Store employee creates worldwide panic by doing her job

[Scooter]

Marks & Spencer ‘apologises’ to customer after ‘trans’ employee offers to help her

Marks & Spencer has reportedly apologised after a customer complained that an employee, who she claimed was trans, had approached her 14-year-old daughter asking if she needed help.

According to the complaint, the staff member politely asked if the pair, who were hoping to schedule a bra fitting, needed help in finding the right part of the store.

The mother told The Telegraph that the offer of help was “completely inappropriate”, and claimed that the member of staff was a “biological male”. Asked how she knew the gender identity of the employee, she said: “This is obviously the case: he is at least 6ft 2in tall.”

Her daughter was “visibly upset” and felt “freaked out” after they left the shop, she went on to say.

After the mother lodged a complaint, an M&S customer service assistant reportedly wrote in an email: “We deeply regret the distress your daughter felt during her visit to our store. We understand how important this milestone is for her, and we are truly sorry that it did not go as you had hoped.”

Marks & Spencer would ensure her daughter “receives assistance from a female colleague” and would make “necessary arrangements” to ensure her experience was “as comfortable and positive as possible”, the email is said to have promised.

The mother said the response wasn’t “sufficient” and fell “significantly short” of what she expected.

She urged the retailer to implement a policy to ensure transgender members of staff stayed away from young women, to preserve the “safety and dignity of women and girls”.

There is no evidence to suggest that trans people pose a threat to young women. A report from the Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre revealed that 98 per cent of sexual assault arrests in 2022 involved men, not transgender women.

A spokesperson for Marks & Spencer told PinkNews: “We want our stores to be inclusive and welcoming places for our colleagues and customers. We have written to this customer and explained that our colleagues typically work across all departments in our stores and customers can always ask to speak to the colleague they feel most comfortable with.”

This is where the incessant demonization of trans people has brought us; someone who doesn't fit some asshole's criteria for femininity is (1) assumed to be trans, and (2) consequently assumed to have evil intentions, for no other reason except showing simple courtesy.

M&S's "apology" was a disgrace in that it did nothing to defend the employee who did absolutely untoward, regardless of embellishments being spread throughout cyberspace of the employee insisting on doing the bra fitting herself, etc. The bitch should have been told to go pound sand up her asshole.

Many people have warned that most of the victims of anti-trans hysteria are going to be cisgender women who don't conform to whomever's idea of what women should look and act like.

[Big RR]

The bitch should have been told to go pound sand up her asshole.

I agree, but then this is capitalism in action; M&S cares more about sales/profits than fairness or justice.

[liberty]

The bitch should have been told to go pound sand up her asshole.

I agree, but then this is capitalism in action; M&S cares more about sales/profits than fairness or justice.

There's a good reason for that, Joe; it's called staying in business. Going out of business is easy; I've done it, so I know

Now, I have nothing against men who dress in women's clothes. The customer had no way to know anything about the woman's sexual orientation. All she knew is what she saw. But I support the right of the employer to decide whether they want to hire them. If I did have a problem, I wouldn't have attended a drag queen show when I was young.

When I was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base, my wife and I, along with a group of fellow students, went to New Orleans. We walked Bourbon Street and took in a drag queen show.

And I, for one, was totally blown away. I thought the performers were fake, because if they were men, they sure looked like women. My perceptions have improved since then, but at the time, to a young man like me, they looked like women. I don't think anyone could have told the difference, so the customer must have seen some masculine feature, like a beard or a prominent Adam’s apple.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Try Thailand, Lib. You'll be even more amazed than amazed

[Scooter]

the customer must have seen some masculine feature, like a beard or a prominent Adam’s apple

The employee was taller than the customer believed a woman should be, therefore, it must have been a man!!!!!

Because that's all it takes these days to trigger trans panic.

Witness the epidemic of women who don't appear "feminine" enough being challenged/accosted/assaulted in restrooms and forced to "prove" that they are women.

