So I applied for a lab position with a local node of a national company recently and they got back to me for a phone interview. Phone interview went fine and no red flags there until the end where he said that I would need to go down to the site the next day for a “meet and greet” in order to see if my personality “fit with the others”.
The next day I went down there and things started off well when I met S, he seemed like a normal enough dude. N came along and also seemed normal, if not a little crass. It was after H got there that things started to take a turn. The first turn was S asking me “what I identify as”, which is a perfectly normal and acceptable (encouraged, personally) question these days. When I responded with He/Him S told me that he identifies as “an Apache Attack Helicopter”. Ahh, just like the early 2010's all over again (note, neither of the other two, nor myself, laughed). Shortly afterwards H offered to take me on a tour of the lab to show me around, which I accepted. As we trudged off S shouted from the door of the lab to “show him the Rape Room” which confused/concerned me. H didn't react. (It's a dinky shack filled with empty buckets). After most of the tour, during which I saw neither hide nor hair of S or N we made it to a separate lab and H showed me things about it. After a smidge we got to talking about past jobs and she lamented that specifically only the lab isn't unionized out of the whole company, and was going to continue on until S walked into the lab and, upon H seeing S, she immediately stopped talking about Unions and swapped to talking about lab stuff again. Curious. After a smidge their supervisor, J, showed up and we stood around talking for a bit, mostly about me and “what's the worst things about growing up as a Millennial” (Note I was the only Millennial there). I made some side comment at one point about a “bucket room” and S tried to correct me twice into saying “Rape Room” (not the room I was talking about) and then an uneventful half hour later I went home for the night.
Two days later J called me to “touch base” with on how things went during the meet and greet.
I told him that his subordinate, S, who makes light of rape and also is transphobic is the reason I won't be joining the team and that I was “surprised to find a workplace where such things were made light of”, much less one where such behavior is joined in on by the Supervisor, to which J just kinda went “huh” and “mm-hm”, and then asked how “identifying as a helicopter” is a phobic and a kinda offensive thing to do.
Also when I told him about H shutting down around S he responded with “alright cool, uh…” (I didn't use names tho to keep 'em safe) which tells me he really didn't care at all since I started off with me turning down the position. “Refusing” it is what I specifically said.
“Looks like we dodged a bullet on both our ends” was what he said to me at the end of the call.
Gave their corporate HR a ring and gave 'em a lil' talking to and they were very nice and receptive, but I don't hope for anything to seriously change in the near future.
Edit: Forgot to hide a name, woopsie.