Justice
The Truly Bizarre PR Stunt That Cost a City Official Her Job
Maybe dressing up a male bus driver as an elderly lady from a senior center isn't the best idea.
In early January, Sue Stenhouse, the executive director of the Cranston, Rhode Island Senior Enrichment Center, announced a new program for teens to shovel snow for seniors. It should have been as innocuous as city press events get. A service for the elderly! A teen-job generator!
But Stenhouse evidently wasn’t comfortable with the optics going unadjusted. So she called in the aid of a senior center bus driver named David Roberts—not to introduce her or talk about their work, but to appear as an elderly woman sitting prominently beside Stenhouse throughout the event.