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agonyaunt2025-09-17 10:25 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2025-09-17 10:25 am
Entry tags:
Ask a Manager: A a colleague is harassing female coworkers...
...and the person I reported it to didn’t seem too concerned Content advisory: ableism, and also sexual harassment.
I am a supervisor for a small-ish organization with very few male employees. “Amy” started working here in January, but does not report to me. Earlier this week she asked if she could talk to me, and told me that one of the men in her department was making her very uncomfortable. Since she started working here, “Ben” makes comments to her about how beautiful she is, saying things like, “I’m sorry for staring at you. You’re just so beautiful.” She said she’s attempted to make small talk with him in the hopes that as he got to know her, he would talk to her about other things.
Apparently things escalated two nights ago as everyone was leaving work. Ben told Amy she looked like one of his friends from college, and could he take Amy’s picture to show his friend? Amy felt uncomfortable but let him take the picture. However, the other women she walked out with said that was really weird behavior and over the next couple of days encouraged her to talk to me. After Amy told me about her experience with Ben, another employee (who does report to me, and who was one of the women who told Amy to talk to me) told me he also made an inappropriate comment to her about how “hot” her body looked in a dress she was wearing.
Amy’s supervisor and the director were both out that day, but the next morning I told them about both women’s interactions with Ben. To my surprise, the director, “Clara,” pretty much blew it off. She said that Ben has ADHD, which makes his social interactions awkward, and she was sure he didn’t mean anything. I said regardless, he couldn’t make those comments to his coworkers and either the director or his supervisor needed to tell him so. Clara said she would talk to him. (I want to point out that Clara is younger than I am, so this isn’t a case of an older woman not taking harassment seriously. Furthermore, she has been very good about addressing harassment from the public towards any of our employees. Also, this is not a case of Ben awkwardly flirting. He’s married and tells people “happily” so, and both women who reported this behavior are also married.)
So what is my role now? Do I follow up with Clara to make sure she talked to Ben? Should I follow up with Amy, or ask Clara to follow up with her? I feel like I was entrusted with making this a safe work environment for Amy, and potentially other young women, and I don’t know where to go from here. I want to reassure her that reporting Ben’s behavior was the right thing to do and make sure Ben doesn’t continue to say things like this to his coworkers.
ADHD doesn’t cause people to sexually harass their coworkers. Clara’s assertion is ridiculous — and pretty insulting to people with ADHD.
What’s more, even if Ben did have some explanation for why he struggled with social norms, it wouldn’t mean that he should be allowed to make inappropriate comments to colleagues and everyone would just have to be understanding. In fact, it wouldn’t change anything about the way the organization needed to proceed; both legally and ethically, they’d still need to tell him to cut it out.
Employers have a legal obligation to intervene when employees are being sexually harassed. Now that Ben’s behavior has been reported, your organization is opening itself to legal liability if it doesn’t act.
Do you have an HR department? If so, skip over Clara and go to them. Relay what was reported to you, and share your concern that it’s not being addressed sufficiently.
If you don’t have HR, go to the head of the organization since it’s small. If that’s Clara … well, that’s not good, but then you’d need to go back to her and say, “I thought more about our conversation, and I want to be sure we’re making it clear to Ben that he cannot make any more of these comments to employees, period. What Amy and Jane relayed qualifies under the law as a report of sexual harassment, which makes us legally obligated to investigate and ensure it stops.”
And yes, someone should follow up with Amy and the other woman who complained, to let them know it’s been addressed and to tell them exactly how to report it if the behavior doesn’t stop. But of course, that needs to be true — so Clara or someone needs to actually handle this first.
I am a supervisor for a small-ish organization with very few male employees. “Amy” started working here in January, but does not report to me. Earlier this week she asked if she could talk to me, and told me that one of the men in her department was making her very uncomfortable. Since she started working here, “Ben” makes comments to her about how beautiful she is, saying things like, “I’m sorry for staring at you. You’re just so beautiful.” She said she’s attempted to make small talk with him in the hopes that as he got to know her, he would talk to her about other things.
Apparently things escalated two nights ago as everyone was leaving work. Ben told Amy she looked like one of his friends from college, and could he take Amy’s picture to show his friend? Amy felt uncomfortable but let him take the picture. However, the other women she walked out with said that was really weird behavior and over the next couple of days encouraged her to talk to me. After Amy told me about her experience with Ben, another employee (who does report to me, and who was one of the women who told Amy to talk to me) told me he also made an inappropriate comment to her about how “hot” her body looked in a dress she was wearing.
Amy’s supervisor and the director were both out that day, but the next morning I told them about both women’s interactions with Ben. To my surprise, the director, “Clara,” pretty much blew it off. She said that Ben has ADHD, which makes his social interactions awkward, and she was sure he didn’t mean anything. I said regardless, he couldn’t make those comments to his coworkers and either the director or his supervisor needed to tell him so. Clara said she would talk to him. (I want to point out that Clara is younger than I am, so this isn’t a case of an older woman not taking harassment seriously. Furthermore, she has been very good about addressing harassment from the public towards any of our employees. Also, this is not a case of Ben awkwardly flirting. He’s married and tells people “happily” so, and both women who reported this behavior are also married.)
So what is my role now? Do I follow up with Clara to make sure she talked to Ben? Should I follow up with Amy, or ask Clara to follow up with her? I feel like I was entrusted with making this a safe work environment for Amy, and potentially other young women, and I don’t know where to go from here. I want to reassure her that reporting Ben’s behavior was the right thing to do and make sure Ben doesn’t continue to say things like this to his coworkers.
ADHD doesn’t cause people to sexually harass their coworkers. Clara’s assertion is ridiculous — and pretty insulting to people with ADHD.
What’s more, even if Ben did have some explanation for why he struggled with social norms, it wouldn’t mean that he should be allowed to make inappropriate comments to colleagues and everyone would just have to be understanding. In fact, it wouldn’t change anything about the way the organization needed to proceed; both legally and ethically, they’d still need to tell him to cut it out.
Employers have a legal obligation to intervene when employees are being sexually harassed. Now that Ben’s behavior has been reported, your organization is opening itself to legal liability if it doesn’t act.
Do you have an HR department? If so, skip over Clara and go to them. Relay what was reported to you, and share your concern that it’s not being addressed sufficiently.
If you don’t have HR, go to the head of the organization since it’s small. If that’s Clara … well, that’s not good, but then you’d need to go back to her and say, “I thought more about our conversation, and I want to be sure we’re making it clear to Ben that he cannot make any more of these comments to employees, period. What Amy and Jane relayed qualifies under the law as a report of sexual harassment, which makes us legally obligated to investigate and ensure it stops.”
And yes, someone should follow up with Amy and the other woman who complained, to let them know it’s been addressed and to tell them exactly how to report it if the behavior doesn’t stop. But of course, that needs to be true — so Clara or someone needs to actually handle this first.
The times they are a-changin'
... I would say that overall AAM has been in the top five of online spaces I frequent where I've seen "maybe he's neurodivergent" trottted out as a reason/excuse/justification for male malfeasance. So it made me SO HAPPY to see pretty much every commenter say NO NEURODIVERGENCE IS NOT AN EXCUSE NOR A REASON NO NO NO ALSO NO. I am so glad that (may have) finally changed.
Sometimes I toy with the idea of writing about my viewpoint of several decades of this trope, but I suspect I would just get myself in trouble.
Also, cripes, Clara, in addition to your other sins don't reveal people's medical information!
Re: The times they are a-changin'
Re: The times they are a-changin'
no subject