The Unicorn

A manager was exciting when she was able to find multiple qualified candidates for her open training roles. She asked me to help her decide between her top two, and we both decided that there was no wrong choice among them. We wound up hiring one as a full time trainer, and another as an adjunct, Mischa. Mischa wound up being extremely quirky to put it mildly. She would often say really odd things (I wish I could remember an example) and would only say hi sometimes; she was extremely hot and cold.

As time went on, Mischa began to complain about money troubles, as the adjunct role was the only thing she had to support herself. She began to call out due to her inability to pay for public transportation and/or afford gas for her car to get into the office. She inappropriately discussed her struggles with some of her students, and one offered to rent her a room in her house, as she was looking for a housemate. We had to tell her that was absolutely a violation of professional boundaries and she immediately agreed but explained she was only considering it out of desperation, and apologized for even brining it up.

Time went on, and we learned to appreciate Mischa’s quirks, and started to feel bad about her financial situation. Her manager successfully advocated to transfer Mischa’s role into a full time position, and all was right in the world …for three weeks.

During her first official two-week training, we received a multitude of complaints regarding inappropriate comments Mischa made about the transgender community to a classroom full of people. And even worse, she corroborated the complaints against her, as if she was completely unaware of how terrible the things she said were.

For example, when the class introduced themselves, they stated their name, gender pronouns and other ice-breaker type responses. Mischa admitted that there was a kerfuffle over gender pronouns, that she seemed to perpetuate. When introducing herself, instead of just stating her gender pronouns, Mischa stated that she identified as a “unicorn.” This was obviously offensive to students in the class, especially when the debate was sparked and centered around a student that used they/them pronouns, and other students were confused by it. The student clearly felt as though Mischa was making light of her struggle, as "unicorn" is not an appropriate gender pronoun response, and caused some other students to laugh. The student openly asked Mischa to not refer to herself as a unicorn.

But it gets way worse! Mischa then launched into a story a about being attacked by a “transgender woman.” When a student asked that Mischa stop labeling the attacker as “transgender,” Mischa told the class and admitted to her manager that she refused to do so because she was trying to illustrate how the “attack” was unfair because the attacker was “really a man.” Obviously, this is high inappropriate because Mischa completely disregarded someone's preferred gender pronouns, contributing to a negative stereotype, and whether intentional or not, further offended and alienated the student. The class had nothing to do with the trans community, or any of the debates and debacle, but Mischa continued to bring up these topics that made many of the students uncomfortable.

Mischa also admitted that in an attempt to explain the “transgender experience,” she chose to discuss Rachel Anne Dolezal, the white woman who pretended to be African-American by painting her body and changing her hair to work for the NAACP, and who was immediately removed from her position for her gross misconduct. Again, students had to explain that this was an inappropriate comparison to the experiences of people who identify as transgender because Mischa was effectively accusing members of the trans community as being deceptive and falsifying their identity, which again, was offensive and not inclusive. Furthermore, it was an unproductive use of class time as the topics did not relate to the curriculum of the training.

Mischa’s manager met with one of the students who complained about Mischa’s behavior to apologize for the inappropriate and offensive remarks Mischa made in the class. The student shared yet another example of Mischa’s inappropriate language, while talking about historic trauma. The student stated that Mischa stated, “Some people debate the Holocaust, but we can all agree that slavery did happen.” By framing this conversation in this way, it implied that Mischa was suggesting that perhaps the Holocaust did not happen.

Unfortunately, Mischa offended too many students, and we were concerned that if we kept her as a trainer, that would tarnish our reputation. Whereas we would have loved to try to change her opinions and hope to have her understand our trans brothers and sisters, we decided we had to terminate her for exposing us to so much risk.

It's extremely sad when someone expresses so much hatred, especially when they have the choice to keep their fucking mouth shut.

Until next time…