One possible way of dealing with this, more indirectly than just going to HR with a complaint (which is what I think your wife should do):
Find out the name of the owner’s lawyer.
Make an appointment with that lawyer.
At the appointment, discuss your planned lawsuit against this company for sexual harassment & racial bias. Give him details, mention that it has been witnessed by other employees (without giving names), that you have notes & documentation of many incidents. Be sure to mention that you want to sue both the company, and the owner personally, because it’s his nephew doing this, and you’re sure the owner is allowing this to happen.
Somewhere during this meeting, the lawyer will tell you that he can’t possibly act for you, since he is the lawyer for the company owner. He might recommend someone else in the firm, but more likely he will tell you you have to go to another law firm.
I think legal ethics would say that he shouldn’t reveal this to anyone. A version of attorney-Client privilege, maybe – but you aren’t going to be his client, actually. But regardless of that, within a few hours, the word will get to the owner of this company.
Then you will find out about the owner. If he is a decent & honest employer, the nephew will get called in for a severe talking-to, if not more. If the owner’s not a decent person, he may decide to fire your wife quickly, before she can sue. At least she gets away from the jerk of a nephew. And now you really have grounds for a lawsuit.
Your wife does not seem able to solve this problem herself. It’s strange that she won’t seek help for it though. Does she think it’s her fault or something, like victims of physical abuse sometimes do?
You should definitely get involved, despite her request not to. I don’t know how, but she’s suffering and she can’t do anything about it. It sucks, but if the only way to avoid making the problem worse is to convince her to quit, that might be all you can do.
When people are being bullied, they often feel ashamed and that it’s their fault somehow.
The correct way to deal with bullying in the workplace is to go to HR with evidence.
If that doesn’t work, speak to a lawyer.
Your wife’s idea that she will deal with a powerful confident bully ‘in her own way’ is very unlikely to suceed. Presumably she’s hoping not to ‘upset’ him and maybe avoid him?
Suggestions from posters that you beat up the bully or smash his property :rolleyes: will lead to you getting a criminal conviction and probably your wife being fired.
You are correct, except for that last bit. I am confident that someone with Skald’s mindset and obvious brain would make sure (as would I) that he had an airtight alibi when the guys car caught on fire.
Your wife is a legal adult with all her faculties, who has asked you to stay out of this, correct? I’m failing to see the dilemma.
Respect her wishes, and be supportive of her decisions. You know, like a husband is supposed to do.
Well, *that’s * one of the more condescending, paternalistic things I’ve ever read here. Unless, of course, you’d welcome your wife’s interference in your business despite your explicit requests to the contrary.
Legal and HR advice aside, I think one of the best things you can do for your wife in this situation is to let her know that you will give her a shoulder to lean on. Let her know that if she at ANY POINT changes her mind and wants you to step in on her behalf or give you advice, you will do so, but that until that time, if she wants to vent rage at this asshole, or cry on your shoulder, she can do so, and you will give her emotional support. Letting her know that she doesn’t have to be stressed out about her husband finding out she’s been crying, on top of all the bullshit she’s going through at work, might be really helpful for her at this point.
This is a tough situation. It’s hard to give advice because I honestly, truly, cannot imagine being in Mrs. Rhymer’s situation and not wanting to take some kind of action against this dude. You both have my sympathy.
HR is a hopeless dead end street, especially since this guy is related to the owner. All they can do is fire him, and chances are they won’t even do that.
First, a quick but thorough talk with a lawyer to see if we can get this guy fired AND in a hardcore fuck-me-in-the-ass prison. If the answer is no, plan B is:
Escalation of force:
Stern words of warning;
Fisticuffs/blunt objects;
Firearms.
Regardless, this fucker wouldn’t get away with it at all.
It is one thing to allow my intelligent, adult wife a chance to fix the situation herself. But if she is going to just sit there and take it, I, the husband who swore to love and provide and protect her, must take the situation into my own hands. Regardless of the violence or legality of my response. IMO.
