I just got counseled for workplace sexual harassment

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Serra said:
Then why bring it up?
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It may simply be due to differences in lines of communication between Civilian and Military channels.

She may have casually mentioned it to his superior thinking it was a small thing, hell she may have even thought it was funny. Unfortunately for OP it seems that on the military side there is no leeway on this kind of thing and so he got a bollocking.
 
I get that people don't like to see verbal abuse towards this female when the topic itself is related to sexual harassment. But people need to exercise judgment before jumping into conclusions, an incident like this can completely poison the working environment.

You can't just start filing complaints based on someone adjusting his zipper and then smiling. Are you fucking serious? Even if it was a smirk that made you uncomfortable you still don't do it after one isolated incident considering the possible consequences. There is no justification here, there is a good chance this female has issues of some sort.
 
Serra said:
Then why bring it up?
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Huh? In case it happens more frequently for example? In that case it'd very heavily seem like the guy would be touching his junk and implying things to women when they see it, but if nobody ever mentioned about it, nothing would be done about it.

ICKE said:
This isn't just about sexual harassment, it's about exercising judgment before jumping into conclusions and completely poisoning the working environment.

You can't just start filing complaints based on someone adjusting his zipper and then smiling. Are you fucking serious? Even if it was a smirk that made you uncomfortable you still don't do it after one isolated incident considering the possible circumstances. There is no justification here, this woman is a loon or has some serious issues.
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Again, we don't know how she made the complaint.
 
It was probably the inflection in which you said "Hey", it might have come across as flirtatious, perhaps subconsciously it was. Did you find this girl attractive?

I think the lesson learned here is don't try to strike up conversation after coming out of the bathroom and/or checking and zipping your fly.
 
Slate Soda said:
I don't understand why you would even attempt to fix your fly out in the open like that. It's pretty gross to begin with. At least turn to the wall or something.
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No more or less gross than adjusting a belt, button, bra or skirt. I would sooner expect people to take issue with a mother having to pump at work, but in the corporate environment, it's not unreasonable or uncommon any longer for them to make accommodations (assign rooms) for mothers to do so in privacy. A small faux pas is hardly justification for spinning something out this far.

Sidestepping the people flinging dirt on the OP or the accuser, it's completely besides the point as a reasonable body of oversight should have treated this whole situation better. The fact that it's the military tends to throw everything on its head though.
 
theWB27 said:
Nice. It's not good to potentially mess up someone's career because of that. Over a fly check. In this instant, it's not careful, it's downright dangerous for that to be able to happen. You'll go about your way, but his career could be tarnished.

Take some responsibility really...and think it through.
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No sorry. Given the military's awful history of dealing with sexual harassment and assault, I am not going to out the onus on her to keep quiet and potentially wait for it to escalate. She perceived harassment and was right for reporting it. We don't eve know how she reported it. It is possible she fully admitted to her superior that she could have been mistaken.
 
backslashbunny said:
*edit- I wonder how many of the posters here saying "what the hell, everyone does this" are dudes. I know *some* men that openly check their zipper or adjust their balls in public, but generally most men seem to realize it's probably inappropriate. The OP seemed to realized that it's something to be done with you're alone (hence thinking that no one else was there).

I wouldn't report someone for sexual harassment, but I certainly think it's in poor taste to do it openly. Grabbing yourself in public is just vulgar, even when it's not sexual.
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It's not a full on grab and how is it vulgar? There's a pretty obvious difference between a guy tugging on his junk and reaching nervously down to feel if his fly is open.
 
My only issue with this is that OP has a "strike" now and needs to be very careful. And if word gets out (her word) about the misunderstanding, it could have ramifications. Accusations need to be taken seriously, both making and receiving them.
 
Slate Soda said:
I don't understand why you would even attempt to fix your fly out in the open like that. It's pretty gross to begin with. At least turn to the wall or something.
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Uh probably to avoid embarrassment and a possible legitimate case of accidental harassment if he wasn't zipped up? And turning your back while doing this would probably look even worse.
 
That's bad luck. I work in a corporate environment and undo my belt, pant button and zip and retuck myself at my desk or anywhere really because in too lazy to go to the bathroom to do it.
 
Foghorn Leghorn said:
He was checking his fly. Not rearranging his junk.
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.GqueB. said:
To be fair, it's less about common sense and more about being careful. I'm always checking my fly because sometimes I'm just not sure. Dudes forget all the time.

