I Got Fired For Being Polite To a Man Who Hit On Me

If you’ve scrolled through TikTok lately, you’ve probably seen a dark-haired lady clapping as she demands women to be polite to men who hit on them, along with replies from hundreds of other TikTokers advising you against this. I can only speak to my own experiences, but I was polite to a man who hit on me and I ended up getting fired for it.

In late 2019, I started what was possibly the most toxic job that I have ever held, and that’s where I met him. He was a coworker who would say bizarre and inappropriate things to me, but I always brushed it off as him being socially awkward. Upon our first meeting, he positioned himself so that he was uncomfortably close to me and told me that my makeup looked nice, before asking if I had any plans after work. I remember telling him no, and that I just wanted my makeup to look nice because Halloween was approaching, and I loved the holidays. I hurried to get away from him, but this was the first of many awkward interactions I’d have with him.

Sometimes, I enjoyed talking to him, but other times he would tell me something vulgar. One example of this is when he told me that he wanted to ‘spank me’ because he thought that I’d lied to him. I should have gone to management then, but I don’t think the outcome would have turned out any better than it did.

As I got to know him better, I thought that he was lonely, which caused me to feel sorry for him. Despite my initial discomfort, I decided to befriend him. Why did I befriend someone who made me feel slightly uncomfortable? To be honest, I felt alone at my new job and was desperate for a friend.

I do claim some of the responsibility for what happened since I should never have given him my contact information. Especially since I did have a slight inkling that he might have been interested in me before I gave him my Steam username. He’d go out of his way to do things like page me when I was standing right next to him, run after me just to tell me that he thought my lunch bag was orange (it was red), or repeat the same sentence over and over until I acknowledged him whenever I was talking to another male coworker. There were also a handful of times when a coworker (who was a friend of his) would ask me if I was interested in him, including once when he was standing right beside them.

It wasn’t until we started talking outside of work that I realized he thought we were going to be a couple. He sent me messages so often that I had to download the Steam app to answer with the same frequency that he expected. He was odd, but he didn’t set off any alarm bells until he told me that it was rude to deny a person of the time that they requested with you. He asked me to go to the gym with him a few messages later. I politely declined, because I wasn’t a member of the gym, but I also wasn’t sure that I would be interested in anything more than a friendship.

He continued to speak to me, but now he was more interested in asking me things like if I was interested in tall, skinny guys or what it was like to date me. He would tell me things about his ex-girlfriends being ‘stupid’ but hot. He made it clear that the only value he cared about in a woman was her looks, even going as far as to tell me that it was okay for his ex to have cheated on him since she was hot. He also told me that all women were gold diggers and complained about how hard it was for him to find a girlfriend because he worked retail.

He also became more possessive over me, even using his position at work to assign my male coworkers a task so that they’d stop talking to me. He also began exclusively coming to me whenever he needed help with something within my department. He kept texting me, telling me things like he planned to look through women’s phones before dating them. This raised a huge red flag for me. Despite him acting this way, he never openly admitted to liking me, but he did ask me to go somewhere with him again. This time I said maybe, and that was the beginning of the end.

Our friendship completely dissolved. He told me talking to me was akin to traveling through a sewer, although he’d previously boasted about how much he loved talking to me. He also sent me a video of a crack alley, and the way he spoke to me had become vile. I no longer wanted to be around him because I feared for my safety, which I made clear to the management staff and my direct coworkers. I ended up being called to the office every week because of him. One team lead demanded to know why I gave him my contact information as if I forced him to behave in the way he did. I was accused of leading him on because I answered him when he asked me if I liked tall, thin guys. The lady from home office even went through my phone.

I was asked threatening questions, like if I was sure I was a good fit for the company. I was asked if I wanted to move to another store. I was even asked if I would move to another department, all so that he could keep his ‘team lead’ position. I wasn’t allowed to be alone with him anymore, but it wasn’t to protect me. One of the things he’d told me when we were ‘friends’ was that he could talk his way out of anything. I thought he was bragging at the time until the managers swooped in to protect him from me. I started getting written up for things that hadn’t been rules before, or things they’d let go for other people. The straw that broke the camel’s back and ended my employment with the company was when a frizzy-haired Karen came to the shoe department and complained about the security tags that prevented her daughter from sticking her bare feet into a shoe during the pandemic. The Karen complained, and just like that, there were enough false writeups to get rid of me.

The Karen who complained didn’t know it, but she’d done me a huge favor. The job had been taking a toll on me both mentally and physically. I would get severe stomach pains and anxiety whenever I was at work, and I was fearful of losing my job. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I never flirted with this guy or did anything to make him think I was interested in him. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have deserved the treatment I received. The only thing I did was show a man who was interested in me kindness, so now I refuse to be polite to men who hit on me.