Called a ‘c*nt’ by two @argos_online employees for standing up to their catcalls
New submission from Rachel
Three weeks ago I was verbally harassed by two Argos employees, who were sitting in the cab of a parked delivery van on a residential street just off Stroud Green Road, North London. As I walked by the van, the men beeping the horn at me, gesturing and laughing and shouting at me. I turned around and confronted the men, walked directly in front of the cab and began to take photos of them and the Argos license plate, and told them that I would be making a complaint to Argos management. As I walked away, they shouted after me, calling me a ‘cunt’. The next day I emailed Argos to register a formal complaint, but have had no response from the company. Three days ago I followed up by calling Argos directly. After being passed along to a number of different departments and having to recount the incident to Argos staff over the phone, I was told that the matter would be ‘dealt with internally’ and as such I wouldn’t hear anything further about it. I told the Argos rep I was speaking with that I didn’t find this was particularly satisfactory, especially as I had had no response whatsoever to my initial email. She told me that she would have management call me to discuss the issue, and said someone would be in contact within four hours. It’s been two days now, and no one has called.
I am posting here the letter I wrote to Argos, along with the photos I took of the Argos employees who harassed me.
To whom it may concern,
My name is Rachel ——-, I am writing to report an incident of sexual harassment by two Argos employees on Tuesday, 11th December.
At 12.40 yesterday morning I was walking down Stroud Green Road towards Finsbury Park station. As I passed Woodstock Road, two men in a parked Argos van began beeping the horn at me. I continued to walk by and they kept beeping the horn, gesturing and laughing as they did so. I stopped and turned around to face them and took out my phone in order to take a picture; in the past I have found this can be an effective way of subduing street harassers. Once I did this and began walking away, the driver continued to beep at me, still laughing and gesturing, and so I walked back and stood directly in front of the van, taking a picture of the license plate and of the driver and his colleague. Perhaps unaccustomed to women responding to rather than ignoring their harassing behaviour, the driver rolled down his window and began telling me that he was beeping because he thought he knew me; given the way he was laughing and gesturing at me, I find this is completely implausible. I told the driver I would be reporting his behaviour to Argos management and turned to walk away. As I did so, the men shouted after me, calling me a ‘cunt’.
Sexual harassment is always unacceptable, at any time and in any place, but the fact that these men feel they have the right to harass a woman while representing the Argos brand demonstrates extreme impudence. I hope that the management at Argos will take this matter very seriously and deal with their staff appropriately; I attach here the images I took in order to aid management in identifying the employees in question. Please also be aware that if this matter is not acted upon, I will take my complaint public, posting this letter as well as the accompanying images to various media and social media outlets.
Regards,
Rachel
5 Responses
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That is disgusting! I’ll circulate this for you too. Spread the word!
Have you tried Tweeting them / putting this on facebook?
I find that’s a pretty effective way of getting companies attention when they’re otherwise ignoring you.
Interesting you mention the Facebook page, I was so angry about this story that I posted it on there, it turns out the whole thing is swarming with fake bot accounts run by Argos’s PR team. (essentially there are a handful of fake accounts on there which prowl their message board and troll any negative remarks the site recieves) Its nice for Argos to try and discredit accusations like this in such an underhand way really. I have kept a full transcript of the thread which developed after my initial posting along with appropriate screengrabs of the bots. If only I knew how to IP track….
I posted this on the FB page. It won’t last long but I hope it helps.Good luck!
I am suprised and dissapointed that Argos haven’t said more about this! They won’t be able to tell you exactly what happens but they should at least assure you they take it seriously!!
I suppose the men would have denied it and said you “misunderstood” or “misheard” etc. Maybe they were dealt with formally but most likely they will have been told to take care how they “react” to the public.
On another tack, people should maybe take care over re posting this. The story itself is fine because no-one is identified, but the photo is potentially a problem. this site may be in breach of data protection by showing it, as the two men are shown the account is potentially libellous.
I somehow suspect they won’t have access to lawyers to make a case but were they to do so they would probably win as in the UK a libel defendant has to prove their allegation, which of course, here, can’t be done.
Taking photos of such is a useful tactic but you need to be careful about publishing them.