Well, she owned the policy in question, and there’s no way that the head of HR didn’t get wind of an escalation like this. I don’t know about the bit regarding

Well, she owned the policy in question, and there’s no way that the head of HR didn’t get wind of an escalation like this. I don’t know about the bit regarding a man below her getting their decision overturned, but ultimately she would have approved it. If a policy interpretation decision was “mistakenly” made before it got to her, she would have been able to overturn it, and evidently that never happened. But yes, of course it’s speculation :)