“It was very apparent that there was a stark gender imbalance… I had never seen anything like it.” (Speaking by phone with The Coast, Cyclesmith owner Andrew Feenstra calls those numbers “obviously wrong.” He counters that of the bike shop’s 38 staff today, about 20% would identify as non-male—and that each member of the staff he’s spoken with is “very happy to be here.”)
www.thecoast.ca/halifax/cyclesmith-ex-employees-allege-unfair-treatment-culture-of-misogyny/Content?oid=30327612
Antonia Chircop can pinpoint the moment her fears about how she was seen and treated by Cyclesmith’s management were confirmed: She was in a closed-door meeting with two of the north end bike shop’s senior managers. In the weeks leading up to the meeting, Chircop—a cycling enthusiast who’d joined the company as a sales associate in January 2021—had voiced concerns to Cyclesmith’s leadership about the bike shop’s alleged practice of profiling customers by their gender without their knowledge or consent. That, she feels, got her into hot water with the company’s higher-ups. “If you think there’s a target on your back, it’s because there is,” she recalls one manager telling her in the Feb. 25, 2022 meeting. The words frightened Chircop. So did her following interactions with Cyclesmith’s brass. In the ensuing weeks, Chircop says she was repeatedly “dragged aside” by supervisors and confronted for being “unproductive” and “ruining” Cyclesmith’s efficiency—none of which, she tells The Coast by phone, was true. “That’s when I realized it wasn’t a safe space to work,” she says.