The former co-worker dubbed Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson a “creep” in a 2020 text message provided to the Lighthouse. He’s the third man to speak out against the mayor’s conduct.
By Bob Norman, The Lighthouse
A former Chico’s FAS employee has come forward with a previously undisclosed account of his interactions with Kevin Anderson, detailing a pattern of unwanted attention that continued for months while they both worked at the company’s Fort Myers headquarters a decade ago.
The man, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, claimed Anderson repeatedly sought him out at work, stopped him in the hallways, entered his workspace without invitation, and repeatedly invited him to lunch or coffee off campus.
“I was a gay man in my early 20s, he was a straight man 30 years older than me, and I remember thinking, Why is this guy so interested in me? Why does he keep stopping me or coming into my cube?” the man wrote in an emailed account. “… I have plenty of older friends; this didn’t feel to me like an older coworker trying to make a friend. It felt forward and like he was repeatedly trying to create a personal relationship that I wasn’t reciprocating.”
The former employee, whose identity and former employment at Chico’s was verified by the Lighthouse, made it clear that Anderson, a married Republican who left Chico’s in 2019, never propositioned him for sex. Rather, he describes persistent personal attention over the course of more than a year beginning in 2016 that he did not welcome and made him uncomfortable.
“I remember him asking if I had a girlfriend. I dodged the question, and somehow the conversation shifted toward his support of gay people in general,” said the man. “I remember him saying something to the effect of, ‘It’s okay if you are, I don’t have any issue with that.’ I don’t remember exactly how he got from the girlfriend question to that point, but I remember feeling like he was trying to get me to tell him I was gay.
“A lot of my conversations with him were like this,” he continued. “He’d bring up something random, personal or kind of charged and somehow twist the conversation into a place that made me uncomfortable.”
He wrote that it got so bad he changed his work routine to avoid Anderson and told several co-workers and managers about it. Two Chico’s employees, one of whom continues to work at the women’s apparel company in a management role, confirmed the man told them about Anderson’s behavior prior to Lighthouse reporting about two younger men who alleged unwanted sexual attention (and worse) from the mayor.
Those two men — 23-year-old Kagan Vann and 18-year-old Dominic Hendricks — directly confronted Anderson with their allegations at Monday’s city council meeting. Numerous speakers demanded the mayor’s resignation. Anderson denied the allegations and said he would continue leading the city before abruptly adjourning the meeting with no discussion among the council. The mayor did not respond to a detailed text message for comment from the Lighthouse regarding the former Chico’s employee’s accusations.
The former employee wrote that he first learned of the allegations from coworkers who read about it in the Lighthouse. He described a feeling of solidarity with the other two men, especially after watching them speak at the city council meeting.
“It was hard to watch and I feel terrible for both of them,” wrote the man, who left Chico’s in 2020. “You should be able to trust your public officials. And I have a lot of respect for them being willing to stand up there publicly and talk about what happened to them.”
He noted that Anderson seemed very determined in all three settings to establish relationships that were unwanted.
“I know how persistent he could be with someone who wasn’t really reciprocating,” he wrote. “In my case, I could keep saying no and eventually get away from it. But he wasn’t the mayor.”
When Anderson did become mayor in 2020, he and two separate coworkers (a message for comment to one of them went unreturned) communicated about it at the time in texts the man supplied to the Lighthouse.
“I spit out my drink,” one wrote about the news.
“OMG. Maybe you should have went on that ‘date’! Lol,” another coworker wrote to the man.
“Maybe I should let wink news know what a creep he was lol,” answered the man in the exchange that predates the current allegations by six years.
The current Chico’s employee, who also asked not to be named for fear of possible retaliation, detailed what the man related about Anderson at the time it was allegedly happening.
“I remember [him] sharing with me that he would be away from his desk and he would come back to his desk and Kevin was standing waiting for him just to chat,” the current employee said. “Kevin was very insistent that they go to lunch together. [He] wasn’t comfortable with that and he declined it a number of times. Kevin got visibly extremely angry and was like ‘what is the point of going for lunch if we don’t leave campus? We need to leave campus.’ That made [him] more uncomfortable.”
He never accepted the invitation.
“At the time, my feeling was that I was one accepted lunch away from finding out explicitly what he wanted,” wrote the man. “But I can’t know what actually would have happened.”
The other corroborating ex-Chico’s employee, who also asked not to be identified, said the man told her about Anderson’s behavior at a work-related conference a year ago.
“He said that Kevin used to wait for him in the morning at his desk and he would strike up conversations with him and was always asking him out to lunch and offering to pay for it,” she said. “He said it was a creepy vibe. He told other coworkers about it at the time it was happening. I was surprised because I didn’t see that behavior in Kevin. I knew he was married and he was always nice and respectful toward me.”
She said she explicitly believed the man’s complaints about Anderson.
“I was disturbed by them, but I also believed them,” she said. “I know him well. He’s an ethical person and he wouldn’t make something like that up.”
e said. “I know him well. He’s an ethical person and he wouldn’t make something like that up.”