Woman claims she was fired for not letting man talk over her; Twitterati showers support

Janneke Parrish was recently fired by her company on grounds of her alleged ‘incredibly rude’ behaviour.

New Delhi: Janneke Parrish, a woman who was recently fired by her company on grounds of her alleged ‘incredibly rude’ behaviour, posted about her ordeal on the microblogging platform Twitter. She said in a series of tweets that her employer let her go after she asked a male coworker to stop interrupting her when she was addressing the meeting. 

“I lost my job because I spoke to a man the way men speak to me,” she said in her first tweet in a series of tweets, adding, “This is why women leave the tech industry.” 

In the following tweet, she explained why her company fired her for doing nothing wrong, absolutely. “A couple weeks ago, a male colleague made changes to a project I was running while I was offline that dramatically impacted the scope and timelines. I asked to talk to him to understand why and how we could set up a way to solve issues in the future,” she said.

“During the meeting, he kept interrupting me and cutting me off. I wasn't getting anywhere, so I just started talking, politely telling him to "please let me finish" every time he tried to jump in. I said my piece, then let him talk,” Parrish added in her tweets.

I was fired because I wouldn't let a man talk over me. This is what it's like to be a woman in the tech industry. It's brutal and it's toxic, and it's where your gender determines your fate before you ever have a chance.

— Janneke Parrish (@JannekeParrish) July 20, 2022

Explaining how she was called by the human resource, she said, “On Monday, I got called into a meeting with HR, where I was told I had been incredibly rude, that my communication skills were abysmal, and I was being fired.”

“I was fired because I wouldn't let a man talk over me. This is what it's like to be a woman in the tech industry. It's brutal and it's toxic, and it's where your gender determines your fate before you ever have a chance,” she added. 

Several other women on Twitter shared similar experiences. “It's so infuriating. I had similar experiences in the gaming industry, so I'm now running my own company and developing games aimed at women/femmes. Guess that makes me a tech separatist. I prefer to think that they don't deserve me,” said one of the Twitter users. 

“When my mum was alive she had a similar issue after spending months setting up a database for a company they let her go how I showed her how to wipe their entire server and all backups of said database so she set it up on her last day so when they arrived to no system working,” another user said.