Sexual discrimination - male, 58 years

Customers can be right cnuts and the company likely took the easier option of just placating the customer. They’ve nothing to gain by launching a battle on your behalf- in their eyes not a battle worth pursuing. Doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong unfortunately. If I was in your shoes I just chalk it down- while no one deserves abuse from a customer it happens unfortunately. I wouldn’t have engaged her at all once the abuse started.

All sounds to me like a hill that isn’t worth dying on.

You have no evidence that you were discriminated against. With all due respect, you are opening a can of worms here and you will regret it.

You are probably right but forget about it and move on. You won't achieve anything by taking it further.

You got an abusive customer which happens from time to time. There is not much the company can do about this either in fairness.

Need a thick skin if you're dealing with customers for sure.

This probably isn't a discrimination issue, but rather one of those situations where your employer is unwilling to push back on a customer's unacceptable behaviour for fear of losing their business (or causing backlash by doing so that creates negative publicity; these days it's easy for disgruntled customers to spout utter nonsense on social media and get a lot of folks in an uproar about some company or other that they perceive has "mistreated" them, regardless of the truth of the situation). It's not fair to the employees like you, but it is unfortunately quite common for companies to just try to placate angry customers with some halfhearted vague apology (whether it's actually warranted or not) and hope the problem will just go away quietly. If it makes you feel better, it's likely got nothing to do with your age or gender, and it's also likely your immediate managers are well aware that you did nothing wrong, but they unfortunately have to play along to keep their boss's boss's bosses happy.

Working in customer-facing roles does unfortunately mean having to have a thick skin and avoid taking it personally when some customers inevitably act like assholes, and while in a perfect world your employer would always have your back in such situations and would happily tell abusive customers where to stick it, it just doesn't work that way in the real world where companies are unwilling to do anything that might jeopardise their QoQ profit growth. It'd really be best for your own sanity to chalk this up to a customer having a **** day and unreasonably taking it out on you, and just let it go. If you're not able to do that, you might want to consider whether a different role that doesn't involve direct customer contact (or at least something other than front-line support, who are usually the ones who have to bear the brunt of such abuse from angry customers) might be a better fit.

It's an expensive way to make a point even if it's valid. It's unlikely to to change a culture of customer appeasement and gender bias using staff as Cannon fodder.

Decide what your objective is and how you'll know if you've achieved it.

Personally I would see this as a toxic environment and would move laterally as far away as I could from such people.

the reality is if he was a woman and his managers men than no one would be questioning his surmising

That's your opinion, also not a fact. Personally I'd be giving the same advice whether male or female.

Nothing in his post exists.

@OP

You might go about tackling it from a point of view of Dignity at Work. By way of pure information - Under the Health Safety and Welfare at Work Act, every place of work is required to have a Dignity at Work Policy and an Anti Bullying Policy. A complaint can be lodged with the Workplace Contact Unit within the Health and Safety Authority. Additionally there also has to be a risk assessment that looks at psycho-social hazards as they term it (their language) which discusses control measures to tackle such issues. In the grander scheme of things, if it is a large employer as you described, such places usually have an Equality and Diversity Officer whom specialise in such matter and may be able to offer some advocacy for you or some form of advice. For what its worth, one option (and again this is by way of information only) , one can make a Subject Access Request to see what data is held on them. From what you have written do you feel in this case that it might be better to let sleeping dogs lie? Solely for the reason that might it open up a proverbial can of worms that you may not wish to open and in return cause more hassle than its worth?

Bit weird but fine.

My job deals with high proportion of female customers.

I get the talk to the manager phonecall sometimes and I get on grand with them. So from my perspective I see no issue. I generally think men have it easier with customers. Again, my own perspective. Maybe it's my laid back approach, ability to bs well...I dunno. I don't speak for all men's experiences.

In saying the above, I'm talking about customers/ clients. I've never worked in predominantly female team, so my opinion may be moot.

But from the ops post I'd say don't bother. Your manager should back you up unless you made a complete balls of it. Then chat in private.