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Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

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Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#81

Post by fjfkdjfjfjd »

csydas wrote: post #37

Really the only sound advice anyone can offer is "keep your head down until you naturally part" or "leave now via a mutual agreement" so as to not cause any of the harm you're afraid of causing. We only have a few tidbits of information from you - this isn't to say that I disbelieve you, but rather that it's impossible to give proper advice without knowing far more about what's going on; anything else is just going t…

I have no intent on damaging my career or making others feel uncomfortable, so at this point, keeping my head low, nose to the grindstone, let this pass, is how I will attempt to make these last few months work out. From the comments here, I definitely gained from seeing other's perspectives of the occasional small-talk I was making could be viewed in a way other than what I was intending.

I am happy to provide some more detail. Is there something specific I can provide?

Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#82

Post by fishnchips »

fjfkdjfjfjd wrote: post #61
fishnchips wrote: post #32

Those accusations can come from weird places. I was once accused of sexual harassment by a male coworker (I'm a straight male, and a father of two). When summoned by HR to face the victim it turned out that he felt that touching his screen (when explaining something) violated his personal space. Not that it is necessarily relevant to your case but if you feel innocent then you probably are - unless you're a psychopat…

Wow! That is a crazy story! I am not justifying the person who falsely accused you at all, but at least in the end, there was some "closure"/mutual understanding of how to reduce any tension. I wish something like this could have happened with management bringing me and them together to determine any problems and resolve them. I hate this feeling that I do not know what if anything I did wrong.

From what I know HR brought us together because they couldn't figure out what actually happened. My coworker was not a very social person and could not coherently explain his accusation. When they finally figured out the whole story... you should've seen the HR director's face. She left not long afterwards to a much more 'conventional' environment. Definitely not related to my case but I'd imagine she never looked back. Anyway, if the accusations were clearer and more coherent, or a female was involved, I don't think HR would organize a confrontation like this.

Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#83

Post by watwut »

contingencies wrote: post #23

Leave but before you do so find a chance to talk to a nontrivial percentage of the staff and explain that this thing happened, affected you deeply and it was never your intent to upset anyone and it has really negatively impacted your experience at a formative stage in your career so whoever made the accusation could they please be aware in future that they may have it wrong about people and accusations can hurt. No…

That will come across as passive aggressive or manipulative at best. You need considerable charisma to be able to pull something like that off. It is nice as vengeance dream, but in practice would turn against him. It is therefore bad advice.

Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#84

Post by fjfkdjfjfjd »

watwut wrote: post #64
fjfkdjfjfjd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your insightful comment! And I'm sorry to hear of your brother's story. It has been hard, but I have suspended talking to people about non-work-related topics since this incident. I thought I was in a domain of acceptable topics, but I guess its better to exercise extreme caution. I am also not very socially-skilled so perhaps this lack of experience has been the catalyst for this incident. I would think t…

> I am also not very socially-skilled so perhaps this lack of experience has been the catalyst for this incident. Ok, then something came across much differently then you intended. Is there a dude on the job that you could trust which could provide you honest feedback? Someone who tend to talk directly and does not badmouth others behind their back. Emphasis on trust here, really it is important that you can trust th…

Thanks for your comment. I have a male coworker on my immediate team who I feel comfortable confiding in. I am a little confused though: what sort of honest feedback should I be asking for? How I may be coming across to other people? Something else?

Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#85

Post by freeflight »

auserperson wrote: post #24

Nobody is accusing you of sexual harassment. They said what they said. You are making some woman uncomfortable. Try to first believe what they said instead of getting paranoid. You are an intern and probably don't have a lot experience on professional behavior. You might be trying to get be friendly but that is coming out as creepy. Stop trying to do small talk if the other people don't start small talk with you neve…

> Try to first believe what they said instead of getting paranoid.

If he wouldn't believe it then he wouldn't be paranoid, the whole paranoia angle only exists because of the complete vagueness of the accusation.

It's literally telling somebody "You did somebody wrong, we won't tell you what you did or to whom, but consider yourself on notice", how is anybody supposed to react to that except with complete paranoia?

> If the other people in the office start doing small talk to you, then you answer, don't engage the other way around.

Sorry for putting this frankly, but why? It's either the same rules for everybody or no rules at all. Why are other coworkers allowed to initiate private small talk while he is not?

What are you basing this difference of rulesets for different people on? On the mere existence of an anonymous accusation that doesn't even detail what exactly he did wrong? Or maybe even superficialities?

Don't you think that whole setup is quite one-sided and could just as well be considered as bullying?

> Just accept what they said and try to take this a learning a experience that your behavior does not come out as professional where you are working at the moment.

Again: How is he supposed to learn anything from this when he isn't even told what he did wrong or to whom? What part of his behavior? In what exact situations? As is, it's such a generalizing statement that it might as well just be a personal insult.

> Try to pay attention to that on your next job.

Remember that thing you did wrong and nobody ever told you about? Don't do that wrong the next time! Much has been learned, very educational.

> That sometimes you might think you are being friendly and people see you as creepy.

And what you might think is creepy I might consider funny in a friendly odd way. There are always two parts to communication of any kind: A sender and a receiver. Getting the right context across, and preventing misunderstandings, involves effort on both ends, not just the sender.

