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Train company responds to woman's complaint about sexist behaviour with, uh, more sexism

Read the room.

Rachel Thompson

on January 2, 2018

Heads up, companies: when a woman makes a complaint about the misogynist behaviour of a male employee, take her seriously.

Sadly, this isn't what happened when a woman complained to a UK train company about the dismissive and patronising conduct of one of their train conductors. Instead, her complaint was met with a snarky and completely tone deaf response.

Emily Lucinda Cole tweeted a complaint to Virgin Trains East Coast that an older male train manager dismissed her in a "patronising" way, calling her "honey."

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But, the social media manager behind the Virgin Trains Twitter account chose to respond with more patronising language.

"Sorry for the mess up Emily, would you prefer "pet" or "love" next time?" they wrote, before signing off with the initials "MS."

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Cole tweeted a screenshot of the tweets, stating that she was "stunned" at the response.

"Wonderful to see that @virgin_trainsEC take complaints of rude and misogynistic behaviour seriously. Stunned," wrote Cole.

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The tweet by "MS" was later deleted, and Virgin Trains posted an apology stating that they deleted the tweeted to "avoid causing more offence."

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But the initial tone-deaf response didn't go unnoticed on Twitter.

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Virgin Trains did not respond immediately to Mashable's request for comment.

Rachel Thompson

Features Editor

Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.

A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.

Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.