Ex-Assistant Gets Revenge on Sexist Boss

He accidentally sent misogynistic email to her instead of just male colleagues
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 15, 2017 12:10 PM CDT
Ex-Assistant Leaks Hollywood Talent Manager's Sexist Emails
Joseph Banco holds a sign in front of a wall decorated with artificial flowers during the Day Without a Woman protest Wednesday, March 8, 2017, in Los Angeles.   (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

When Rosette Laursen, former assistant to Hollywood talent manager Michael Einfeld, emailed him to ask about not coming into work for Day Without a Woman, he replied with what he thought was an email to just her male colleagues. Instead, the email went to the entire team, Laursen included, and it was a doozy, with lines including "Someone should [sew] her vagina shut" and "Uppity selfish C---." Laursen recently decided to make the exchange public, posting the emails on her Facebook page, Vanity Fair reports. When Einfeld realized his mistake, he apologized—kind of. He promised Laursen, "If you come back we can play nazi death camp. You can beat me and put me in the oven. Or feed me cabbage and lock me In the shower." Laursen responded by quitting.

On Facebook, she explains Einfeld often made offensive remarks he later insisted were "jokes," but that his response to her email was the final straw. Through a lawyer, she initially tried to get a few months' pay as a settlement, but when he ignored her lawyer's communications, she decided to take the emails public rather than go through a trial to collect money. "Please don't let anyone treat you like this, and to paraphrase the great Mike Birbiglia - If you have to say it was a joke, it wasn't a good joke," she concludes. Variety reports that Einfeld has responded with an apologetic email to friends, colleagues, and clients. "I used language that was tasteless, humorless, and completely inexcusable," he wrote. "I believe deeply in workplace diversity ... and I am mortified that the things I have said have worked against my commitment to inclusion." (More sexism stories.)

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