been subjected to sexual harassment? Your stories requested (informal research)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

As you may or may not know, I am the author of an online comic strip called Scandal Sheet!. I’m planning an upcoming storyline that deals with sexual harassment.

I’ve never been involved with sexual harassment from either perspective, nor do I know anyone who has (at least no one has ever mentioned it). It’s important to me to get this right, so I’m turning to you folks for anecdotal data.

NOTE: I want to promise you that I will not be playing this storyline for laughs. I take the subject very seriously and I don’t want to offend anyone who’s been sexually harassed. It will be powerful stuff - at least I hope it will - and maybe it will open someone’s eyes.

So if you’ve ever been sexually harassed at work (either directly, i.e. “sleep with me or lose your job”, or through being forced to work in a hostile environment), please share your stories with me. If you aren’t comfortable sharing them here in this thread, you can e-mail them to me at tcreole (at) hotmail dot com.

Possible points to include: Did you try to address the problem through channels? if so, were you satisfied with the response? How did other people react when they heard about it (or did you not tell anyone?) Finally, is there something you wish someone had said to you that would have helped you deal with the way the whole thing made you feel?

I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to answer.

2

Funny, this thread made me think of something that I had completely forgotten about.

My first job in high school was as a cashier in a grocery store. Near the break room one day I was joking around with a bag boy, and he reached out and twisted my nipples.

I was shocked, and told him that hurt, but I didn’t follow up with management or anything. I probably should have, but I really didn’t think anything of it. Maybe because I was just a teenager and I didn’t know that I should have been offended.

I certainly wasn’t scarred for life or anything, and I doubt you would see any bagboys doing such a thing to a cashier today due to the increased awareness on the subject. Which reminds me of another thing…

All of the cashiers were women, and there was some friction between the supervisor cashier and the rest of us. She was just a mean bitch. One day the manager called us all together and told us he expected such nonsense, because that’s what you get when a lot of women work together. She ended up getting demoted to a regular cashier, and then I went away to college, so I have no idea what happened.

Ah, the good old days… :rolleyes:

3

Not at my place of conventional employment, but in a university setting –

Background:

Grad students pursuing their PhD are part of the insular little community of a department, which otherwise includes the faculty and support staff. The grad students need the friendly cooperation of (at least some) faculty members within the department in order to leave with degree in hand. (You need a committee, and you can’t demand one. You need faculty members who are willing to be on your committee. Furthermore, if you are doing your work in one subfield, faculty members whose predominant work focuses on a different subfield generally will not consider being on your committee, so the pool from which you can recruit faculty members for your committee is generally going to be rather small).

Tale:

One person within a social sciences department with a research focus on gender issues and feminist theory. Unusually enough, a male person. Many grad students interested in these subjects, especially female grad students as you might suspect.

At a departmental Christmas party the story comes out that he has been having an affair with one of the grad students he was working with, and is unhappy because she is now getting married and is therefore terminating the arrangement. Nothing strictly forbidden by rules or law so far, but

a) In what was a very male department (faculty-wise), many of the female grad students wondered if they now understood why they were finding the going to be so difficult: they hadn’t become mistress to a faculty member yet! (Aha, is that how it’s done and I was naive enough to think it was just a matter of doing coursework and writing papers and doing good research projects?)

b) Her subsequent papers came back with red-inked commentary all over the margins, redo this, this is insufficient support for such-and-such, maybe you should consider changing your proposal to include blah blah…to an extent this was his style, but it seemed like he was more critical and harsher, and in addition she now was wary of arguing with him. Had he been giving her leeway before for inappropriate reasons and was now being the harsh taskmaster? Or was he being inappropriately demanding and impossible to please, in retaliation?

c) No one who had not already agreed to be on her committee would touch her with a ten-foot pole. Would folks think THEY were having an affair with the grad student who was known to have a history of sleeping with faculty? Would the feminist-theory guy resent their stepping in after he’d been working with her up until now? Given these departmental politics, no one on faculty was inclined to find out.

d) Other student started speaking of her (occasionally even TO her) in ways that implied she was not a serious student, that she had only been getting by via providing special services to a faculty member. And a serious student would not have been doing those things, right?

