Was my remark out of line? (companies, moving, lawsuit, how much)
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How about a full on flushing of the cheeks and noticeable redness of the neck and upper chest area. As happened with a female coworker new to the company, Was it a sign of interest or just an allergy that week. Nobody will ever know for sure. But then came the slow movement of her hand toward mine while having a meeting about email marketing campaigns. I told her soon after that this is a professional relationship and no more. It is very flattering to get such interest, however things can get lead to trouble when the lady in question is married with kids.
You take your study of body language a bit too literally. Yes, tugging on hair CAN be a flirtatious signal. It could also be a personal habit one has when he or she is deep in thought. It could also mean her head was itchy and she was avoiding scratching it around another person. Or you were making her want to rip her hair out and she was trying to controhil herself.
In any case, if I were your boss, I would take your comment as somewhat rude and certainly unnecessary. In fact, depending on the tone you used delivering your statement, I might assume you were flirting back. Were you?
It was an offhand statement. Not as if I was hitting on her. Again, everybody, I GOT IT! I'VE LEARNED MY LESSON! OKAY???
Wrong. Just mindful of sexual harassment, and not tolerant of ignorant people like the OP, who yes, should have been fired..immediately.
I also hope you're not a manager. It's hard to fire an employee for stealing, destroying company property, or making lifelong enemies out of a valuable customer, so for *flirting*?
A one-sentence reprimand - "try to keep those kinds of thoughts to yourself" - is sufficient.
I also hope you're not a manager. It's hard to fire an employee for stealing, destroying company property, or making lifelong enemies out of a valuable customer, so for *flirting*?
A one-sentence reprimand - "try to keep those kinds of thoughts to yourself" - is sufficient.
Not hard at all. Employment at Will is law in 50 states. Newsflash: Short of union contract language, there is no requirement to even state a reason to terminate.
Your remark was so far out of line it can't even see the original line. Seriously, I'm surprised you haven't been reported for sexual harassment. That was extremely creepy.
BTW, just an aside about Freud. I think he's been petty much debunked, when it comes to women. He claimed that women have penis envy because they want the organs themselves, seeing how they don't have anything. (Freud obviously didn't understand the female body.) He interpreted most dreams of women to have sexual meanings. He had some serious sex issues, apparently.
It's not surprising that he would interpret many ordinary movements of women to be sexually oriented. That's in keeping with his view of women. But he was wrong in that area.
I've also noticed throughout the years that many men view women in a way that's not objective. They see what they want to see, and often assume a woman is "smiling flirtatiously" at him, or making suggestive comments, or is interested in a relationship with him, when none of those things is true. You will find this with child molesters, too, as they reference a child giving him a "suggestive look," or "smiling flirtatiously" at him. I can't count the times that men have assumed I was interested in them, when I wasn't in the least. Nothing in my words or behavior implied that, yet that's what they saw or heard.
If the person someone is looking at is a sex object to that person, he tends to view that person in a sexual context, which is more often than not completely opposite to reality.
Implied in the OP's comments is the fact that he thinks she would be flirting with him. He is older, she is younger and a supervisor. It's not likely she has ever viewed him in a romantic or sexual way. Therefore, he should have known that in that instance, fiddling with her hair was not a flirtatious action.
Unfortunately a great number of men think that if a woman so much as looks in their direction or smiles at them then they want in their pants, immediately, no matter where they are.
OP had a story going on in his head similar to penthouse forums and the boss was probably thinking about a deadline she had to meet and was stressed.
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