And it's extra personal for me because I had my fly down once on a train in front of a woman. She sat in front of me for like 20 minutes and didn't say anything. It must've been horrifying. This was back when I was wearing buttonless briefs.
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My post was in direct response to someone equating it to a woman adjusting her breasts. That's all I really meant. Although I do agree with the following post:
backslashbunny said:
I would hope the lesson most people from this is-- check your junk in the bathroom. Adjust your bras and boobs, your crouch, your underwear, your balls... whatever... in the bathroom. If it's REALLY vulgar, a stall.



*edit- I wonder how many of the posters here saying "what the hell, everyone does this" are dudes. I know *some* men that openly check their zipper or adjust their balls in public, but generally most men seem to realize it's probably inappropriate. The OP seemed to realized that it's something to be done with you're alone (hence thinking that no one else was there).

I wouldn't report someone for sexual harassment, but I certainly think it's in poor taste to do it openly. Grabbing yourself in public is just vulgar, even when it's not sexual.
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PlayALLtheGames said:
Absolute, mind-numbing stupidity.

Also, why wouldn't they have you both come in so you could talk to her and explain???
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Maybe the supervisor didn't think it was necessary to have her present. She might not even have told the supervisor not to mention anything but he might have brought it up to me as a courtesy. Maybe all reports (formal or informal) need to be addressed to the person that's being accused of something or having something pointed out to them. I honestly don't know their policy on things like this.
 
Tell you guys a quick story about a coworker. I work at a grocery store and at night a stock guy has to clean the bathrooms,including the womens. Well the guy pounded on the girls bathroom door to see if anyone was inside. He then went inside and started changing the trash when a girl comes barging out of the stall yelling rape. He said he ran outta there immediately and later the manager took him in the office to fire him,told him shes not getting the cops involved but hes fired. Never saw him again
 
SkeptiMism said:
Huh? In case it happens more frequently for example? In that case it'd very heavily seem like the guy would be touching his junk and implying things to women when they see it, but if nobody ever mentioned about it, nothing would be done about it.

Again, we don't know how she made the complaint.
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We know she complained about it in some manner to her superior (supervisor) and there was an informal counseling and as a result the situation is all kinds of messed up.
 
ICKE said:
We know she complained about it in some manner to her superior (supervisor) and there was an informal counseling and as a result the situation is all kinds of messed up.
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She could've simply said that the OP might've been doing something sexually implicit but she might be wrong, and then the supervisor would've just talked it through with the OP anyway. We don't know how it happened.
 
ICKE said:
This isn't just about sexual harassment, it's about exercising judgment before jumping into conclusions and completely poisoning the working environment.

You can't just start filing complaints based on someone adjusting his zipper and then smiling. Are you fucking serious? Even if it was a smirk that made you uncomfortable you still don't do it after one isolated incident considering the possible circumstances. There is no justification here, this woman is a loon or has some serious issues.
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So you're saying there's no room for misinterpretation here? That she just made an honest mistake? Consider this a special case of Hanlon's Razor.

You may also want to think why you are attributing malicious motivations to her when you are not in a position to properly understand the situation as it occurred or her experiences etc. Consider the Fundamental Attribution Error and the Actor-Observor Bias. You're attributing her motivations to her personality rather than other situational factors.

Yes it's POSSIBLE that for some reason she hates the OP and has it in for him. But it seems more plausible that she misinterpreted the situation and made a report (of which we do not know the context in which she presented it; possible accident, definite harassment, etc.) which made sense in her context.

It simply isn't rational to jump to the idea that she has mental problems. I mean, really.
 
CornBurrito said:
No sorry. Given the military's awful history of dealing with sexual harassment and assault, I am not going to out the onus on her to keep quiet and potentially wait for it to escalate. She perceived harassment and was right for reporting it. We don't eve know how she reported it. It is possible she fully admitted to her superior that she could have been mistaken.
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I'm just really uncomfortable with what is really a one sided system, and yeah majority of harassment cases are going to be in that direction so to speak, but really now, let's be fair, let's have some mediation, some attempt to work out what happened rather than take somebody at their word the second they make the accusation, that's a dangerous precedent regardless of what has happened.

The military's awful history is for doing nothing when faced with repeat harassment reports, meaning, they weren't even looked into. This is too far in the other direction, they're still not being looked into, in this instance they're just outright treating them as statements of fact - bad idea, it's abusable and abuses one way are just as bad as abuses the other way; they really do nothing to help the rhetoric as it were and will just damage the movement in the long run.
 