Somehow it didn’t seem to have a major effect on the career of the faculty member, despite the (IMHO) highly relevant question of how a professor of feminist theory could be having an affair with his own student in a situation like this and be oblivious to all the reasons why doing so is a bad idea. It’s not like his specialty was Colonialism in Africa or Linguistics and Hermeneutics or something, this was his STUFF. The both should’ve known better but she’s the one who paid the price.

4

I could write a book…

It would have everything…pretty young girl with financial problems feels job will be lost if she doesn’t sleep with executive of Fortune 500. Is raped by said boss, eventually turns him in to HR, is ridiculed, but transferred to a different department. He eventually is canned - perhaps for unrelated transgressions, perhaps for this one, and it is made clear to her that her career is at a dead end with that company and it would behoove her to seek other employment.
Thats my own story - and its somewhat more complicated than that - as I said, I could write a book. If you need more, email me.

5

I have seen a lot of sexual harassment type of incidents, from minor to serious but never a boss/employee situation.

In the restaurant business, there was a lot of this kind of thing, most of it was rather harmless. Usually, a busboy would pick up an entire loaf of french bread and point it at a waitress sugestively. The best response is, “You wish”, or “Oh yeah, baby.” This kind of thing is a joke at best or a lame attempt to freak out the weakest characters.

There was an incident I did not find as harmless, I asked a cook for a potato because I hadn’t eaten. He was giving me a hard time, although I had permission to eat at any time (I am hypoglycemic). Finally I said that I could pass out on my shift if I did not eat. He replied, “If you passed out I would rape you, it wouldn’t be the first time.” I did go to the manager about it, because I thought it was really threatening. The cook apologized before the manager spoke to him, so it turned out he did realize that he was out of line.

Perhaps the oddest and saddest incident happened to a male co-worker of mine when I taught middle school. A young male teacher was in class, and a seventh grade girl who was not in his class used to come by his door. To say that this girl had a crush on her teacher would be a huge understatement. The student would come by while he was teaching and lift her skirt and give him looks. A female teacher had to intervene in her repeat performances.

As a teacher, I really feel for my male co-workers. Every time they speak privately with a female student or break up a fight involving girls they are vulnerable to accusations of sexual harassment.

6

Two coworkers of mine in a small office at a community school would always make sexual comments to me or about me. Sometimes one of them would corner me the office and make comments about oral sex. I was in my 20s and had never experienced that type of behaviour. For my 21st birthday, they thought it would be funny to buy me a dildo. I opened my present in front of all my coworkers and inside was a plastic cucumber which turned into a dildo if you peeled the skin. I eventually left my job with the excuse that I was going back to college.

And then there’s the coworker who decided she was in love with me. If I walked in front of her, she’d make comments about how good I looked in a dress. She’d bring me little presents or leave me notes on my desk. She’d stop by my office two or three times a day just to visit. Then she started calling my house in the middle of the night while drunk. I kept telling her I had a boyfriend and wasn’t interested. I finally went to my boss and HR when she left me a note telling me she was “in love with me.” After a few rounds of she said/she said, I felt like I was the one who had done something wrong even though all I’d ever done was be nice to her. HR decided it was a misunderstanding and asked if I would feel comfortable continuing to work with her and I said no. They opted to reassign her and when she found out, she quit the job saying she didn’t want to work in another building. The most uncomfortable part was her sudden departure. People who knew we were friends would come by and ask me where she’d gone and I couldn’t tell them.

7

My first job was working at Target, and during the short time working there in the christmas season I was deluged by obscene phone calls of a sexual nature. This was very unnerving to me and I complained repeatedly to management, but they claimed they couldn’t do anything about it. These phones were all over the store, so someone could be calling me from anywhere in the store. It pissed me off, but I quit that job for other reasons before it really got out of hand.

8

I used to work in a restaurant as a waitress, and once while I was in the cooler attempting to refill the salad dressing bins, one of the cooks also came in to get something. He wrapped his arms around me from behind in a big bear hug and yelled “Mamasita!!!” and I growled something like “Get your hands off me!” and stormed out and straight to the manager.

In retrospect, I wish I had given him a swift knee to the crotch. He got talked to, but not fired, and he was always giving me stares and shit like that afterwards, though he never actually touched me again.

9

I actually would like to hear a more detailed version - all of it, but specifically of your experience trying to get HR to take you seriously and do something.

