Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I graduated from college at age 22 and got my first professional job in an office for a mid-sized corporation at age 23. Since then I have worked for three employers with varied sized corporate office settings. I am told by friends and family I am very pretty and sexy but have never had any trouble at work with harassment by the men. Most people are just indifferent to me.
The media tells us that most women will experience sexual harassment at the office. I asked my female friends and family and no one says they have been harassed at work. Do you think the reporting of the problem is just a way to sell newspapers and get Internet site clicks? And there really isn't much of problem with sexual harassment in most offices.
I'm always disturbed when women don't even believe other women, simply because something hasn't happened to them or someone they know hasn't told them of anything happening to them - women don't always share. That doesn't mean a friend or family member hasn't experienced it and it certainly doesn't mean other women haven't.
Interesting though that you blame the media - maybe you need to read some more in-depth news pieces or actual research rather than click-bait sites?
I had a boss who didn't do much to me - I wasn't and still aren't pretty or cute. But, he managed to ask me multiple times about my age in front of groups of colleagues which I didn't appreciate. He did keep porn on his phone and sometimes when he was showing people a pic, it "accidentally" came up. One person who came in to be interviewed saw a porn mag on his desk (yes, that was 20 years ago). Another colleague said he asked her if she enjoyed specific sexual positions.
He was finally fired - he had porn on his work computer...but the kicker was they found out he'd had alcohol one day at a work lunch and came back to work. Yeah - what's important to a company?! Oh, actually now I recall he wasn't fired - he had his people "taken away" from him and became an "analyst" at the same pay level -now THAT'S how ya do it!!!!!
One job I worked, the receptionist was making a lot more than the secretaries. I discreetly asked, and she told me one of the VPs was very generous.
Another employee told me she had a fling with a VP (I think the same one), and he was now giving her trouble at work because it hadn't gone well. That same VP flirted with me, but I avoided getting involved. He kind of freaked out when I transferred to another office, worried I was going to complain.
I started a job once and there was a woman in media relations that seemed to do no work. She did little things, but still was the highest paid staff member. I had no idea what was going on, until somebody clued me in that the President and her were having a long term affair. Both were married, and all spouses knew. He even took her on trips, saying it was for "capital raising and seeking investors" - but he never brought back any new funds. He did spend some great times on the company dime. After awhile, one of my co-workers made the mistake of yelling at the woman over some ridiculous demand she made. He was fired soon after. The President was finally removed. His mistress was gone the same week. She had no function outside of her "service" to the President! You see this kind of crap and it makes you disillusioned with working. It goes on everywhere.
What's the difference between a sexual harassment charge and an office romance?
If she thinks your hot...…...or not.
No. Sexual harassment is when someone in a position of power tries to initiate a romance, perhaps implying you'd get a promotion if.... Or tries to initiate a romance at all. It's inappropriate, no matter what. Sexual harassment is when someone in the office, whether a superior or not, assaults you, grabbing at a body part, or whatever. This happened to a staff member at the university where I worked. There was also a recent article in the NY Times, about a company that encouraged the men at all their retail outlets to harass the women. In some of those cases, sexual harassment was the boss or male coworkers exposing themselves to the sales staff.
This is not people making up stories to sell newspapers. This is a serious problem, that sometimes gets unions involved, the ACLU, or other authorities in defense of the aggrieved worker.
OP, just because you haven't encountered it, doesn't mean it's not a real problem, or that it's been overblown. For the women who have encountered it, it's very real, and can be threatening to their job tenure. A neighbor I'd grown up with had to quit the first job she got out of college, because of this.Back then, there was no support for this issue; no one to lodge a formal complaint to. Back in the 50's, the meme of the boss chasing his secretary around the desk in circles used to be a running joke. It was considered funny. No one ever thought about what the women in that position were going through, dependent on a job like that to support themselves.
Get some friends in HR and you will hear new stories all the time. Some stories don't come out until decades later, due to payoffs and cover-ups. Look at Dr. Larry Nasser, Catholic priests, and Jerry Sandusky.