[Scooter]

Minnesota teen says server forced her to prove her gender in restaurant bathroom

A Minnesota teenager filed a charge of discrimination against a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant Tuesday, alleging a server followed her into the women’s restroom and demanded she “prove” she was a girl.

Gerika Mudra, 18, went to dinner in April with a friend in Owatonna, about an hour south of Minneapolis. When she went to the restroom, a server followed her inside and banged on the stall door while saying: “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here,” according to Gender Justice, a Minnesota gender-equality organization that filed the charge on Mudra’s behalf.



Mudra, a biracial lesbian who isn’t transgender, said that she has been in similar situations before, when people have suggested she’s in the wrong restroom, but that when she tells them she’s a woman they leave her alone. However, when she came out of the stall at Buffalo Wild Wings and told the server, “I am a lady,” she said, the server responded, “You have to get out now,” Gender Justice said in a statement.

Mudra said she felt she had to prove to the server that she is a woman, so she unzipped her hoodie to show she has breasts. The server didn’t say anything in response but left the restroom, Mudra said.

“She made me feel very uncomfortable,” Mudra said. “After that, I just don’t like going in public bathrooms. I just hold it in. ... I want to be able to use the bathroom in peace.”

Inspire Brands, which represents Buffalo Wild Wings, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gender Justice filed the charge of discrimination with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, arguing that what happened to Mudra violates the state’s Human Rights Act, which protects people from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, among other protected statuses.

Sara Jane Baldwin, senior staff attorney at Gender Justice, said at a news conference Tuesday that even though Mudra isn’t trans, the server’s actions “were based on assumptions that she made about” Mudra, and that Minnesota’s law protects against discrimination based on stereotypes or assumptions about protected characteristics like gender identity.

“Businesses have a legal obligation not to just have antidiscrimination policies on paper, but to train staff and ensure that those policies are followed in real time,” Baldwin said. “When that doesn’t happen, the business is liable for the harm caused.”

Gender Justice said Mudra’s experience “reflects a broader climate of fear and suspicion aimed at anyone who doesn’t conform to narrow expectations of what girls and women ‘should’ look like.” That suspicion has been driven largely by the wave of state legislation targeting trans people, particularly their access to school sports and bathrooms that align with their gender identities, though Minnesota hasn’t enacted any such legislation.

Nineteen states have laws that prohibit trans people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identities in K-12 schools, and in many of those states the restrictions apply to other government-owned buildings, as well, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Twenty-seven states prohibit trans people from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities.

Even before such laws, trans people had long reported facing harassment in public restrooms and avoided using them as a result. There have been several reports this year of women who aren’t transgender alleging harassment in public restrooms because they were suspected of being trans, including at the U.S. Capitol in January, Phoenix in February, Florida in March and Boston in May.

“This kind of gender policing is, unfortunately, nothing new,” Megan Peterson, executive director at Gender Justice, said in a statement. “And yet, in our current climate we have to ask: What if Gerika had been a trans person? Would this story have ended differently? That’s the terrifying reality too many trans people live with every day.”

Even if Mudra had been trans, she would be able to file a discrimination complaint under state law in Minnesota, which is one of 21 states and Washington, D.C., that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Two states explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation only, and six additional states interpret existing measures against discrimination based on sex to also include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Twenty-one states don’t have explicit protections from discrimination based on gender identity in public accommodations.

[BoSoxGal]

I'd like five minutes alone in a women's restroom with that server - she needs a few swirlies to readjust her attitude.

Of course I don't really mean that - the swirlies part - because I'm not filled with hate and aggression toward other human beings like the server is. So I'll settle for knowing she's a miserable POS and stupid to boot.

[Joe Guy]

Since we live in a world where our president, if he could, would outlaw the existence of transgender people, we will likely be hearing more about traumatized children and adults who have suddenly discovered that not everyone in the US is one of them-there gun-toting heterosexual trailer-homeowners and married to their cousin.

