I used to think that my workplace was a tolerant space, open to all people regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, but I learned I was sadly mistaken when my boss refused to fulfill my request to put poppers in the staff lounge.
Now, I’m considering putting in my two weeks. It’s just not worth it to work at a place that is so clearly against my right to get mildly turnt up with a popular cleaning chemical.
When I noticed that our staff lounge at work was lacking a tray of poppers, I thought that I’d do my diligent duty and alert Human Resources and my boss, Susan. But when I reported this mistake, neither of them understood why this was so detrimental to the people working in our office.
“Why would we put poppers in the staff lounge?” my boss asked me. “That’s extremely inappropriate.”
Wow, and during Pride Month of all months?! How does she expect us to work in this environment?
Of course, I’ve dealt with bad bosses before who weren’t able to accommodate me or my fellow employees, but Susan takes the cake in the tyrannical leader department. After all, how is a workplace sufficient without poppers readily available for employees to take a little hit once in a while?
I tried to rally my coworkers around this issue to fight against our boss, but it was a lot harder than I anticipated. Even though my peers were totally down to have poppers in the office, they didn’t actually want to put their jobs on the line in order to get them.
“I’ll do poppers with you if you get Susan to buy them,” one of my coworkers, Ty, said. “But I’m definitely not signing your letter saying we’ll ‘all walk out if you don’t rectify this grave miscarriage of justice.’” ???
Looks like I can’t trust anyone to stand up for what’s right. I thought not having poppers in the workplace was bad enough, but now I can’t even put my faith in my fellow office workers.
I hope that in the future, Susan will learn from this and manage her workforce in a better, more holistic way by finally putting poppers in the breakroom. But for now, I guess I’ll just have to keep my own on me and take sniffs of it while I’m working at my cubicle.
