male employees stole their lactating colleagues' breast milk at Blizzard
I can corroborate this, and I am likely the origin of this statement (though I don't remember telling this specific person).
I was the one of the first, if not the first, woman to use the new "quiet rooms."
At that time they consisted of a chair, side table, and light.
This was in 2008.
There was no fridge in the room, so I had to label and carry my breastmilk out and store it in the breakroom fridge. It was very clearly breastmilk, in baggies with a baby's face on it.
It was clearly mine, as I was the only lactating woman in the building.
One day, I went to retrieve my pumped supply at the end of the day and it was gone.
There were no other mothers in the building, & very few women at all in either QA or CS at the time.
All the other items I had seen earlier were still in the fridge. They were dated and labeled.
Someone had either taken my bags and tossed them, or stolen them for some creepy reason.
This was devastating, not just for the creep factor but because I was already very low on supply and had a baby who wouldn't latch. I was already supplementing and struggling to get milk.
We never ever found out who did it. To their credit, my HR rep and my department's director swiftly provided a mini fridge and other improvements to the room within 24 hours. But it should never have happened in the first place.
What demented person steals an infant's food?
Another note is that for both post-maternity situations, I consistently felt judged and otherwise penalized for having to pump every hour/two hours. With my second baby, I also suffered from severe mastitis, which required me to "air out" and medicate my nipples after pumping.
Which meant I had to sit topless for a good amount of time after pumping. It was so severe, I lost some batches of milk due to contamination from my own blood.
I tried to mitigate this time loss by buying a Surface and remoting into my station/calling into meetings.
Still, I ended up experiencing loss of project duties and received a lot of negative attitude from my male bosses and male middle management due to my lack of ability to physically be in the room, even though I was in the office and actively working and responding to comms.
After the pandemic, perhaps being able to remote in won't have the same stigma and people will realize that you CAN be just as productive, if not more so, when not physically present. Especially if you're disabled or a caregiver. If leadership decides to let you do so, that is.
I have related the stolen milk story to a lot of people, however, so I would be unsurprised if it's become a story that's a regular part of one of the feminine/marginalized people "whisper campaigns" - y'know, where we all warn each other about shit and specific people on the DL.
www.resetera.com
