John Demsey, a senior executive at cosmetic giant Estée Lauder, has agreed to retire after he was asked to leave the company following his inappropriate social media post. The executive group president of the firm shared a meme related to Covid with a racial slur. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the news of him being fired by the company.
On Monday, in a memo to the staff, the company announced that Demsey was exiting the company. The memo had been posted after the WSJ reported that he had been asked to leave. An Estée Lauder spokeswoman confirmed that the senior executive, who handled many of the firm’s popular brands including Clinique, had agreed to retire.
The company said that his termination was the “result of his recent Instagram posts, which do not reflect the values of the Estée Lauder Companies.” He will be leaving the company after an over 30 year long stint, this week.
The company, which is renowned for its popular brands including MAC and Clinique said that their employees and their senior leaders were accountable for driving the progress of their company and they had to “respect the values of the company for the long term.”
The 65-year old executive was asked to leave after he acknowledged that he had posted a meme that was racist. It was posted on a personal account on social media. He has over 73,000 followers on the social media platform Instagram, where he shared the offensive meme. The meme was taken down later. After the company came to know about the offensive post, they had suspended him.
$10,000,000 a year down the hole over CHINGY 😂😂😂😂ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜‚😂😂 I can’t breathe https://t.co/kk8qJe8Ros
– Freddie HotSpot (@HeavyFarda) February 28, 2022
Later, in another post, he apologized saying that he was “terribly sorry” and “deeply ashamed” that he had hurt so many people when he made the decision of “carelessly reporting a racist meme without reading it beforehand.”
From the past two years Estée Lauder is putting in efforts to make the company more equitable as well as more inclusive. The letter said that they were “making progress” against their “commitments” to their employees, their partners and their consumers.
(Photo: Sorbis)
