"It's so awful we just HAVE to show you how awful it is"

Some numpty at PricewaterhouseCoopers' Irish office is in a spot of bother after he got hold of photos of all the firm's female new recruits, picked out the 13 he found most attractive, and emailed the pictures to his numpty mates with the message "This would be my shortlist for the top 10".

All the numpties involved are now being investigated by their bosses after the email whizzed around the world. As you can imagine, a major multinational like PWC is very aware of the damage such a stunt could do both to their reputation and to the poor women involved, who are likely to be less than happy at the prospect of being ogled and "rated" by cyber-pervs from Dublin to Dunedin*.

As a PWC spokesman told the Daily Mail:

"Our main concern is the impact of this matter on the women who were the subject of these e-mails. We are meeting with them regularly to offer them every reassurance that they have the full support of the firm in dealing with this very difficult issue for them."

It's nice to see an employer taking its duty of care to employees seriously. It's less nice to see the Mail add insult to injury by publishing all 13 photos, both on its homepage and on the story itself. And to really rub salt into the wound, they've even included a clip from the email chain in which derogatory comments are made about one of the women in particular.

The photos look they were copied from staff profiles, which also means the Mail will be breaking all manner of copyright and data protection laws by publishing them. But what the hell, it means they get to publish a bunch of pictures of blonde women!

* Google it.

UPDATE!
The Telegraph are at it as well - lots of "isn't this terrible" about the pictures, then all 13 reproduced for your viewing pleasure. And it certainly seems to be doing the trick - at the time of writing it is the most-read story on the paper's website, edging out even Japanese man streams suicide live on the internet and Dick Van Dyke 'saved by porpoises'. It's a very serious paper, you know.