I would e-mail you but you don’t have an addy listed here - will you e-mail me at tcreole (at) hotmail dot com to get the ball rolling?

10

Folks, I want to expand on my original request. What I’m looking for, more than the bare facts of what happened, was what was going on in your mind when it happened. Did it make you feel angry? Scared? Did you feel like you somehow invited the attention or that they saw something in you that made you a target? I want to make my character’s reaction as realistic as possible.

I realize that even after time has passed this stuff may be painful to dredge up, so if you’re not comfortable telling me about it, I’ll understand. After all, you don’t know me from adam. I hope someone will help me get a picture of what it feels like to be harassed, though - and what I have in mind for this storyline will involve both the “persistent creep who won’t take no for an answer” variety of harassment and the “person in a position of power who abuses that position” variety.

Help me out, folks. I really appreciate it.

11

I’ll go with my situation with my female co-worker. It started out with us being on friendly terms with each. She would compliment me on something I was wearing or say I looked nice that day. After awhile, her attentions because a little more flirty. I don’t know about anyone else, but at first I thought it was funny. I’m straight and I knew she knew it so I just thought she was being silly. When she started bringing me presents and coming by my office all the time, I got annoyed but I continued being nice. I would make a point to mention Mr. Grace and ask co-worker about her live-in girlfriend. A couple of times I gave her a ride home because she lived a few miles from my house. I thought I was being friendly, but she interpreted it a different way.

When I finally went to HR about it, I felt like I had done something wrong. I felt guilty for being nice and thought maybe I led her on. They brought out every thing that I’d ever done or said to her. They even produced a notecard that I’d written her once as an apology for making her cry. For goodness sakes, the card had a praying angel on the cover. I said something completely innocent, but even to me it sounded wrong. Anyways, I very uneasy with the attention from Mary. After she quit, I worried that she’d come after me. Her girlfriend was a deputy sheriff and I was sure they were going to come after me for making her lose her job.

12

When I was 16 I worked at a fast food joint. One of my managers (age 35 to 40-ish) was awful. Two examples: Once, he told me to go watch a training video in the back office. When I went and turned it on, it was a graphic porn scene. He and a couple of guys were outside the door when I came out, laughing. (Keep in mind I was 16 and hadn’t yet been introduced to real sex, much less porn!) I also remember at Christmas time, the employees were talking about buying gifts, and he said he’d buy me some edible underwear. There were lots of incidents, but those are the two I remember very clearly.

I didn’t do anything. First off, it was the late 80’s, before sexual harassment was really an issue, so I didn’t really know that bosses weren’t supposed to, or allowed to, do that kind of stuff. Second, he WAS my boss, so it wasn’t like I had resources to go to (no HR, all hiring was done at the store by the managers, etc.)

I was very uncomfortable, and embarassed (especially since he did this in front of others). I was also a little disgusted, but also scared, since I was so young and he was so much older. I didn’t think he’d DO anything or go further than getting WAY too close in my personal space, but I really hated having to deal with it.

13

A gay television producer offered to “help my acting career” if I had sex with him. I decided to keep my self-respect. It was an easy choice.

14

I was breaking into cheffing working as a cook for the Silicon Valley homeless shelter. My supervisor was a rotten b@stard who would ask you to your face if you were sleeping with one of the other employees. I was called into the female director’s office to answer accusations that I had insulted a group of donors by altering some food they had brought.

I produced a letter written by the long time manager of the temporary location where the food was prepared that night. It specifically mentioned how the donated spaghetti sauce was made without any salt, and nearly inedible. He also explained how I added the salt when none of the donors were looking.

I told my manager and the woman director that, as a chef, it was my personal obligation to ensure good flavor so our guests would consume the greatest quantity of food. I explained how most of them lived on the street during the winter days, without benefit of truly warm clothing and needed the maximum possible caloric intake. At this point my twisted manager turned to me and said:

“Well, Zenster, the story at the shelter is that you are gay …”

Since I’d had exactly no relations with anyone there, I was so shocked that I could only mumble something about how my girlfriend of five years would have been quite amused at such a thought, instead of telling him outright:

“Sure, I’ll be gay just as soon as your done b!owing me!”