Related to the owner or not, if HR doesn’t want to open up the company and the uncle to further liability, they will take action.
As the OP has already noted, his ability to “provide [sic] and protect her” would be severely compromised were he to follow your advice and wind up in what you so charmingly refer to as a “hardcore fuck-me-in-the-ass prison.”
So… she’s an intelligent adult when she behaves in a way you approve of, and an incompetent child to be protected when she doesn’t? Does she *know * that’s how you feel? Because it may not be what she believes she signed up for.
A lot of times, women seem to talk about their problems because they want sympathy, not advice. It kind of drives me nuts when I tell Himself all about some shitty situation at work, and he’s all like “Here’s what you need to do.” I mean, that’s not what I’m asking him, and when he does that I feel like he’s pressuring me to do something or maybe ask why I haven’t done something, when I just wanted to tell him how much it sucks and have him rub my feet. Just a thought.
I mean, I might hesitate to tell Himself if shit like that was going down at work, not just because he’d try and choke a bitch, but also because I just wouldn’t want to deal with his reaction. I mean, I’d already be worn down by it and feeling shitty and then he’d be all “RAAAR!” and “You have to do a) b) c)” and frankly maybe I just wouldn’t want to schedule his emotions into my busy day, you know? On the other hand, if it was as blatant as porno mags and such, I’d be in HR that day, so maybe I’m not the person to ask.
And I have, myself, reported somebody for a hostile work environment sort of thing. Constant filthy jokes (and it takes a lot to perturb me), constant comments to me about female customers, etc. The guy also sold pot in the store. He was still in his 90 day trial period. We couldn’t prove it but knew he stole stuff. They didn’t fire him.
If she asked you to stay out, then you’re doing the right thing by staying out.
There could be larger things in play that you don’t understand by virtue of not being in her shoes, and she’s got a better handle on it than you. Just as a wild fictitious scenario, maybe she’s the victim of a gossip campaign about an inappropriate relationship with the guy, and filing an HR complaint would just add fuel to the fire. Or maybe she’s trying not to call attention to her interracial relationship because she believes others would also give her grief, the subtle type of grief that isn’t so easy to document and support.
For whatever reason, she’s decided she has to work at a job where she has to accept being harassed. You can’t change the harassment part of the equation, nor can you change her decision to accept that harassment. As I see it, the only thing under your control is to make it 100% clear that you don’t expect her to stay at any job that causes her distress. Let her know she has your support to quit immediately and take all the time she needs to find another job. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I’ve been in a similar situation where my wife, in her acting company, was being hit upon by other men. (a different guy every month) She too, didn’t want to tell me about afraid of my reaction. I told her that I trusted her to deal with the problem and that I would support her.
She ended up having an affair and our marriage is over.
Now I don’t think your wife is going to have an affair with this jerk, but she must deal with this. And the way to deal with it is to document it, present it HR and if they won’t help, a lawsuit with the help of the EEOC is in order.
You have every right to be pissed off at this guy and your wife shouldn’t be telling you to just ‘accept it’.
Whether you agree with the book or not, this exact same scenario was in Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and it’s true. Women just want sympathy, not advice and they definitely do not want the man to take over and tell them what to do. Don’t offer advice unless you are asked directly.
I have to agree with all the advice about just being there to support her. The most you could do would possibly get her some information or numbers to call for her to get some professional help/advice on the matter and give them to her in a very non-confrontational “not a big deal” way, “hey, I found some information for you, if you’re interested” and leave it at that. It would be her decision on whether or not to use it.
I am a bit shocked at the relationship deal breaker comment. People are all different, we process and deal with things differently. It’s rather bull-headed to assume that anyone who doesn’t handle things the way you would has something wrong with them. Trying to force someone to handle their problems your way would most likely be the deal breaker for them.
How bout an anonymous note to the owner from the OP? You could make it sound like it came from a concerned co-worker.
Let him know that someone might get their face ripped off if it doesn’t stop because you know that the employees husband is aware of the activities and he’s gettin’ gosh awful upset about it. He also owns a bunch of cool toys he got from an auction that a crazy Vietnam vet held a few years back.
