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How severely can I be disciplined at work for being accused of making a female co-worker feel uncomfortable via text?
Avvo ^ | November 6, 2022 | Anonymous

Posted on 05/24/2023 7:46:17 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat

I've worked for a large bank for 6 years. I have excellent performance reviews. The female co-worker lives/works in California. I do not work with her on any projects nor is she related to my team. Nor are we in the same office. She reached out looking to leave CA to NC. There was a position open on my team & sent her the application. She applied and wasn't granted an interview. She called me mad and frustrated. She filed a complaint two days ago against me with HR. We last texted 3 months ago; HR has this text string. I met with HR, and I'm being investigated. In one text, I said she was "pretty and young". She's accusing me of tracking her and asking verbally if she sold her home and if she wanted to move to NC. I won't have future contact with her. I presented to HR an e-mail chain of her telling me she doesn't like CA and that she wanted to move to NC. I used to consider her a friendly acquaintance. I'm told HR will make a "recommendation" to my manager in 3 days. I have a good relationship with my manager. In the complaint, I did NOT hear the words "sexual harassment" but only "uncomfortable" - I think she is retaliating against me.


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To: CheshireTheCat

I would not want that chic working at my company. Seems pretty unstable


41 posted on 05/24/2023 8:34:20 PM PDT by dandiegirl (BOBBY m)
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To: All

To whom it may concern:

Last year, I called Ms Greta Whiner of Paragon Enterprises pretty and young. I wish to inform all parties that I was not in my right mind at that time, and in fact Ms Whiner is ugly and old.

I hope this will satisfy all concerned with my unfortunate error.

Yours sincerely,

Edgar B. Puswipd


42 posted on 05/24/2023 8:34:56 PM PDT by Peter ODonnell (In leftspeak, "disproven false claim" means fact. "Intolerance" means revulsion. "Progress" =failure)
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To: DaxtonBrown

I told him to say little and to respond to their inevitable demands he sign their write up of him that he needs to consult his attorney first— and to be sure he grabs their little paper from them and doesn’t give it back.

Yeah, they will probably fire him for not signing it, but he should get a response from an attorney on file.

The two new HR chicks are clearly on some sort of feminazi rampage and are making him their first scalp. None of the other male managers will stand up to them. As if their days aren’t already numbered.....Idiots.

His own—female—boss sees the writing on the wall and is moving on herself because standing up to them is going to get her in trouble. And she is a bit of a feminazi herself. That’s how bad these two HR b*tches are.


43 posted on 05/24/2023 8:36:44 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat ("Forgetting pain is convenient.Remembering it agonizing.But recovering truth is worth the suffering")
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To: Reno89519

This is a problem with having young or young-looking female co workers in an office. They can exert almost total power over their male colleagues and even bosses. All they have to do is say they are “uncomfortable.” It is the same with homosexuals of any stripe and a bit less so for male racial minorities.


44 posted on 05/24/2023 8:37:50 PM PDT by arthurus ( covfefe maakt niets)
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To: Reno89519

This is a problem with having young or young-looking female co workers in an office. They can exert almost total power over their male colleagues and even bosses. All they have to do is say they are “uncomfortable.” It is the same with homosexuals of any stripe and a bit less so for male racial minorities.


45 posted on 05/24/2023 8:38:08 PM PDT by arthurus ( covfefe maakt niets)
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To: CheshireTheCat

Try not to lose any sleep over it the next three days. If nothing, or something minor happens, you could wait and see if there are any hidden long-term implications toward your career. You probably should consider looking around in any event, which is true today regardless of how happy you are with your job. It is easy to be pigeonholed, with no upside possibility, particularly as a male. God bless.


46 posted on 05/24/2023 8:39:15 PM PDT by alternatives?
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To: peggybac

“Oh, how I miss the days of being called young and pretty.”

Me too.

Some years, ago, when I was young and pretty, I was called into HR, who wanted me to make out a complaint against my boss for saying harassing things to me.

The things he said, well, “Whoa, Nelly,” I can’t repeat them here.

But I liked hearing them. For all I know, I might have been the one who started our banter.

HR was not at all happy that I said I had nothing I wanted to complain about.


47 posted on 05/24/2023 8:40:39 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat ("Forgetting pain is convenient.Remembering it agonizing.But recovering truth is worth the suffering")
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To: CheshireTheCat

The only defense a man has in a hostile workplace is keep every conversation work oriented. If they try to be friendly, re-orient the conversation back to work in some way.

You can’t win by being social.