The only thing anybody learned here is that he's considered a horrible creepy person, with exactly zero context or reasons given as to why he's supposedly such a bad person.

Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#86

Post by fjfkdjfjfjd »

apatters wrote: post #66
rmetzler wrote: post #29

Look for a better full time job now. Your time there is limited. I'm not in the US, so I don't know anything about how you have to handle this legally, but I would publicly apologize for any unintended wrongdoing and make clear that you don't know what you are punished for. Be rather brief. Any decent person (which isn't legally bound) will come to you and give you some hints or let you know what happened from their…

I would second the call to start looking for a new job ASAP. However I would focus my energies entirely on ensuring the healthiest departure possible, leaving any and all relationships you can on a positive note. And I would not speak a single word about this accusation ever again. Unfortunately business culture in the US is such that it's very easy to become "tainted" by an accusation like this, and it's the next wo…

Thanks for your comment! Well said! I am looking forward to working as hard as I can and then moving on in a few months when this internship ends. But becoming "tainted" or worse, convicted of a crime is what I am worried about, especially further down the line, when I have a permanent position, a mortgage to pay, or a family to support. I recall in a Planet Money podcast episode an interview with a Wells Fargo banker, who after being pressured to meet new account quotas by opening extra accounts without their customers express desire, was somehow marked when she left her position, and had trouble finding another job in the banking industry. I wonder if anything like this (or perhaps a social credit system) exists, and if it could be corrected/adjusted as spurious information on one's credit report can be taken off.

Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#87

Post by fjfkdjfjfjd »

watwut wrote: post #54
chmike wrote: post #43

My brother (manager) has been confronted to a similar situation, except that he was accused of moral harassement. The employee complained about it to the director of human ressource. They reacted swiftly. They hired an independent and specialized company to investigate the matter. The conclusion was that it was a fake accusation. This is the correct behaviour in face of any kind of accusation between employees. This…

What is moral harassment?

I am curious too!

Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#88

Post by fjfkdjfjfjd »

le-mark wrote: post #74
zabana wrote: post #45

Not judging you but it could just be that you might come across as """creepy""" (notice the three pairs of quotes here). The issue is that you're in a hyper sensitive environment with hyper sensitive people. If you try and initiate a conversation with certain women (even to be polite because you dgaf about them) that dislike you, it can be considered """pushy""" and/or """creepy""" (even though there's no objective p…

I've concluded over the years that I must give off some sort of creepy vibe at tmes. It's wierd, it seems to be situational or based on the other party, because it's only happens about 95% of the time. I've found that I just seem to make some women uncomfortable. Sometimes it's been justified, and I've learned what not to do, like sitting to close to a lab partner in college. But then other times, I'm still mystified…

Well said! I will definitely keep the workplace for working especially during the rest of this internship.

Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#89

Post by watwut »

fjfkdjfjfjd wrote: post #84
watwut wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am also not very socially-skilled so perhaps this lack of experience has been the catalyst for this incident. Ok, then something came across much differently then you intended. Is there a dude on the job that you could trust which could provide you honest feedback? Someone who tend to talk directly and does not badmouth others behind their back. Emphasis on trust here, really it is important that you can trust th…

Thanks for your comment. I have a male coworker on my immediate team who I feel comfortable confiding in. I am a little confused though: what sort of honest feedback should I be asking for? How I may be coming across to other people? Something else?

What exactly makes people uncomfortable about your innocent small talk? What could you change so that you get interpreted correctly next time? Specific info like that.

Most advice here goes toward keeping to yourself and while it can be safer up to the point, social isolation sux in long term - it sux on the job too and limits your career. Also, if you isolate yourself people wont learn how to communicate with you either and will more likely to interpret you wrong. It is certainly reasonable to be careful about communication (safe topics, end small talk soon so that they wont get wrong idea, don't be persistent, etc), but if you closing yourself entirely is bad idea. But I cant tell you exactly what good strategy would be, only someone who sees you interact every day could.

The goal is to learn how to avoid the problem without isolating (and thus potentially harming) yourself.

Re: Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?

#90

Post by fjfkdjfjfjd »

freeflight wrote: post #85
auserperson wrote: post #24

Nobody is accusing you of sexual harassment. They said what they said. You are making some woman uncomfortable. Try to first believe what they said instead of getting paranoid. You are an intern and probably don't have a lot experience on professional behavior. You might be trying to get be friendly but that is coming out as creepy. Stop trying to do small talk if the other people don't start small talk with you neve…

> Try to first believe what they said instead of getting paranoid. If he wouldn't believe it then he wouldn't be paranoid, the whole paranoia angle only exists because of the complete vagueness of the accusation. It's literally telling somebody "You did somebody wrong, we won't tell you what you did or to whom, but consider yourself on notice", how is anybody supposed to react to that except with complete paranoia? >…

Thanks for your comment: This is my outlook: I try to be the best person I can be and when I make mistakes, I try to know what I did so I can learn from them. I agree with you that in this case, I do not feel I have even a chance to really learn from it, other than to be very cautious. While I am trying to move forward, I don't want this to haunt me. I do not want to "creep out" people, or repulse them since people are how I will make my living, hopefully one day get married, etc. I guess its a fine line one must walk to be friendly to others while not offending/creeping out people and not talking to people.
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