kevinapex's blog

sexual harassment?

 abuse

I thought I would share this for the fun of it. First, a quick disclaimer; I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this story and any similarity to real people and events is coincidental.  

This incident described in this story occurred at company XYZ (not a pseudonym for IBM!), an older and fairly well known corporation. The story involves an encounter between two employees, whom we’ll call A and B, that resulted in a sexual harassment complaint.

We’ll start with employee A.  A 20 year veteran of the company, he is universally respected by his coworkers and also by clients. He is a senior engineer and his contributions to the company have been compared by upper management to his being the star athlete of the football team. A family man and devoted Christian, few if any had any personal problems with him.

Employee B has been with the company about 4 years. From a personal perspective her reputation is less stellar.  She wears her feminism and lesbianism on her sleeve and being a Pagan, she has recently developed a reputation for complaining about religious discussions and symbols in the workplace. To this point she has not formally filed any complaints, she has only complained to managers about their employees and/or sent terse emails asking for restraint. Despite her less then charming demeanor she works in Customer Service and is generally viewed as competent in her job.

As a general rule employee’s A and B rarely if ever cross paths and they do not know each other personally.  On this particular day employee A happens to be involved in a conversation with some other engineers near where employee Bs cubical is located. Accounts of exactly what was said are varied but what follows more or less sums it up;

The group of engineers is discussing a pending project and employee A quips

“It has to pass the Clara Johnson test!”

Another person asks,

“The Clara who test?”

Employee A laughs,

“Don’t you remember the old Hanes underwear commercials? Clara was the old lady that checked every pair of Hanes underwear to make sure it was good enough. She’d stretch the band out and say, “Ship it!”  Now that was a lady who knew something about men’s undies!”

There is scattered laughter and then all is forgotten, or is it? Unknown to employee A and the rest of the men, employee B had been listening carefully to what was being said and something had apparently struck a nerve with her. She decides to call HR.

If I’m going to give employee B any credit here I will say that when she calls HR her tact was one of inquiry as to what she needs to do if she wants to file a sexual harassment complaint. Unfortunately, the HR employees, three of whom would soon join in on the call are hungry to test out all they had learned in the sexual harassment based training and seminars they have attended. They insist that employee B file a formal complaint and gear themselves up for a test of their powers and talents. With little or no restraint they file an official complaint with corporate headquarters on employee Bs behalf without even telling employee A he has been accused of anything. The HR employees want more, they asked for the names of additional people who were involved. There had been a group of men present, but ultimately no other witnesses or perpetrators are mentioned in the complaint. In her own words, employee B states that she knew who he was by his “loud obnoxious voice” and that it was his words alone that had offended her.

When employee A arrives for work the next day he is greeted with a stoic voicemail insisting that he report to HR at 9:00. He doesn’t think much about it and after doing his normal rounds he meanders down to HR at about 9:10. When he enters he is surprised to find three stern looking HR employees, all female sitting at a table like a panel of judges. After a bland good morning one of them orders him to sit in a chair facing the table.

He makes a little joke about being in trial, but no one laughs. The leader of the HR employees gets right to the point, telling him a complaint of a sexual nature has been filed against him. She starts to speak a bunch of legalese when he interrupts her, expresses complete ignorance to what this is about, and demands to know who has complained and what he allegedly did.  She explains that he had used offensive language of a sexual nature in front of the complainant, and because of company policy she can not reveal the name of the person who filed the complaint. In short, his comments about Clara Johnson knowing something about men’s underwear implied some kind of sexual innuendo.  He can hardly believe his ears.

Employee A would later recount that his initial reaction was fear, panic and emotional distress, but it very quickly shifted to extreme anger. He had no doubt in his mind that he was not guilty of anything more than some lame joking around, and yet he is being accused by someone who does not have to even face him. Why hadn’t the complainant simply asked him not to speak that way in her presence?  Was there not a less formal way to deal with this?

The HR employee leader began to lay out the action to be taken as if she were reading from a script. All employee A has to do was attend sexual a harassment training class and his record would be clean, but a second offense would result in more severe action. The condescending and demeaning tone she uses increases his anger to the point that he stands up, tells them where to go (in a Christian like way) and walks out with the ladies yelling at him that they aren’t finished.

Before noon he has written his letter of resignation. By 2 o’clock he is back in HR with his manager, who demands to know the details and is refused. By 4 o’clock the CEO of the company is involved, unable to believe he might be losing one of his star employee’s on what almost all agreed is a farce of a charge.

The CEO at XYZ, who had hoped to use his authority to diffuse the situation, finds that his hands are tied because of a company policy.  To meet some kind third party employment based certification the company has a policy by which once a sexual harassment complaint is filed, it can not be withdrawn even if the complainant changes their mind. This is a process that protects the complainant from being pressured into withdrawing the complaint and more or less forces the process to move forward. Because HR rushed to file the complaint the gears of the corporate process were turning and had passed the fail safe point.

Over the next couple days attempts to negotiate some kind of compromise failed because employee A, who at this point is already in contact with a competitor regarding employment, refuses any agreement where he acknowledges doing anything wrong, and that is unacceptable to HR. At one point a pretty HR employee fresh out of college arrogantly reminds him that he can not work for a competitor for two years because of a corporate employee contract. He then reminds her that she needs to get the facts straight before making so bold a statement. The contract in question came long after he was hired and so does not affect him, she wilts at hearing that.

The only loophole available for him the beat the rap is to leave the company. As long as employee B is OK with it, and she is, if he resigns he can leave in good standing and without a sexual harassment complaint in his record. Despite the pleading of his co-workers including the CEO to jump through the hoops and tough it out, he chooses to leave and have no scourge on his record. On principle he can not make himself succumb to the humiliation based on such a silly complaint.

In theory he can be hired back after a six month period but he scoffs at that idea saying he could never work for a company that put him through such nonsense.  

Employee A would later call the whole thing the best move of his career. After a 6 week vacation with his family he is immediately hired at a substantial raise by a client of XYZ, and later makes a great deal of money consulting to XYZ, helping them fill the void he left them with.  

The aftermath of the incident brought on a review of the whole process of handling employee complaints. One finding was that the local HR employees had made a serious mistake in filing an official complaint without at least discussing the issue with employee A. The conclusion of the review panel was that the nature of the complaint and its vague reason for being offensive should have resulted in no more than a warning that employee A be more cautious with his words.

So did heads roll for this fiasco? Of course not, this is corporate America we are talking about. The result of the review was that the HR employees involved needed more training and so they headed off to Las Vegas for a one week remedial course given by the third party certifier.  Most employees figured out that it was Employee B who had filed the complaint and people tend to walk on pins and needles when near her cubical. She was, however, taken aback at how quickly and significantly the issue escalated.

To be politically correct I do want to say that in no way does my mentioning employee B’s lesbianism, Paganism and feminism indict all persons who fall under those categories. Likewise, nor does mentioning that employee A is a Christian elevates those who fall under that. I find that people tend to jump on such things when you mention them, but I thought that given the situation at hand it was relevant to define these elements of the people involved.

I also don’t want to diminish the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. This story is just to illustrate where a particular situation was handled poorly and ended up getting way out of hand.  A person who is genuinely sexually harassed in the workplace should and normally does have avenues to address it without fear of retribution. As with so many of today’s issues across numerous spectrums I just think we need to use some old fashioned common sense to prevent situations similar to this.