I've been writing letters to Bud Selig for years about much baseball players touch their junk. I mean for fuck's sake it's the major league fellas, act professional.
 
Seth C said:
Nope. Eventually her poor judgment IS going to get someone fired for fucking checking their damn zipper. Her behavior needs to be corrected, promptly.

IE, she either doesn't need to be in the workplace or she needs to get a grip on reality.
.
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Stop with your revenge bullshit. It was a misunderstanding. I don't agree with her reporting it right away but she's not some malicious person trying to get him fired.
backslashbunny said:
All of the above.



@OP - You sound like a really nice guy that made a small mistake, even an social gaffe, and you were really unlucky to have run into her the same time you did.

I would hope the lesson most people from this is-- check your junk in the bathroom. Adjust your bras and boobs, your crouch, your underwear, your balls... whatever... in the bathroom. If it's REALLY vulgar, a stall.



*edit- I wonder how many of the posters here saying "what the hell, everyone does this" are dudes. I know *some* men that openly check their zipper or adjust their balls in public, but generally most men seem to realize it's probably inappropriate. The OP seemed to realized that it's something to be done with you're alone (hence thinking that no one else was there).

I wouldn't report someone for sexual harassment, but I certainly think it's in poor taste to do it openly. Grabbing yourself in public is just vulgar, even when it's not sexual.
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Ehhh grabbing yourself sure, but checking to make sure your fly is up? I don't think there's anything vulgar or wrong with that. I do it a lot. Prolonged touching on the other hand would be inappropriate.

Most of that list I do agree with, however. I just think checking to make sure your fly is up is not inappropriate at all.
 
Scofield94941 said:
Tell you guys a quick story about a coworker. I work at a grocery store and at night a stock guy has to clean the bathrooms,including the womens. Well the guy pounded on the girls bathroom door to see if anyone was inside. He then went inside and started changing the trash when a girl comes barging out of the stall yelling rape. He said he ran outta there immediately and later the manager took him in the office to fire him,told him shes not getting the cops involved but hes fired. Never saw him again
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That's fucked up. In cases like this I think you need to fight it but I dunno.. legal battles scare people too.

Coins said:
Is your name Dannel Evans, OP?
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post-11756-I-understood-that-reference-gi-GkxF.gif
 
CornBurrito said:
No sorry. Given the military's awful history of dealing with sexual harassment and assault, I am not going to out the onus on her to keep quiet and potentially wait for it to escalate. She perceived harassment and was right for reporting it. We don't eve know how she reported it. It is possible she fully admitted to her superior that she could have been mistaken.
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She put herself in that environment. With that, comes responsibility to handle yourself accordingly. The story goes, he checked BEFORE he saw her and then said hey. The onus goes on her to look at the sequence of events, has she encountered him before, was there any further advancement. From the story, none of that happened.

Even if she mentioned she could've been mistaken, she had some idea that wasn't going to be the end of it. If she didn't....it's reckless. Reporting is reporting. If she mentioned it casually, that's called dry snitching.

At some point, some responsibility needs to be on the other party also.
 
Holy hell I think people need to settle down here. We haven't heard the women's side of the story. Maybe she misinterpreted the situation. It could have looked like he was looking at her and started playing with his fly. We don't know how big of a deal was made of it either.
 
lexi said:
This is the most casually misogynistic thread I've seen in at least a week.
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No fucking shit. Have there been any posts so far positing that maybe the OP is fucking lying? Everyone immediately starts bashing this unnamed female based on his word alone. Why do I have a feeling she would have a completely different interpretation of what happened?

Can we at least take five seconds to consider that in a male vs female conflict, the male isn't automatically the 100% logical, perfect side and the female is the hysterical, malicious, vindictive illogical one?
 
theWB27 said:
She put herself in that environment. With that, comes responsibility to handle yourself accordingly. The story goes, he checked BEFORE he saw her and then said hey. The onus goes on her to look at the sequence of events, has she encountered him before, was there any further advancement. From the story, none of that happened.

Even if she mentioned she could've been mistaken, she had some idea that wasn't going to be the end of it. If she didn't....it's reckless. Reporting is reporting. If she mentioned it casually, that's called dry snitching.

At some point, some responsibility needs to be on the other party also.
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To blame her is a mistake really, the fault is the systems by far, peoples perceptions aren't fixed, people have different perceptions all the time, you just need a process that can piece together what actually happened, something a bit more objective than the accounts of both.