In my 2nd job, a co-worker put his hands down another co-workers pants and she yelled in the office. He didn't know that she was the daughter of an exec in another department. He was promptly let go.
At my next job, a manager licked the cheeks of his boss's secretary. The guy was a bit crazy like he was high. Next week, there was a "random" drug test for the manager. HR let him go for a failed drug test.
Those incidents were were back in the 2000's. It appears to be much less frequent, after Sandusky, Weinstein, and Nasser stories.
Last edited by move4ward; 06-01-2019 at 12:50 PM..
I graduated from college at age 22 and got my first professional job in an office for a mid-sized corporation at age 23. Since then I have worked for three employers with varied sized corporate office settings. I am told by friends and family I am very pretty and sexy but have never had any trouble at work with harassment by the men. Most people are just indifferent to me.
The media tells us that most women will experience sexual harassment at the office. I asked my female friends and family and no one says they have been harassed at work. Do you think the reporting of the problem is just a way to sell newspapers and get Internet site clicks? And there really isn't much of problem with sexual harassment in most offices.
You will ultimately be asked out at work. The work place is probably the single largest way people find spouses. A supervisor should never ask you out. The guy that works a couple of floors down might.
Sexual harassment is three things. The first is a coworker making sexually offensive remark that upsets you. The second is your boss asking you out. The third is your boss pressuring you for sex.
If the guy two floors down asks you out and you say no, he shouldn't ask again unless you clearly tell him that you will take a rain check or be free to ask at a better time.
Sexual harassment for women, was a LOT more prevalent and blatant in the 50's/60's. Starting in the 70's at least in my state, the employment laws starting getting more stringent and employers started enforcing the sexual harassment laws.
My wife (WAY before I met her 28 years ago) worked at a factory as a young, single Mother back in the 1960's. Her line foreman was well known to be the "hound" on two legs by the female employees that worked for him. She had to take his sexual innuendoes daily, when he would tell her that if she would just let him "at her" one time, she would never forget how good he was in bed.
She would just tell him to get lost and go on about her work. Because she NEEDED her factory job with two toddlers at home to feed, so she tolerated a lot from the guy with his sexual hints.
Until one day he caught her bent over at the water fountain getting a drink in the employee break room. He put his arms around her from behind, and then thrust his crotch in to her buttocks.
She instantly swung her left elbow around which caught him upside his face and she told him to, GET THE F--- AWAY FROM ME !!!...
Within 5 days she was called into the dept. supervisors office. Her "hound" foreman told her in front of his boss, that he was putting her back on the "pre-installation" parts line. And that it was "company policy" for all employees to be shifted back and forth between their line duties.
My wife talked to other employees about this job demotion and they told her it was total B.S. She had been working on a NICE sit down, clean and light parts finish line for her first six months at the factory.
But she still got demoted to the big warehouse where she had to stand and lift heavy metal, greasy parts across a big table all day. Within 30 days on the dirty, heavy lifting job, she herniated two of her lower lumbar discs and had to quit the factory. The hound got his revenge.
Save two places of employment, I've had harassment of some sort occur at nearly every single one of my workplaces. It's a closely knit work community within a male-dominated industry, so it's rare that women report incidents, let alone complain about them. "Telling" on someone could cost a woman her career's upward trajectory, so most of us learn to put up and shut up (or, in my case, learn to play effective defense).
Early on in my career, incidents were more physical in nature (cornering, etc.), but once I hit management, with one major and disturbing exception, they became more verbal/textual. The reason that I didn't report the most recent incident (another manager repeatedly propositioned me via text) is that I didn't want to cost the man his job as he was his family's sole breadwinner. (You'd be shocked just how many men "hide" behind their wife and children when it comes to shielding their jobs in these cases) He was later fired for reasons unrelated to harassment.
Just because it hasn't happened to you, doesn't mean that it is a creation of the media.
Last edited by Formerly Known As Twenty; 06-01-2019 at 07:03 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
