A Man Mistook Her For Being Trans In A Walmart Bathroom—Then She Got Fired
Dani Davis, a 6’4” cisgender woman, says she was harassed in a Walmart bathroom—then fired for reporting it incorrectly.
A Florida woman’s experience in a Walmart restroom and subsequent termination from the company has gone viral on social media. Dani Davis, a 6’4″ cisgender woman, says she was harassed by a transphobic man in the bathroom of the Walmart she used to work at, then fired for not reporting the incident to the “right” person.
Davis says she had worked at the Lake City Walmart for seven years when, on March 14, she was verbally assaulted in the store’s women’s restroom. While she was alone in the restroom and in a stall, a man stormed in, shouting about transgender people and claiming he needed to “protect his wife or girlfriend” from them. She says his partner frantically yelled at him to leave, but not before Davis was left feeling targeted, humiliated, and frozen in fear.
“I honestly totally froze. I am not confrontational in the least and honestly… I didn’t know how dangerous he was,” Davis later recounted in a now-viral Facebook post.
When she finally emerged, shaken but physically unharmed, the couple had vanished. Still, Davis did what she believed was right: she reported the terrifying ordeal to her supervisor.
A week later, she says she was fired.
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Davis claims that she was told she’d failed to report the incident to a “salaried member of management,” which Walmart deemed a “security risk.” Her vest, badge, and work phone were confiscated, and she says she wasn’t even given termination paperwork.
“To me it sounds like they thought I was the security risk,” Davis wrote on Facebook, trying to make sense out of the confusing situation. “Because of my height and someone’s ignorance mistaking me for something I’m not, I was now a security risk and they terminated me for it.”
To Davis’ surprise, her post went viral, racking up over 13,000 shares. Support poured in, with many urging her to take legal action.
“Fight back!” one commenter wrote.
“Sue the hell out of them,” suggested another.
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Another user, who identifies as a trans woman, shared her own bathroom harassment experience: “I’ve also been harassed as an employee in the bathroom. (I’m a trans woman, but get this—I was using the men’s.) So literally just not safe anywhere from deranged and bigoted people.”
A common theme in the responses was the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, with one commenter noting: “Transphobia and misogyny have always been two sides of the same coin. I notice it’s a cis man that’s going into the bathroom and you that’s getting punished for it. I’m so sorry. This has always been about punishing women, cis and trans, for not fitting standards of femininity they want to enforce.”
Davis later posted a video on TikTok, further detailing her experience. The video has drawn thousands of views, with more people calling for justice.
As of now, Walmart has yet to publicly address Davis’s firing. However, given the mounting online backlash, the retail giant may soon find itself under pressure to explain its actions.
