So, personally, I think the guy is just average looking, but apparently Melissa Nelson has different tastes. Melissa Nelson is a dentist in Iowa, and for ten years, she worked with her dental assistant, James Knight. James is a married with children and so is Melissa, and it seems like an average working situation took on some sort of sexual undercurrent over the course of the years. Melissa says James wore “tight clothing” to work that showed off his shape, discussed his lack of a sex life with his wife and he was becoming a bit of a distraction.
James says he just wore scrubs, like all the other assistants.
Melissa’s husband, who didn’t exactly win the lottery in the looks department, was snooping through his wife’s phone and found some “personal” messages that Melissa had exchanged with James. Melissa’s husband was not impressed, and requested that James be removed from his wife’s workplace, and since she owns the dental practice, she is well within her rights to do just that. Or is she?
Melissa admitted that while nothing had happened YET, there was a real risk with James, and since she valued her marriage and her religious beliefs that do not permit adultery, she fired James and gave him one month’s severance pay.
James sued. He felt he had been wrongfully dismissed on the basis of his gender, and admitted NO wrongdoing. He had never flirted with Melissa, he was happily married and he was not interested in any kind of relationship with Melissa and those text messages? Oh, oops. We’ll just ignore those.
A panel of all female judges decided James was full of shit. They agreed that Melissa, as a business owner, has the right to hire and fire any one she pleases, and that James was not fired on the basis of his gender, but rather because Melissa had feelings and James was a threat to her marriage. Melissa had a right to honor her husband’s wishes that James be removed from the office.
Agree with that decision? I do. If Melissa had worked for a government agency or a large corporation, and needed to remove James from her life before he became a real threat to her happiness, then the onus would be on her to get transferred or find a new job. But because Melissa OWNED the business, those options were not on the table. Melissa’s husband, no fool, knew from the text messages that the relationship was more than just professional and suspected, quite rightly, that perhaps James was hoping to become Husband 2.0 to a wealthy dentist.
So it was goodbye James and score one for traditional marriage. And more importantly, score one for the rights of individual business owners to decide whom they hire and whom they fire. James had to scuttle his not that cute butt off to some other dental practice. And Melissa and her husband will now carry on, as best they can.
And of course, this decision is horribly offensive to women and feminists everywhere. Why, human rights have been set back 100 years in Iowa! Why on earth should an attractive man be fired just because he sent some text messages to his boss and her husband found out? Why should HE lose his job because SHE found him attractive?
Outrageous!
Nope. Not outrageous. Not in the slightest. Melissa has every right to honor her husband’s wishes and to remove herself from a tempting situation. As a private business owner, the only way to do that was to fire James.
Everything about this situation remains true, even though Melissa is the assistant and James is the dentist.
There’s the door, Melissa. Don’t let it hit you in the ass on the way out.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 