Also saying she put herself in that environment is a bit daft, all working environments should be protective of all genders and all peoples. That's a really silly comment tbh.
 
I'm rather proud (if I could say that and doesn't bother you) how you handled the situation, Grime. Yes, it's very unfortunate what happened, but I'm very glad you didn't let it escalate. And your boss obviously trusts you, so I'm sure you're a very good employee. I hope this doesn't affect you at all for the rest of the career. Good thing it was an informal counsel.
 
Does the informal go in your record as well, OP?

Like if you eventually transfer, would that informal counselling follow you? Or is it like a mental note for your higher-ups?

Is there any way that you can "lawyer up" or get some type of representation to get that informal cleared or no longer considered? I don't know if taking that step would just make things worse or more embarrassing by shining a spot light on it (or somehow pit you and your higher ups against each other), but it has to be absolutely stressful living with the fear of a second strike hanging over your head.

Either way, good luck OP. We're pulling for ya.
 
TrueGrime said:
So basically around lunch time I finish using the bathroom, exit, and my hand goes down to check my fly to make sure I'm not walking around the hallways zipped open. It was up. Just wanted to make sure. It's a habit. I'm just not really conscious of when and where I'm doing it.
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Wow I do this all the time, I feel bad for you.
 
David H Wong said:
You have only heard from one of the parties. You have absolutely no idea whatsoever what actually occurred. None. The OP is the furthest possible thing from an unbiased observer.
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Sure but Grime has been pretty good about this entire thing so I see no reason to doubt him.

That's not to say the people responding haven't been wrong, because they definitley have gone way over the top and vicious but just Grime has been reasonable.
 
Wormdundee said:
Yes it's POSSIBLE that for some reason she hates the OP and has it in for him. But it seems more plausible that she misinterpreted the situation and made a report (of which we do not know the context in which she presented it; possible accident, definite harassment, etc.) which made sense in her context.

It simply isn't rational to jump to the idea that she has mental problems. I mean, really.
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I never implied this woman hates him, what I have said is that she has completely failed to exercise any sort of meaningful judgment. There is nothing to misinterpret. If you see a coworker adjust his or her clothing, as suggestive as it may be, there is absolutely no reason to report it at that point. You shrug your shoulders and move on, you should always give people the benefit of the doubt. If it is not an isolated incident and you see a pattern, then take action.
 
I've heard crazy stories like this from around my firm. A woman got written up for sexual harassment by another female for sharing details about her pregnancy how it was going etc nothing lude.

The woman who filed the complaint about the female employee actually told new hires about how she was harassed and not to talk to or make friends with the offending employee even though after an investigation the accused was found to have done nothing wrong.

I understand that companies have to err on the side of the accuser in these cases but in this instance it was found the accuser was actively trying to get the accused fired through any means necessary. (Moving the accused files to unsecured locations, tampering with documents and the harassment claim, the accuser was later fired).
 
I look forward to our 1984 surveillance future every day now when I hear stuff like this. It's way to scary to be on the receiving end of one of these situations.
 
David H Wong said:
You have only heard from one of the parties. You have absolutely no idea whatsoever what actually occurred. None. The OP is the furthest possible thing from an unbiased observer.
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That's what we're discussing. So I commented on what was presented.

P44 said:
To blame her is a mistake really, the fault is the systems by far, peoples perceptions aren't fixed, people have different perceptions all the time, you just need a process that can piece together what actually happened, something a bit more objective than the accounts of both.

Also saying she put herself in that environment is a bit daft, all working environments should be protective of all genders and all peoples. That's a really silly comment tbh.
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I didn't blame her. I'm saying, if the story we got is true, there should've been tact on her end also. Never did I imply she shouldn't be protected. I stated the environment she's in, she accepted the job, I think would require a bit more thought on handling certain situations. Because they handle certain situations different than civilian life. They ask that of the soldiers, I don't think it's too much to ask of the people working around them. Thanks for taking that sentence out of context. : )
 
Stet said:
I walked around for three hours today completely unzipped. I guess that's better??
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How does it feel to be a registered sex offender now?
Also GAF, ease up, the issue I would take is against the body of oversight, not the OP or woman in question.
HR and mediation exists for a reason regardless of the issue. Considering it's the military though, it's just tough titties for OP.
Least he's taking it in stride.
 
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