How a slap on the bum cost my wife her job

‘I can’t believe this happens in a first world country’,  my trembling wife told police as we sat there giving a statement on a Sunday afternoon in Canberra. ‘No one has a right to touch my body without my permission’. But before I go to far into that, I should provide some context to why we in the police station giving a statement in the first places.

My wife is from Mexico, and me, I’m from the Gold Coast originally, but got a job working for the government in Canberra, where I’ve been for 13 and a half years.

 When my wife and I we were married my wife was a Human Resources manager for a Swedish company with a factory in her home city of Guadalajara, Mexico. A very important role for a pretty large multinational business. But after we were married, my wife followed her heart and came to live with me in Canberra, this civilised society where nothing much happens, but it has enough restaurants and bars and things to do. It was a tough choice, she lives her country, but you do these things for the love of your life.

We didn’t expect things to be necessarily that easy here for her, English is her second language and us Aussies speaks a fairly peculiar version of the language. We knew my wife would have to work extra hard and persevere to get ahead.

 So firstly she went and did six months of English training to improve her language skills. And then, accepting, it might be difficult for a new immigrant to Australia to get a HR job she then also spent months taking a customer service course with a local training facility here in Canberra. There was a component of the course where they offered a work placement, so she could get her foot in the door at a local business.

Then COVID hit and it became even harder. The work placement was cancelled pending easing of restrictions. So months went by and my wife waited patiently for her chance to get a foot in the door at a local business. She waited around 6 months to get that opportunity and finally it came. A landscaping firm was willing to take her on. It was retail, but hell, she wasn’t that fussy, in fact she’d got one day a week cooking chips at a hamburger place in Barton through friends.

So she goes along to their placement at the landscaping firm, full of optimism, ever willing to help out. They were so impressed with her they offered her a few shifts after the placement finished. The manager was a fellow Spanish speaker and he helped support my wife, even though she found it difficult sometimes to understand the terminology for the pond and landscaping equipment. But she was getting there, she tried her best and a few weeks later she was offered more work. Three days a week on an ongoing basis. Now my wage is pretty good so we were doing ok, but that extra money and independence meant so much to my wife. I was so proud and supportive of her. I knew it wasn’t her preferred position but it was a start and could lead to other things. 

Things were looking up! This morning I dropped her off at work, picking up some potting mixture from the place before I left so I could go do some gardening, expecting to come back at 4 pm to collect her.

Around 11.30 I get a call, “cariño (darling), please come and collect me, something has happened, I will explain later”.

“Ok,” I said, she was obviously distressed and upset, so I drove straight out to collect her.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I was just putting prices in some products and B*** comes and slaps me (she didn’t know the English word for ‘slap’ so she used the Spanish one) on the butt”.

I immediately got out of the car and screamed at the manager, who wasn’t B***, he asked whether I wanted to speak to B***. 

“Yes”, I said along with a few expletives, “this is 2020, this behaviour is not acceptable”, few more expletives.

I confronted B*** who was out back on his backhoe thing digging piles of dirt.

He tried to explain it was a joke, that he was just fooling around and that now he knows the limits he will stop.

“She’s not going to come back”, I said to him, “you can’t just go around doing that sort of thing. Do you know how hard it is for new immigrants to get jobs, do you know how much effort they go through just to work at a place like this? I mean she was a HR manager of a larger company in her own country, before she came to Australia, and the you treat her like that!”.

Now many people, obviously this guy included, think it’s just a bit of fun to slap a woman on the bum. And they can just say sorry and move on. Well you know what, you can have that view, but we too. The view that they guy had crossed the line and should be reported to the police.

Just a slap on the butt, many might say.

Well, I say we live in a supposedly civil society, where we are meant to have the rule of law.

I mean my wife would admit that in Mexico much more serious crimes often go unpunished, I see the pictures of missing women display led on roundabouts, abducted and murdered and never seen again. In fact one her cousins was murdered and dismembered and another was almost abducted from a bus stop I. Broad daylight, but for the grace of god a passerby help drag her from the grip in the man and woman taking her away.

But you know what, this is a workplace in Canberra in Australia in 2020.

If anyone thinks they can still slap a woman (or man) on the bum and just have them laugh it off. Well, I hope you give them the same ride shock as this man B*** did to my wife when, she trembling, turned around to see him smile and explain it was just a joke.

I hope, like her, you tell him he has no right to do that, and I hope, like her, you spend what would have otherwise been a lovely a relaxed afternoon pursuing the matter with police.

And, despite yet another setback in the year, with bushfires blanketing our city, and the now is rial COVID business, I hope like her, you don’t just take it, you stand up for yourself, and you bounce back!

From a loving and supportive husband of the best chip fryer/ HR manager in Canberra, and possibly, the world, and also the love of my life! Te amo (I love you), and your strong spirit.