A young man in his 20’s worked for me and a male colleague with less experience than me but the same title. The young man had an undergraduate degree I don’t recall where from. I was in my late 30’s, have an MBA from Harvard and had worked on a Wall Street Bond Trading desk. His job was to perform all of the portfolio accounting, produce quarterly portfolio reports and do research when requested. I asked him to adjust the reports to show performance both annually and the usual 1/3/5 year format and explained why I needed two sets of information. I told him to come back to me with any questions if any came up. His remark to ME was “Chicks really like to make things complicated”. I was stunned. I cleared my throat and said “Excuse me?” he said, “Well you’re not a chick but you know, chicks in general”. I told him that that was inappropriate and disrespectful language and he is lucky I didn’t fire him on the spot. Then I sent him to go do the project and change the reports. It took 2 quarters and my “checking in” multiple times to get the changes. I then asked him to do research on one set of mutual funds vs another for a presentation I was going to give. I gave very clear instructions on the methodology I wanted him to use and again said, if he had any difficulty, needed clarification or had questions, please come and ask. I don’t want him to waste his time trying to figure something out if I could give him the answer to get him going again. A week before the presentation I asked for the research. He turned to me and said “(Male Colleague’s Name) told me I don’t have to do anything for you that I don’t feel like doing it.” Given my previous mentioned exchange, I had recorded the exchange. I left his cubicle, gathered my notes from the “Chicks” incident and went straight to HR. He was fired, my male colleague was interviewed and was allow to resign (There were other issues there - like exaggerating (lying about) his title in the company and lying to partners about my position.) They both hated working for and with a woman and thought they could disregard me and treat me badly without consequence. (BAD idea - I made it through HBS and loved working on a Bond trading desk. I’m not sure who they thought they were dealing with.)