive orders as well bolstering the common rightwing individual's boldness in harassing people.

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 80 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I hope she retires after suing Walmart for millions.

[–] ansiz@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago

Sorry to bust your bubble but that won't happen. Walmart is infamous for drowning people that sue them in litigation until they are bankrupt.

She's free to sue them for sue but that at best will get her a small payout that her legal bills will immediately consume. That's only if Walmart offered her a payout, I'd say in this political climate and in Florida they would just grind her down.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Doctor_Satan@lemm.ee 127 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This story is so depressing on so many levels.

First and most obviously, we have a biological male entering a women's bathroom to harass and threaten a biological woman because he doesn't want biological males entering the women's bathroom to harass and threaten biological women. Dumb redneck stared into the abyss and it stared back, as it always does. Congrats, dickhead. You are the thing you claim to hate.

But then we have this shit:

Dani Davis, who is queer, took to social media on March 24 and wrote a post about what she said happened while she was at work. The incident occurred on March 14 at the Walmart in Lake City, Florida. She noted she was a nearly seven-year employee of Walmart and holds several other part-time jobs, including the “joy and privilege" of tutoring "special-needs children as requested,” describing herself as a hard worker who has never been in trouble.

How many more reminders do we need that Capitalism hates us and our employers don't even see us as human? A person should not have to work "several part-time jobs", one of which is with the biggest private employer on earth, just to get by.

Does anyone else remember the 'Hey Mon' sketch from 'In Living Color' about an immigrant family that all had like 10 jobs each? It was supposed to be a joke to have to work that much to make ends meet. We weren't supposed to make it a reality for everyone.

I hate this world.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 83 points 1 day ago

Transphobia rots the brain. The fact the store still fired her is insane. I hope she just takes them to court instead of taking her old job back.

[–] reluctant_squidd@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What ever happened to people just minding their own business?

Seriously, just help when you can and but out otherwise. EASY peasy recipe for a better life.

It’s almost like “Ignorance is bliss” got mixed into “intolerance is better” somewhere along the way.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] WickedPissah@lemm.ee 12 points 1 day ago

This is our world now…please remember Inclusion Day April 30!🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

[–] Hobo@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Walmart appeared to acknowledge the error in a statement released to the media.

“We want our associates to feel safe and supported in their workplace, and we won’t tolerate bullying or threats of violence against our associates or customers,” Walmart spokesperson Joe Pennington said in a statement. “We’ve reviewed the situation and will be addressing it internally. We’ve also made multiple attempts to invite Ms. Davis to return to work, with back pay.”

For once in my life I'd like to see one of companies respond in the same way that got them in the situation in the first place. Like if Walmart just responded, "lol fuck you idc" it would actually make me less angry than this bullshit.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›