15

YOU’RE DONE …

16

I was working as a receptionist at a Health Center when I was in my early 20s. There was a gym, diet center, health counseling etc…Anyway, one of the exercise instructors used to corner me all the time in various places. One time he followed me into a closet and said he’d give anything to spend one night with me. I was afraid at the time because he was blocking the doorway. When I refused he persisted. I wish I had been stronger at the time, because I think now I would have certainly punched him out!! Finally I asked him (with tears in my eyes) to please let me pass. I think he knew that if I started crying people would want to know why, so he let me pass. I remember being so angry and shaken up that I went in the bathroom and cried. He was a very good looking guy and everyone seemed to adore him. I found him repellent of course - I put up with his advances for way longer than I should have. I wish I had said something to my boss, but I guess I didn’t think anything would be done in my favor so I just kept quiet. I eventually became fed up and looked for another job even though I was being paid well and I liked my co-workers. Urrgh he was a bastard!

17

A few years ago, I was working for a temp agency located in a small town in North Carolina. They farmed me out to a largish factory company to work as a “go-to girl” in the office.

The boss was a middle-aged, very “old South” type who constantly called me sweetie, baby, darlin’ etc. I chalked it up to regional speech. Then one day he started patting me on the ass whenever I passed by him.

This happened for maybe two or three days. Then I quit. Looking back, I really should’ve mentioned it to the temp agency. But I was young and unsure if anyone would take me seriously. Especially since the “sexual harassment” charge is so often misused. (Supposedly.) I should have told somebody though. I pity the girl who came after me.

18

I grew up in South Africa where alot of men thought it was their duty and god given right to be boorish and chauvinistic. I was about 16 at the time (this was about 1985) and at a disco which was held every Friday night in the Toristo hotel. I was wearing a very short skirt, and was going up the stairs to use the bathroom when three extrememly fat men were on their way down. I turned my back to the banister to let them past (believe me there wouldn’t have been room) and as the first one passed he stopped, looked me up and down lasciviously, and then put his hand between my legs and slowly removed it whilst feeling my crotch. I couldn’t believe it and ran upstairs to the bathroom feeling physically sick where I started crying. My sister came in and I told her the story, but neither of us thought to go back down and kick him hard in the crotch. I really felt like it was my fault for wearing such a short skirt. Of course now I would make sure I took good aim with a well positioned knee. So my feelings at the time were guilt, feeling totally violated, feeling physically sick but not “how dare he!” (Which I most certainly would now) Now of course I wish I could go back and react differently.
This wasn’t the only time this happened, another incident was when I was at the Supermarket with my mom, and I was wearing an itsy pair of shorts (again about 15/16) when this man came past and felt my bum, again by putting his hand there and slowly removing it (hey could have been the same arsehole for all I know). I turned round and looked at him in horror as he walked away like butter wouldn’t melt. My mom was totally oblivious, and I never mentioned it to her, even to this day. Same feelings but not quite as strong as the crotch thing that felt way more violating, though don’t get me wrong this didn’t feel much nicer!

19

Folks, your stories are really helpful - I want you to know how much I appreciate your willingness to share them. I’m particularly struck by the fact that so many of you say you’d react very differently if the same thing happened to you now.

Let me ask you this - do you think that if, at the time, someone had simply told you the truths about what happened to you that you came to realize later on your own (i.e., it wasn’t your fault, you should have blown the whistle), would it have made a difference in how you handled it?

20

I was recently falsely accused of sexual harassment.

I’m male, and work for a giant international company. For several years now, I’ve had two postcard-sized classical art prints from the local art museum pinned to my cubicle wall.

One day, a female co-worker came by and discussed the prints with me. She wondered if they projected the proper image for the female engineers in our area, seeing as they were prints of oil paintings that contained female breasts and a female backside. I asked her if she was offended by the prints, or if she knew of anybody that was offended by the prints. She stated that she wasn’t offended, and didn’t know of anybody who was.

Some weeks later, my boss mentioned to me that I should think about those art prints and make the right decision. I gave it a great deal of thought, and left them up.

Can you see it coming?

The next I heard was from Corporate Personnel, who informed me that I was being charged with sexual harassment. I was not entitled to question any witnesses against me, or even know who had complained. My manager admitted to Personnel that he had not told me of any complaints, and hadn’t told me to stop. Still, I was found guilty.

Was I naive? Sure. Clueless? Without a doubt. Was I actually guilty of sexual harassment? I don’t think so.