As part of my job in 1998, I was required by my employer to attend an in-service on sexual harassment, led by an attorney. The think I remember most from this two-hour session was that raising one’s eyebrows could be considered sexual harassment!! For heaven’s sake!
Sexual harrassment: You say, “You look nice,” and the woman is so devastated that her life is ruined forever and the only thing that will pull her back together is a large financial settlement.
What need is a loser pays rule. If you can’t prove damages, you pay the other party the amount you stand to collect if that’s the case. It would eliminate 99% of the lawsuits in this country and put ambulance-chasing legal loan sharks out of business for good.
That’s the way to put frivolous and shakedown sexual harrassment claims to bed.
I’m hungry, FEED ME!
My Brother owned a small taxi company in Boston. One day the dispatcher said to a female customer on the phone , “The cab will be at you door in ten minutes, Hon.”
The woman sued my Brother for sexual harassment because he refused to fire the dispatcher on the spot for saying “Hon”. She won six figures from my brother’s insurance company, who promptly dropped him after paying out. The Comm of Mass Commission Against Discrimination was involved, and it was all over the papers with my brother cast as the EVIL BOSS who didn’t care about his customers. And so on.
All because of an antiquated speech pattern that “offended” somebody. If she didn’t like it, she could have called a different cab company. But No. She felt it was more just to destroy somebody’s life who had never meant her any harm.
I don’t talk to women at work, or even make eye contact with them, for this very reason. Sorry ladies, but in your quest for making a quick buck by being a professional victim has marginalized and isolated you from men in the workplace.
People are scared to death at the work place to get acquainted for fear of harmless conversation being misconstrued as sexual harrasment.
You lose.