[Scooter]

[ex-khobar Andy]

I was in England a few weeks ago. Stopped at a motorway service place for a pee and a coffee. As there often is, there was a bit a queue outside the ladies' loo. I went and did my business at the urinal. (If this is TMI, sorry.). A lady and (I assume) her daughter - 5 or 6 at a guess - came out of one of the mens' stalls - 'Sorry, sorry, sorry', head averted. I'm guessing daughter had a 'gotta go now or I am peeing my pants' moment, and Mum decided that the lesser of two evils was a trip to the mens'.

No-one turned a hair or got bent out of shape. Which is the way it should be.

[BoSoxGal]

Women having been using the stalls in the men's restrooms since forever - at crowded bars and also concert and sports venues. Men are much faster in and out (they are less inclined to wash hands as well, according to public health studies) so the queue is always shorter for the men's room. I've used men's rooms multiple times over the years of my concert and sports attending youth.

[Big RR]

When my daughters were too young to use the restrooms by themselves and were out with me, I used to bring them into the men's room when they "had to go", but there were times I brought them into the women's room as well (if there was a crowd in the men's room). I recall my anunt used to routinely bring my young male cousin into the men's room as well when he was young. The thing that amazes me is that public restrooms are hardly secure--anyone of any gender (or none for that matter) can push open either door and enter easily (and because the rest rooms are often located out of the main thoroughfares in businesses) anyone could enter without being seen; I fail to see how such an unlocked door would deter pedophile intent on harming a child, nor how the presence of a transgender person using the restroom for its intended purpose would pose any danger whatsoever, but such are the idiocies we now deal with.

BSG--in my younger bar hopping days, I recall a number of times (it was pretty common actually) where women "took over" the men's and women's rooms, psoting "sentries" outside the men's room to keep men out. One time when I really had to go, and when I had had almost just enough alcohol, i just pushed my way into the men's room--one of the "sentries" got the bouncer, and he told them that he didn't care if women used the men's room, but they had to share it with them. I actually like the way I have seen public restrooms in a lot of European cities, where there are a lot of private toilets and a common sink/wash area (often they also have urinal (or a large tough urinal) to the side to ease congestion. It works.

[Bicycle Bill]

BSG--in my younger bar hopping days, I recall a number of times (it was pretty common actually) where women "took over" the men's and women's rooms, posting "sentries" outside the men's room to keep men out.

More than once I've done the same thing in convenience stores ... if I come out of the men's room and there is no other guy waiting to use it, but there are women waiting in line to use the ladies' room, I'll tell them to go on in and I'll stand guard until they're finished and come back out.   Perhaps it's a flashback to my old Boy Scout days and the credo about "doing a good deed every day".

-"BB"-

[Big RR]

And of course you had to run in and check on them periodically< Boy scouts taught me to think several moves ahead.

ETA: I believe I mentioned this before, but many years ago I saw a play called "Good" on Broadway that resonates with how things are now. It was about a college professor in prewar Germany who hated the Nazis, but was seduced by them by playing to his intellectual hubris (like "We don't like burning books, but certainly you will agree that many of the people will not and cannot understand them, so they are dangerous in their hands"); he eventually was convinced that everything they did was for the good and became a high functionary in the party. With an apology for raising the nazis, I see the same thing here with the worship of the rich and an open tolerance of excesses and crackdowns.

[Sue U]

With an apology for raising the nazis, I see the same thing here with the worship of the rich and an open tolerance of excesses and crackdowns.

This is probably the wrong thread to pursue this (maybe better in the Tense Sandwich Situation thread over in Politics), but federal prosecutors have been having difficulty getting grand juries to return indictments against ICE/DHS protestors accused of "interfering with law enforcement."

