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agonyaunt2025-02-24 10:58 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2025-02-24 10:58 am
Entry tags:
Ask A Manager: Coworker Masturbates In Bathroom
Title tells it.
There is a guy in my office who will go into one of the stalls in the men’s bathroom for 20-30 minutes at a time. I have had the bad luck of entering a stall next to him and hearing audible masturbation noises. I think he does this every day we work in-office because I swear it’s happened 5-6 times. A coworker I’m close with has confirmed hearing it as well, so I know I am not going crazy. I have also seen this guy come out of the bathroom with headphones on, looking at something on his phone, so after repeated incidents, I’m pretty sure he just doesn’t know how loud he is.
Not sure how to handle this one. He is more or less doing it “in private” and I feel like HR would escalate things too much. We also were recently acquired by an international company and no longer have in-house HR. I don’t really want to tell someone halfway across the continent about a coworker’s bathroom habits. On the other hand, I would feel uncomfortable going up to him and saying, “Hey, I hear you jerking it every time we’re in the office, can you knock it off?”
Asking HR to intervene would not be escalating it too much. Far from it! This guy is not in private; he’s using a shared bathroom where coworkers are hearing him (and he’s apparently not even bothering to be discreet or to stop when someone is in a stall a couple of feet away from him). You don’t owe him privacy here; he owes you the ability to use the bathroom at work without being exposed to the sound of someone jerking off. “Not hearing someone masturbating” is pretty much a bare minimum expectation you should be able to have at work.
Talk to HR. Say you’ve heard others report the same thing, it’s gross, and you don’t want to be exposed to it.
There is a guy in my office who will go into one of the stalls in the men’s bathroom for 20-30 minutes at a time. I have had the bad luck of entering a stall next to him and hearing audible masturbation noises. I think he does this every day we work in-office because I swear it’s happened 5-6 times. A coworker I’m close with has confirmed hearing it as well, so I know I am not going crazy. I have also seen this guy come out of the bathroom with headphones on, looking at something on his phone, so after repeated incidents, I’m pretty sure he just doesn’t know how loud he is.
Not sure how to handle this one. He is more or less doing it “in private” and I feel like HR would escalate things too much. We also were recently acquired by an international company and no longer have in-house HR. I don’t really want to tell someone halfway across the continent about a coworker’s bathroom habits. On the other hand, I would feel uncomfortable going up to him and saying, “Hey, I hear you jerking it every time we’re in the office, can you knock it off?”
Asking HR to intervene would not be escalating it too much. Far from it! This guy is not in private; he’s using a shared bathroom where coworkers are hearing him (and he’s apparently not even bothering to be discreet or to stop when someone is in a stall a couple of feet away from him). You don’t owe him privacy here; he owes you the ability to use the bathroom at work without being exposed to the sound of someone jerking off. “Not hearing someone masturbating” is pretty much a bare minimum expectation you should be able to have at work.
Talk to HR. Say you’ve heard others report the same thing, it’s gross, and you don’t want to be exposed to it.
no subject
Even as someone sexually interested in women, no, I don’t want to go to the can and suddenly hear Bev from Accounting spanking it. Nor do I want to smell sexual activity I’m not involved in. (No matter what someone’s junk is, sexual friction and/or release has smells for those of us with sensitive noses.) Even if I had a crush on someone in my office, I still wouldn’t want to accidentally hear them going at it, because then I’d feel like a creep when it wasn’t even my fault.