48 posted on 05/24/2023 8:41:07 PM PDT by Jonty30 (If liberals were truth tellers, they'd call themselves literals. )
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To: CheshireTheCat
Scott Adams advice -- "Stay away from black people." -- can be expanded to "Stay away from everyone."

Seriously. Unless you know someone very well, do not say more than you must. Don't joke, socialize, banter, volunteer to help, offer your opinions on anything, or ask any unnecessary questions.

49 posted on 05/24/2023 8:44:32 PM PDT by Angelino97
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To: Angelino97

Social Distancing is SCIENCE!

YMMV


50 posted on 05/24/2023 8:46:24 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: CheshireTheCat

I love it!


51 posted on 05/24/2023 8:51:16 PM PDT by peggybac (My will is what I wanted. God's will is what I got.)
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To: peggybac

If I were a guy, I probably would have been fired 20 times by now for making people uncomfortable.

I don’t consider my work week a success unless I’ve made some idiot “uncomfortable.”

I’ve been asked in the past about comments I supposedly overheard when some woman alleged harassment against a guy I had no issue with.

My response has been along the lines of, “I don’t remember hearing anything like that, but if I had, I would not have thought anything of that comment because it sounds rather harmless and even flattering to me. Besides, I’m not easily bent out shape like Karen and tend not to misconstrue situations like she does, so I probably just didn’t notice anything.”


52 posted on 05/24/2023 9:04:38 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat ("Forgetting pain is convenient.Remembering it agonizing.But recovering truth is worth the suffering")
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To: CheshireTheCat
For me, it would help to layout the case in a timeline with simple language and repeating names so it is clear who did what. Example: In this example, the sequence suggest that Sally is getting revenge. Sally and Jezebel did not go to HR until after Sally was caught violating the donut rules.
53 posted on 05/24/2023 9:07:40 PM PDT by UnwashedPeasant (The pandemic we suffer from is not COVID. It is Marxist Democrat Leftism.)
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To: CheshireTheCat
"I’m a chick myself, so I know how some operate."

I'm an old, long-time divorced chick, who in 1980, with two sons to support, took a job working for NY State's Dept. of Corrections. I was first posted at Auburn, an all-male maximum security prison. I experienced discrimination, verbal harassment, etc., not from the convicts, but from the male officers, male brass, and male administrators. In my first days at the facility, I met the Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent of Security. The Superintendent couldn't even call me Officer. He insisted on calling me Mrs. Both never welcomed me, or told me they were glad to have me there. Instead, their first question was: "Are you on a transfer list?" Now the dummies, had they actually known their rules, would have known that back then, you couldn't transfer to another facility until you had been on the job for a year.

The older officers had no problem with us being there. They made us feel welcome. It was the younger, cocky officers who gave us a hard time. I was older than most of them. One night I ended up working night shift in one of the cell blocks with a male officer. While we were making rounds, he tried to kiss me. I pushed him away, and that was the end of it. I could have reported him, but at that point in time, I probably would have been blamed for it. Thankfully it never happened again.

Of course there were double-standards I dealt with. If a male officer was talking to an inmate, it was called having a conversation, but if a female officer was talking to an inmate, it was called being too friendly. Thankfully they got over that horseshit. I bid and won jobs by seniority, that after I won them, I was told I couldn't have them because I was a female. I wasn't the only female officer they did that to at that prison. They wouldn't talk to you on the job, but if you ran into them on the street, they'd put the make on you. One day, a Lieutenant saw me standing on a post outside the main inmate bathroom, a job I had worked numerous times in the past without incident. He called the yard Sergeant, chewed him out for putting me there, and told him to remove me, which he did. Before I went home that day I went to see the Lieutenant, to find out why he'd removed me. His explanation was, that if a fight broke out, and I had to go into the bathroom, what would people think? My response was, they'd think I was doing my job. I told him all I had wanted since I got the job was for people to leave me alone, and let me do the job I was hired to do. When I told one of the other female officers about the Lieutenant's actions, she said, that he, when he was a Sergeant, put her on that same post repeatedly in bad weather so his male officers wouldn't have to stand without a shelter.

That Lieutenant was the same moron, who as Sergeant, had stopped at my post in the South Yard to talk. While we were talking, I told him an inmate was over in the corner with his dick out, stroking it. Of course when he turned to look, the inmate turned away. And then he had the nerve to ask me if I was sure what I had seen. I told him that since I had two boys, and had been married, I thought I knew what a dick looked like. That shut him up.

