Christian Witten, the managing director of New Breath Consultants, announced Monday that they’ve hired a new creative liaison, Daisy Mitchell, who they are certain will “fit in neatly with the office environment.” A photograph of the new blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman now adorns the office wall with the rest of the staff photos.

“We carefully considered all the available options,” said Witten, “and I, as the chief recruiter on the team, decided that we should weigh all factors by their relative importance. And of course, the most important factor in a young woman — excuse me, in a young assistant — is her, uh … approachability.”

The creative liaison job had been posted publicly for two weeks and had received multiple applications. The most notable applicant who was not accepted was Shira Jamison, who came from a background of several years’ work as a creative liaison after graduating magna cum laude from UC San Diego. In her cover letter, she said her “experience living in the world as a half-Black gay Jewish transgender woman” would grant her an “unusual perspective, which [she] would bring to the creative work of creating the company’s internal and external materials.”

“I just didn’t feel that comfortable talking to that candidate,” said Witten. He claimed that this was “totally unrelated” to the fact that he had referred to her as “Mr. Jamison” multiple times when he met her, which she had politely corrected each time.

“No, no, it wasn’t that. Jamison spoke out of turn, and was loud even when we hadn’t explicitly spoken to, uh, her,” Witten explained. “Our execs said we should at least give her a chance, for the optics of the thing, so we did the interview, but I knew it wasn’t going to work out.” The public listing for the creative liaison position called for a candidate who was “creative, highly skilled, professional, who would bring a unique energy to the room and be independently-minded.”

“I’m disappointed, of course,” Jamison said. “It would have been nice to work there. But it’s not as if it was personal, right? I’m sure whoever they went with had a more impressive background.”

“This is so great,” said Mitchell, slouching in her new cubicle. “I get to make the shit that the rest of the world sees. I just graduated from ITT Tech right before they went bankrupt and I’m already raking in the big bucks. Plus, did you see the way that cute manager looked at me? My boyfriend is gonna flip. I love it.”

Critics of the decision include Janelle Brown, the former creative liaison. She resigned last month, citing “an office full of bigoted assholes.”

“The new creative liaison appears to be under-qualified for the position,” Brown said in a public Facebook post. “But she is white! And she has a boyfriend! She’ll fit right in with the rest of that office that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about diversity.”

“Of course New Breath Consultants cares about diversity!” Witten exclaimed in response when shown the post. “We have a bunch of diverse people.” He gestured around the room, which held over 30 people. “There’s Andrew, who’s from a minority religion, and Jake over there, who’s half Korean. And Cathy, Sarah, and Emily, who are women. We’ve even had women in contention for top management spots during the last two hiring cycles! Henry and Steve are doing a great job though.” Andrew Bingham is Mormon, and Jacob Yasuda is in fact half-Japanese.

New Breath’s website states, “We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate based on race, color, age, disability, national origin, veteran status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.”

Written by: Jaz Twersky