U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli Under Pressure From Bondi
A major new development out of Los Angeles, where the LA Times reports that U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli has been no-billed by grand juries in some attempted prosecutions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protestors:

The three officials who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity said prosecutors have struggled to get several protest-related cases past grand juries, which need only to find probable cause that a crime has been committed in order to move forward. That is a much lower bar than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required for a criminal conviction.

But among the most damning revelations in the LA Times article is Essayli ordering a subordinate to ignore the DOJ’s Justice Manual:

On the overheard call, according to the three officials, Essayli, 39, told a subordinate to disregard the federal government’s “Justice Manual,” which directs prosecutors to bring only cases they can win at trial. Essayli barked that prosecutors should press on and secure indictments as directed by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, according to the three officials.

The Trump administration targeted Los Angeles for heavy-handed immigration enforcement, including deploying the National Guard and active duty marines to the Democratic-run city, that set off mass protests and some street clashes with law enforcement.

US Attorney Pirro's office admits grand jury refused ICE interference charges — twice
Federal prosecutors told a judge they had failed twice to secure an indictment against Sydney Lori Reid for allegedly assaulting an FBI agent during an ICE arrest.

Author: Jordan Fischer
Published: 7:54 PM EDT August 14, 2025
Updated: 8:01 PM EDT August 14, 2025

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors twice sought a grand jury indictment against a D.C. woman accused of assaulting an FBI agent during an ICE inmate transfer — and were twice rejected, the U.S. Attorney’s Office admitted in court Thursday.

Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey revealed the denials to attorneys for Sydney Lori Reid and later granted their request to remove all bond conditions and release her on her own recognizance over prosecutors’ objections. He will resume a preliminary hearing on Friday afternoon to determine whether to dismiss the case entirely.

“Two presentations to the grand jury returned no bill both times,” Harvey said. “Suggesting the evidence is wanting, given the standard for indictment is probable cause. Suggesting the government may never get an indictment.”

***

Reid, 44, was charged last month with an enhanced felony version of an assault charge that requires inflicting bodily injury on a federal officer and carries a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison. The charge is the same offense filed this week against a former DOJ employee accused of throwing a sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent.

In a press release last month, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office accused Reid of trying to impede the transfer of two alleged members of the 18th Street gang who were being arrested by ICE outside the D.C. Jail prior to transfer to the custody of the FBI.

Federal prosecutors declined to call the injured FBI agent or any of the ICE officers involved in the incident during Thursday’s hearing, however. Instead, they had an investigator with the U.S. Attorney’s Office testify about his review of video of the incident and brief conversations with the officers. The investigator, Special Agent Sean Ricardi, said he’d had no involvement in the case until he was asked to prepare for testimony Thursday morning.

Video played by prosecutors shows Reid approaching the ICE officers while holding up her phone, which she says is for her protection. She is then later seen being held by multiple officers against a wall while she asks, “How do you feel about stealing f***ing people?”

“Mind your own business!” an unidentified ICE agent can be heard responding.

Ricardi said while officers were attempting to control her, Reid’s “flailing arm movements made contact” with the FBI agent. No injury is shown on the videos played in court, although prosecutors submitted photographs of the agent with small abrasions on the back of her hand, which Ricardi said did not appear to be present prior to the incident.

Eugene Ohm, an assistant federal public defender representing Reid, said prosecutors were presenting the court with nothing but “hearsay” from an investigator who wasn’t present. He asked Harvey to review the grand jury testimony himself before ruling on probable cause, although Harvey declined.

“We should be able to get to the bottom of why all the citizens of the District of Columbia seem to think there’s no crime while the government continues to allege one against my client,” Ohm said.

[BoSoxGal]

Fuck yeah at least the jury system can be a last bastion of liberty!

I'm having a hard time believing a DC jury is going to send sub sandwich guy to prison.

[Big RR]

We can only hope.

[Bicycle Bill]

And of course you had to run in and check on them periodically< Boy scouts taught me to think several moves ahead.

-"BB"-