After I had a year on the job, I bid and won the phone room job. Back then, inmates got two calls a month. An officer would connect inmates to the approved call list, and the operator would ask the person who answered if they would accept the collect call. I had inmate clerks working for me. I should tell you that the phone room I worked in was in the basement of the Administration room, and that the only other officer in the area, was the officer locked in the sallyport control room. We couldn't see or hear each other. At times I would be alone with 20 or more inmates. One of the inmate counselors sent me a young inmate who was doing time for rape. When I discovered what he was in for, I asked the Counselor why he had sent him to work for me. His response was, "You have nothing to worry about, he only rapes young girls." Another time I had another Sergeant who hit on all of us women at one time or another, come up into the phone room to use the wall phone behind me. There was a room full of inmates. I had my back to him. He came up behind me, lifted the hair off the back of my neck, blew on my neck, and loudly said: "There, I just gave you a blow job."

I took all the crap in stride, spent my 3 1/2 years at Auburn until a prison near my home was being constructed, and left there. From the time I left that facility until I completed my 25 years, I never had another problem, not even when I was promoted to Sergeant, and I was the only female Sergeant in the prison, on the afternoon shift. I never worked in female prisons, just male.

54 posted on 05/24/2023 9:10:38 PM PDT by mass55th ("Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway." ~~ John Wayne )
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To: Peter ODonnell

Claim temporary insanity. It worked for then Congressman, later General Dan Sickles when he shot and killed his wife’s lover in broad daylight in Lafayette Square. Her lover happened to be the son of Francis Scott Key


55 posted on 05/24/2023 9:15:29 PM PDT by mass55th ("Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway." ~~ John Wayne )
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To: CheshireTheCat

A few SIMPLE rules to live by:
1. Work is work, nothing else, and should NEVER include ANY idle emails, texts, comments, jokes, chit-chat, etc.
2. Regardless of your sexual orientation do not EVER, as in NEVER, develop, encourage, discuss or engage in relationships of any kind with co-workers, even if you work remotely or at opposite ends of the country.
3. Regarding #2, ditto for friends of co-workers.
4. Keep your own counsel.
5. EMAILs, TXTs & SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTS NEVER DIE.


56 posted on 05/24/2023 9:17:41 PM PDT by O6ret
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To: CheshireTheCat

In the mid to late 90’s I worked (as a contractor) for Microsoft. I was pursuing a path to FTE (Full Time Employee) and had scored a position as a System’s Engineer with one of the elite teams. The first two years was a dream come true. The third year one of the senior members of the team advocated for a second engineer (AKA, create a new position for a friend).

The new engineer turned out to be female. Every alarm went off but I tried to keep my cool. She was flatly incompetent, had a terrible work ethic, and determined to work a side business as some sort of Wiccan counselor. I quickly discovered that I had more on my plate once I had “help” than I ever had before. Deficiencies began to creep up and were conveniently laid at my doorstep.

The good news is that she soon enough moved on to a job that was (total coincidence!) less demanding than her previous gig. Bad news is that the director’s son graduated from college and they kicked me to the curb to make room for junior.


57 posted on 05/24/2023 9:26:16 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now... )
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To: UnwashedPeasant

Yes. I agree this is great. Thanks.

This is what my guy should write up to bring to the attorney and then perhaps have the attorney attach to a letter in which he (the attorney) demands the timeline as written up be entered into the employees’ files.


58 posted on 05/24/2023 9:28:54 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat ("Forgetting pain is convenient.Remembering it agonizing.But recovering truth is worth the suffering")
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To: dfwgator

I’ve got lifelong friends from HS even though I’m rarely in the area I grew up. Small class. 48.


59 posted on 05/24/2023 9:31:24 PM PDT by vpintheak (Live free, or die!)
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To: CheshireTheCat

My advice: Do not contact the coworker unless professional necessities require it. Be civil. Be polite. No jokes. (Text messages should be on a professional footing with all co-workers anyway. IMHO.) Carry on with your work until told otherwise. Don’t bring it up. Hope for the best. Don’t burn any bridges it comes to it.

In other words, try to put the incident behind you and continue to do your best at work. It may return to haunt you. But it may also never come up again if you stay professional and do your best going forward. These days, people are relieved for all kinds of reasons. Don’t dwell on it and look forward to new opportunities if they are presented.

Chester Nimitz ran a destroyer aground early in his servce to the Navy. The sort of thing that can end a career immediately. Staying professional and doing his best in a series of tough assignments that followed put him on the road to becoming perhaps the Navy’s greatest admiral.


60 posted on 05/24/2023 9:36:22 PM PDT by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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