171–180 of 622 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>My reaction would be to just fire both. What did the existing employee do to deserve such treatment?
At least he is owning up to not want to deal with adult babysitting, which is what this is.
From a legal standpoint, you need do nothing. He is not in any position to commit quid pro quo harassment. So far, there is no evidence of hostile workplace. What your female employee has done is to cover her own ass in case the new male employee engages in any work-inappropriate behavior. If she comes to you again, and claims harassment, you are primed to believe her immediately and take immediate, appropriate actio…
It's not their personal lives. It was in work time, initiated through work channels. And even if it was at a bar after work, it would still be rude and indicative of the kind of personality you don't want at your company. Waiting for him to slip up and hoping someone will report it is a horrible solution. It's not like he said "hey nice haircut" and it was taken the wrong way. He called her a milf. There's no ambigui…
If it was at a bar after work, there would be no reason for us to know about it other than the suspicion that it might later spill over into work matters. Zero tolerance is a horrible way to run anything, not just a business.
It is true that "at will" employment means you can be fired at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all, but if you choose to run your business that way, do not be surprised when otherwise disassociated people abandon ship.
If I worked at this company and discovered that a co-worker had been fired on a justification this flimsy, I would be job hunting again at 5:01 PM that very day. Firing is an extremely disproportionate response to making a failed proposition to a co-worker on personal time, through personal channels.
As immediate termination seems to be a somewhat popular response here, I just have to say "What the Hell is wrong with you people?" You are now building the world you will have to live in later. I hope you appreciate the irony when popular sentiments change and your livelihood is subsequently threatened because your lifestyle and opinions are now unpopular.
You are, in all seriousness, advocating loss of employment and potentially long-lasting career damage as extrajudicial punishment for the heinous crime of privately sending inappropriate text messages.
It went to HR. I got interviewed. I assume he got interviewed. He was not fired. He never spoke that way to me again. I eventually reestablished trust with this man and we got on well. I suspect he got sensitivity training. I was not told what went down. It was all handled very discreetly.
Please do get HR involved. Please do not listen to the people here who are advising you to nuke the man from orbit, it's the only way. Doing that will only deepen the problem. Men and women need to learn to interact at work. Promoting fear and loathing will not further that larger goal.
You get his side. You do some training. If it continues to be a problem, sure, fire him. But please do not use final solution/terrorist tactics. This only hurts women in the long run. Men need to learn better manners. Cutting their nuts off for a faux pas doesn't teach them that. It promotes a hostile environment between the genders. It doesn't create a more civil environment.
So, I am female. When working at a Fortune 500 company, I once emailed a colleague and copied our two bosses. I advised him to never speak that way to me again. It went to HR. I got interviewed. I assume he got interviewed. He was not fired. He never spoke that way to me again. I eventually reestablished trust with this man and we got on well. I suspect he got sensitivity training. I was not told what went down. It w…
I'm not familiar with US customs, so little confused here: is asking your co-worker out is considered a sexual harassment? Or is it the "milf" part?
Asking somebody out isn't sexual harassment. Insisting and making crude work-inappropriate remarks is harassment, and that's not just in the US: [76/207/EEC] Article 2 § 2 > harassment: where an unwanted conduct related to the sex of a person occurs with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, and of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment > sexual harass…
We here know too little to really make educated statements.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a mistake. He didn't leave the server room door open. He called her a MILF.... TO HER FACE. He's not 12 (I assume). If he hasn't learned to be respectful to women before now, it's not this guy's job to teach him.
Per the side of the story we know. Do you know something not present in this narrative? The use of 'milf', whether it's derogatory or a compliment, will depend entirely on the context of the larger conversation. Something we don't have. Something which apparently the OP didn't have either.
An HR rep is, frankly, usually pointless, unless you have high quality HR with specialized training. They do serve as a verifying party though.
Me? I'd interview this guy (not alone) to see if I thought he could learn (as atrocious as his behavior reportedly is, I've been very surprised by what lessons have simply never been communicated). If you don't have full confidence he can improve, he's a liability to you and should go.
I'd also lead this off by talking with the female employee about what you want to do - It's not just about her (although she certainly deserves respect), but about what kind of a company you want to have - which employees are protected and which ones are not. Hopefully she'll understand.
Just to play devil's advocate: how hard is it to spoof whatsapp/slack messages if one wanted to get someone fired? If he denies that he sent the messages, or says he sent messages but the content has been altered where could the employer go then? "She's trying to get me sacked because ...". Where could you go from there to prove he committed an offense against propriety/policy? Also, a perhaps more realistic issue is…
He called her a milf to her face. That's completely unacceptable. She was clear when she said "as friends at work". It wouldn't have been harassment if he hadn't been so crude and suggestive. if he'd just said "hey, want to have dinner some time?" Then it would have been a little forward, but not harassment. He didn't. He said "You're a mom I'd like to fuck". It doesn't have to be ongoing to be harassment. Once you'v…
Lawyer lawyer lawyer LAWYER lawyer LAWYER . I think the consensus in the grown-up business world is "fire immediately for cause." I would bet substantial money that when you lawyer lawyer lawyer they will advise you to do that and document the heck out of it. The calculus is really, really simple: if you don't, then you will with probability approaching one get this incident or a similar incident cited during a threa…
In addition to patio11's excellent advice it's time to get some training on this. Possibly the lawyer you're going to hire can do this. Possibly they can refer you to someone appropriate. There are very well established procedures for how to deal with this sort of thing. You need to know them. Depending on the size of your company your managers might need to know them too. Hacker News is not the best place to learn t…
Patrick's advice is very sound. (Except, perhaps, for that last bit about what to say in an email to employees -- before sending any such email, please refer to Patrick's earlier, superseding advice to "Lawyer Lawyer Lawyer." Let your lawyer basically dictate what your email will say.)
There are ways of handling this that have been worked out through decades of practice and litigation. This is most certainly not an area to be winging it. And, with all due respect to the thoughtful posts on HN you'll encounter, you should always keep in mind that HN is not a free source of legal advice.
Since this has now happened, you'll want to a) lawyer up; b) terminate the offending employee for cause; c) work with the lawyer to set up some sort of HR training for managers in how to appropriately handle these situations.
It might also be time to reemphasize the employee handbook and make known your zero-tolerance policy towards harassment. (But again, consult a lawyer before doing so.)