Good Old Fashioned Sexism, '70's Style, From Virgin Trains.

[ALunerExplorer]

Virgin Trains responding to highlighted sexism with... more sexism. The non-apology apology will be arriving at Platform 2 as scheduled.

What do you expect from RB?

Bloody idiots. Be part of the solution, Virgin, not the problem!

Sorry is that Virgin Trains policy or an a individual manager?

That response is disgraceful and horribly disingenuous.

I work for a big organisation. The amount of effort put into training people to do media/web training so they don't cock up is enormous. Hell, all of us get regular reminders on what we can and can't say on our private twitter/facebook accounts. To think that this is simply an asshole individual manager is a mistake - this is Virgin East Coast's official twitter account and the person on it will have received a lot of training - so yes, it very much does reflect what Virgin want their brand image to look like.

They want to look like a bunch of sexist arsewipes because they think that the amount of custom they lose from annoying a few "honeys and pets" will be far outweighed by the amount they will gain from the "look, Virgin are standing up to PC gorn mad and the feminazis, ho ho ho, I think my beer belly sides just split laughing" brigade. And the sad thing is that because they have a captive market - there is no other operator running high speed trains up and down the east coast main line - they are right. They won't lose enough custom for it to matter.

Sorry is that Virgin Trains policy or an a individual manager?

This ^

And it won't even be a manager. It will be a member of the social media team making a misjudged attempt at a joke.

She wouldn’t have complained about this had the train manager been a woman.

The thing is, Roo, I'd be the first to defend the actual train manager. Various words (we've had a lot of threads on this in the past) are dialect terms that I personally don't take offence at. However, the twitter reply - on Virgin EC's official twitter account - is a calculated, deliberate and deliberately offensive piece of sexism. Not sure quite where I'd rate it on the Ratner-ometer, but it is a deliberate attempt to laugh at your customer base, which is never a good look for a large firm.

But honey / pet / love are all the same. That’s the point Virgin were making - that it wasn’t sexism. Crying sexism when there isn’t any sexism ensures that women who do experience sexism aren’t treated seriously.

Yup. Exactly that Prickly. It will be written off as a ."poorly judged joke", "sorry for any 'offense' etc etc blah blah.." because they can afford not to take it seriously.

After all, its just some silly woman moaning about being called a patronising, demeaning name, so no harm done, eh?

Having worked in customer service which involved social media interaction, it will be some (probably underpaid) guy in his early 20's, who cares even less about some 'silly woman' complaining than he does about the job.

But it wasn’t a woman manager, it was a man talking to a woman. A better test of whether it was sexist or not would be does the male manager also call male passengers Honey, surely?

But Roo, you don't actually understand.

The train manager does not refer to male passengers as pet, honey, love, darling, sweetheart.

Why do you think that is? Just take a minute and actually use your brain.

I agree with Prickly too, this is less about the original I’ll judged comment and more about the deliberately insulting response.

Honey/Pet/Love

As my son pointed out a little while ago - when he is the customer he is either 'sir' (formal and used less often) or Mr [surname].

Not 'dude'. Or 'mate'. Or anything like that. Just the professional sir or mr.

Ofc its sexist. I'm not some strange man's 'love' or 'pet'. PET????

I am not an adjunct of a man.

I actually don't like it when anyone (of any gender) working in customer services uses it. Customer service should be strictly a professional exchange between the customer and the company - words like 'love' or 'pet' are words used in intimate or family relationships.

It's not so much the original complaint (although I hate being called honey/hun/etc whether it be by a man or a woman). But the response.

If the woman had made the complaint face to face this kind of response would have been considered rude and poor customer service. For some reason being rude to paying customers seems acceptable if it's done online.

Made the mistake of reading the comments under an article on Facebook about this. I wish I hadn't. So many people missing the point entirely.

I've just had to reread all this as,although I can see the response is offensive,love and pet are used by women to address all ages/genders around here.
Honey though is one that makes my hackles rise.

Various words (we've had a lot of threads on this in the past) are dialect terms that I personally don't take offence at.

Yes. For example, in my particular regional working class background, "love" isn't a gendered term, just a general affectionate diminutive. I call my husband and sons "love" from time to time.

But this isn't that. As you say, big companies put a great deal of effort into social media training and clearly Virgin have gone with a "bantz" template, knowing perfectly well that it'll likely come over as sexist on a regular basis. They don't care about that: it gets people talking, reinforces brand recognition and there's no downside because rail franchises are captive markets.

To be fair if Emily expressed herself as poorly on the platform as she did in her tweet, even I (a young woman) would have been sorely tempted to patronise her. I prefer to use sweetie over honey though.

It's really easy to be passive-aggressive with "honey". It's not a dialect word like "pet" would be for a Geordie or "me duck" is for someone from Derbyshire.

I find it really irritating when very young men call me "love" or the suchlike. In my line of work, I'm meant to be an authority figure and when they say things like that, it's 100% meant to patronise and demean.

Passengers calling my male colleagues "mate" or "pal" in a particular tone of voice are trying to do the same.

Honestly, I don't understand why anyone working in customer service would do anything other than use the customers given name. There is literally no need to use anything else in that context.

Customers do it themselves all the time. It used to drive me nuts (it was on a helpline for fantasy football players, who were the absolute worst to deal with. I have soooo many stories...)

Roo, I'm with you in not actually understanding [rolls eyes]

I'm female and brought in a north eastern town. Previously in my customer service days I would often call men darling or love. It's a colloquial nicety, same as where I like now calling people 'me duck'.

But oh no, we have to be offended at everything now because we have a vagina.

I don't understand why anyone working in customer service would do anything other than use the customers given name.

To establish some kind of rapport, I'd guess. They're probably trained for it. I once had a customer service job where we were trained to establish an informal rapport with the customer.
Many people probably don't want stiff, formal, possibly unfriendly customer service.
Not excusing the use of honey by the way, just answering your question on why informal customer service exists.

Actually I think it is very easy to tell the difference between a colloquial “pet/duck” etc and a patronising “honey/darling” or whatever. I trust women to interpret the difference so would take the original tweeter at her word. But oh no, we have to distrust everything she says now that we know she has a vagina

Of course, the bigger problem is the corporate response

Am I the only one who laughed?

(sorry!)