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

Now there are definitely behaviors that I think can easily be labeled as creepy(leering at people, making inappropriate physical contact, asking too many unwanted personal questions, etc) but there are other behaviors that are harder to automatically equate as such. As an example, I tend to be relatively introverted, and extremely private when it comes to discussing my personal life, this is especially true at work or with people I don't know well. As a result, I typically don't engage in small talk at work, and seeing as I rarely ever bring up my personal life, I very rarely ask about others. This isn't to say I'm not cordial, but when at work I prefer to simply focus on getting stuff done.

At one prior job, I worked with an extremely extroverted and talkative group, not gossipy or inappropriate, but simply gregarious. I would obviously join in when directly asked but I was always hesitant to initiate this kind of discussion. I did over a long period of time end up becoming close friends with one of my coworkers, at which point he let me know that when I first started some of my coworkers thought it was somewhat creepy that I never talked much about my private life.

I only relay this situation to point out how difficult it can be to navigate these kinds of interpersonal relationships, particularly in larger groups. One person's reluctance to discuss their weekend plans, which to me was completely benign, can be another person's creepiness. Just to be clear though, I absolutely think there are behaviors that are very unequivocally creepy or unwarranted, I'm not trying to argue that this is always, or even mostly, a matter of personal interpretation.

In my case, having explained the details to my friends (including several females) and discussing with a former female coworker at that company, my mind was put at ease somewhat as to what was actually my fault (I wasn't blameless, but I did not do sexual harassment - there are some greater responsibilities that I failed on as a manager that was my primary fault). I was also already debating leaving the company at that point because I was dissatisfied with higher management, and it turned out to be a major blessing for me.

My recommendation is to keep work strictly work as much as possible. Small talk is fine, but when you spend time outside of work hanging out with coworkers, especially on the weekends or separate away from other coworkers (i.e. just another coworker and you), you put yourself at risk potentially. It sounds like what you did might be ok, but of course we don't know the full details so it's hard to really give an accurate assessment. One should be guarded in the event one has coworkers who aren't well-meaning, which is always certainly a possibility & the disproportionate damage that can occur sadly makes it important to be watchful & behave accordingly.