Done.
The dilemma is that his wife is spending her afternoons crying in her car, and trying to hide it from him, and refusing to work together to stop being harassed.
It’s hard to respect and support someone when their decisions thus far have been to do nothing but allow herself to be harassed, and hope to keep her unhappiness a secret.
At a minimum, husband and wife should be a team, working together for the common good. He, with his HR experience, can work with her to stop this harassment, but she wants to do it “on her own” like she’s some movie action hero. “Stand back, I need to take down the villain my way, by holding in my tears until I make it to the car. That’ll show 'em.” One of the primary reasons to get married is that you’re no longer alone, you don’t have to deal with problems by yourself, you have a partner, someone who will help you when you have trouble, someone who’s got your back. Doing this alone isn’t going to make her some big shot tough guy, it’s apparently just going to prolong the harassment.
Since she seems to be hell bent on the the action hero approach, all he can do is tell her that he’s there for her to talk to, and is willing to bring his HR experience to help, if she decides to go that route. Definitely don’t bother trying to push her to do something, that just makes people dig in and resist other options even more.
Seriously, has (nearly) everyone here lost their damned minds?
Skald, your wife asked you to leave it alone, so leave it alone. She doesn’t require your protection, and there is nothing that you can do that isn’t going to both piss her off, and make her look bad.
Boys, do take a deep breath and a moment to contemplate how you’d feel if your wife came on down to the office to fight your battles for you.
Just let her deal with it in her own way and support her. Life has a funny way of working things out. For example, I posted a thread a couple of months ago about being in a similar situation as your wife, though mine involved a lot less pornography. There was a guy in the office being a huge jerk, screwing around with my work to make me look stupid, and generally being an asshole. I posted here about it asking for advice and went to my boss with proof that my work was being screwed around with (though I didn’t specify a person I thought was sabotaging things, just that I found all the work I had done that had previously dissapeared) and things immediately changed. I figured that the harrassment stopped because I proved that I would stand up for myself and not let someone else screw with my work. Then as I was surfing the dope a supervisor in another department walked by, looked at my screen, smiled and walked away, and I remembered that in the first month I was here he had seen me reading the dope during lunch and had asked how Cecil is doing. So whether the situation was solved by my addressing the problem with my boss or because another supervisor reads the boards and recognized the situation and addressed it so I wouldn’t have to it still worked out for the best. Who knows, maybe by posting here you have already done what needed to be done to help fix her problem.
And if you are reading this and you did indeed do something to stop all the crap that was going on in my office, thanks!
A relationship is more than just “being there”. Nashiitashii and I take care of each other; and that includes occasionally intervening or having a serious talk about an issue.
The fact that she continues to do nothing about it rings serious alarm bells in my mind. Either she’s been the victim of some sort of abuse before, or has some other underlying issue here. No self-respecting woman would put up with that sort of behavior for one red second without feeling that there would be SERIOUS repercussions if she brought it up.
Granted my advice is just words on the intarwebs, and worth what you paid for it, but I should have a serious sit-down with her. Explain to her that the situation is hurting you, and you feel like you are powerless to help her. Explain that you feel that her current method is really demeaning and that you feel cut out of the loop in her justifications. Ask her WHY she isn’t doing anything. Tell her that you’ll abide by her decision if she can just explain it to you.
A spouse has the right to ask for justification.
Maybe she’s biding her time, but when she included you into this problem, as a spouse you have an obligation to help solve a problem that is obviously causing her significant pain.
The rest of you who just say shut-up and be supportive are a little too liberal here, imho. How far will it have to go before someone ought to do something? Her behavior indicates that maybe it’s gone way too far already, and she’s scared.
Isn’t Mrs. R a bit young? I know that I didn’t gain this empowerment perspective until I was 25 or so, at least. I say encourage her, but also see if older women whom she trusts might get involved. Not that any of you guys couldn’t tell her how to do it - but this is something she needs to learn how to do, how a lady does it.