Tell him don't do it again, or he'll be fired?
And check with your lawyer. Get a lawyer if you don't have one.
Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
371–380 of 622 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
In many states, intent doesn't matter for sexual harassment -- even if the person saying "MILF" didn't know what it meant, the recipient could still construe it as harassment (and win!).
And some states still execute people and until recently some didn't allow homosexual marriages. Some states kept slavery well into the twentieth century. Do we measure right and wrong with state legislations?
I'll ignore your strawman entirely.... and just say: If the OP wants to protect his business, the offending employee's intent is immaterial when it comes to exposing himself^ and his company to undue legal risk.
^ IIRC in California managers (as company representatives) are personally liable if they knew of the harassment and didn't take corrective action.
OP needs to lawyer up, deal with this, and address harassment more broadly in the company. Sucks to deal with... but is mandatory training for all medium-to-big companies.
Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
#373Wow.
So few information, but so many people ready to fire his ass.
At this point, I wonder if we should have men/women segregation in the workplace. This is the logical conclusion if you want to avoid this kind of problems.
Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you believe this, it seems like you might also believe that it's legally risky to fire a developer who rm's the production environment. After all, they might bring a frivolous lawsuit for no purpose other than to "get a declaratory judgement asserting the facts of the case". (Incidentally: I don't think you can just "sue for declaratory judgement" to enlist judges to settle arbitrary disputes; the judgement has to…
I can't tell whether I am explaining myself poorly or whether you are intentionally misinterpreting. I am not a lawyer, and to my knowledge, neither are you. And that's why I won't go further than this post on this branch of the conversation. As I have noted before, you can apparently post far more often than I can, and I can't keep up with you even when I have any credible knowledge on the topic. I have a somewhat j…
"Injunctive relief"? Help me understand what you mean by this.
Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
#375So, 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 really get what you're saying. But don't you think the fact his guy is already acting like a cowboy a little while into his job raises some red flags? Sure, if he'd been there a while and was carrying on like this then some sensitivity training might be the best option. But this BDM is acting like a loose cannon somewhere that he has just been employed. Seems like a bad hire all-round, regardless of the SH stuff.
Your sexual harassment policy cannot be written for one specific instance. And if you write it with a "Guilty until proven innocent" (or just hey, hang 'em high on her word alone) framing, this is going to cause serious problems.
I am aware that people like to get on their high horse concerning perceived injustice, but the comments here are a) passing judgement on third hand information -- she told her boss, who came here and repeated it presumably in his own words and b) reacting to only one side of the story.
I get that actually determining what actually happened is a pain in the ass, but if this man is fired out of hand based on a) the female employee's remarks and b) histrionic discussion on an overwhelmingly male forum where many of the men here have no idea how to interact effectively with female colleagues and if this becomes the precedent for the company policy, I think that is very problematic.
Would you want to work for a company with a known track record of firing someone out of hand based on the remarks of another employee, without so much as asking for both sides of the story? Never mind issues like this going to court, how are you going to attract good talent if people are terrified that the women in the office can say something to the boss and get them canned the next day without any attempt whatsoever to hear both sides?
Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
#376I might be missing the obvious here, but why did she confide in you if she didn't want something done? Unless you two are drinking buddies and she was just unburdening herself, you have to assume that she is asking for your help - and the double speak is an attempt to emotionally protect herself from the inevitable.
Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why will firing him worsen the problem? I would fire this guy immediately. > Men and women need to learn to interact at work. Men should not need sensitivity training to interact with women at work.
> Men should not need sensitivity training to interact with women at work. Sexism should already be over, but it isn't, and is more complicated than people who think they are not sexist declaring zero tolerance policies.
Not sure where you're getting the "think they are not sexist" from. Everyone has unconscious biases (men and women). Some are more aware of them than others. This problem is not sexist in and of itself. It would be equally inappropriate for a woman to put a man in this position in the work place or for a man to put another man in this position, or woman to put another woman etc.
Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why will firing him worsen the problem? I would fire this guy immediately. > Men and women need to learn to interact at work. Men should not need sensitivity training to interact with women at work.
Consider the case of a small startup with only one or two female employees. If OP does in fact fire him and provide training to staff it wouldn't take much deductive reasoning for the rest of the employees to figure out who was involved with the incident. Maybe the accused was favored in the office and some employees take his side. Maybe some employees have a bias that is set off by what they deem to be necessary sex…
This is a fair point. Thanks.
Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
#379Wow. So few information, but so many people ready to fire his ass. At this point, I wonder if we should have men/women segregation in the workplace. This is the logical conclusion if you want to avoid this kind of problems.
> I wonder if we should have men/women segregation in the workplace.
That assumes all of your employees are heterosexual.
Once you assume some employees may be homosexual, bisexual, non-binary, asexual, etc. you quickly get a graph where employees are nodes are edges are "could possibly have unwanted attraction towards" that is not bipartite.
Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have a pretty strong opinion in this thread considering the lack of information we have. In this particular reply, all the 4 things you mentioned are NOT happening in the story. (At least by what we know.) Unwelcome: We don't know if it was unwelcome. She even agreed to move to another communication medium (one which wasn't officially work related.) Overt: It was on their own time, on a completely distinct commun…
She reported it to the founder, presented evidence, and made it clear that the conduct was unwelcome. I'm done at "milf".
The 4 things you mentioned are still false.
She made it clear to the FOUNDER that the conduct was unwelcome. Did she tell it to the new employee? Did he repeatedly talk to her in the same manner after being told it was unwelcome? We don't know.
I have no problem calling a coworker an "asshole", especially on my own time while taking a beer with him. Without context, that the new employee said "milf" doesn't convey anything other than he found the lady sexually attractive. His seducing techniques might be abyssal, or she might be the kind of girl that likes a little spices.
Again, we don't have near enough information to make a judgement here.