Workplace Harassment

[tatapb]

First month into my job, I got my ass slapped by a coworker.

I never expected anything like that to happen to me or, frankly, to anyone. I was floored and panicked. I blamed myself. I blamed the clothes I was wearing, my general behaviour and a million other factors that are too complex to unpack here without going into a complete psychoanalysis of myself, my company, the pervasive misogyny and bro culture in my team and the specific arsehole in question.

The lack of corporate structure, lack of HR, the fact that my team was a Boy's Club that had been together for 10+ years, the fact that I loved the work I was doing and, most importantly, needed (and still need) my job... were all part of the reason why I did nothing about it.

I'm writing an OF piece for @crowsb4bros and I've decided to touch the subject workplace harassment. I have my own experience and feelings to draw from and I'm doing research online, but I'm here to ask whether any of you have suffered something similar and would be willing to share your experiences/feelings so that I can better understand and depict what is, undoubtedly, a shitty and difficult topic. 

I know it's not something easy to talk about at length and in detail. I tried to myself, wrote a whole wall of text and then I re-read it and erased it because it made me feel sick to my stomach and helpless and weak all over again. I get it if you don't feel comfortable sharing it here but if you still would like to talk about it, my pm box and my discord are always open. 

[grumpy cat]

as a young(ish?) woman working with a bunch of civil engineers that resulted in some sexual situations/sexual harassment in the office, with one memorable meeting where a lot of us and professional partners were supposed to be in and we were down one chair so a coworker who i hate told me to sit on his lap in front of everyone including my boss (also his boss). who then asked him to leave the meeting but i felt so humiliated and ashamed and angry at both him but also at myself, not just wondering about the clothes i was wearing and the way i carry myself, but also for all the things i could've said but was shocked and speechless and felt like everyone was judging me, and not him because people laughed. like it was just some joke and the way i felt is difficult to describe - but i wanted to run away and obviously i couldn't because it was an important meeting but if you asked me the moment i left the room what the meeting was about i couldn't tell you a thing because i was screaming inside. and that was just one public comment.

we don't have hr and idk maybe this wasn't a big deal?? but also my boss talked to the guy after (by talked to i mean yelled at him and threatened to fire him if something like that ever happened again) and the only words we've exchanged since then were strictly professionally related to a project we're both working on which, of course, i'm glad about but i still feel very uneasy around him. the meeting comment was just one among many others, but that one was public and i suppose it's easier for me to deal with minor aggressions when it's not in front of other people

tw: sexual assault (?):

Spoiler

recently i was assaulted at a new construction site where i haven't been previously (part of my job consists of overseeing the constructions of projects i, and others, have designed) and i was alone there because my boss was out of town. alone with numerous construction workers. disgusting comments, supposed flirting (??) and then the actual assault by one of them were really fucking traumatising and i won't go into details here because i'm not quite sure it's t rated, because it definitely would require a consent issues advisory. i described some of it on discord but i don't feel like talking about it too much because like ...days later i froze when i was back there with my boss, basically ran away and spent two hours in his car shaking while he did the job i was supposed to do, then drank vodka in our office bathroom when we got back because i couldn't deal with it. i'll never go back there and just thinking about this is making me nauseous, anxious, icky and scared.

i don't know why it happened and it could've been way worse and i also feel like i have no right to feel the way i do and i keep thinking i'm blowing things out of proportion because i tend to do that because it's the way i am (more on that in culture, identity, race thread...........) and i kinda wish like i could forget it and when it happened i spent the rest of the day laying on my floor and not wanting to ever again get up and i didn't want to see anyone. so that's how i felt/feel. i don't know if my reaction is valid at all and i keep questioning myself and wondering what i did wrong or what i'm doing wrong or whether it might happen again.

[down-in-flames]

ugh, i wish this wasn't a topic i could contribute an essay to but i've got so many stories that i don't even know where to begin. 

....... ok i think i'm gonna start with my personal training job, because that's a job i literally left because of workplace harassment (and a few other things, but that was undeniably a very central part of it). i was the first female trainer at the gym, which should've been a huge fucking red flag on its own but i was naïve so i accepted the job anyways. half the staff harassed me in one way or another throughout my time there. some of the most notable offenses were the 40-year-old trainer who texted me while he was working with a client and i was working out on the other side of the training area and told me that watching a specific part of my body (three guesses which one!) was 'distracting him.' and then proceeded to double down on how distracting i was to my face once he finished with his client, accompanied with a wink and very slow once-over that made it clear exactly what he was looking at. also the coworker who regularly filmed me from behind while i was demoing workouts and sent the videos to his friends, and also tried to follow me home one night and got so overbearing in asking me out through instagram DMs that i eventually had to block him. it made me so unbearably uncomfortable in the workplace - i couldn't do my own workouts in the very gym that employed me without feeling incredibly paranoid, and i stopped demoing as much (which, if you've ever worked with a trainer before, you might be able to imagine that it's pretty fucking hard to do that job without showing people how to do the exercises you're trying to teach them), so it started negatively impacting the quality of my work as well. and because it was an all-male setting otherwise and i was the newest employee, it was my word against theirs, and my boss was already targeting me for sexist reasons (which i could go into but this isn't the place), so putting yet another target on my back would've only served to make things worse. (also uhhhhh, my boss also made some charged comments about me too, so like, how do you complain about harassment to someone who's a part of that harassment?) i felt like a fucking animal at a zoo and a piece of meat around the men i worked with for the entire time i worked there, which is an absolutely horrible and degrading feeling that i wouldn't wish on anyone.

i also worked as a lifeguard for a few years (and then a manager for the company after that) as a teenager and that was also a... uh, frequent venue for less-than-great behavior, although this was less from coworkers and more from patrons. once again, just picking some highlights (and mind you, i was 16 or 17 at the time of most of these incidents) - i had a boy moon me from the pool and then try to kiss me when i got off stand to kick him out, and a 10-year-old who put a pool noodle between his legs and start singing the song 'candy shop' (which is a song i still can't stand listening to to this day because of this incident) and following me around and hitting me with it while my (male) boss just watched it happen and laughed. and that's frustrating as hell and so humiliating, because yeah, this was a scrawny kid who's a foot shorter than me and who i definitely would've had a physical advantage on should i have chosen to retaliate, but i was also in a position where i was powerless to stop him because... i just... what do you even do in that situation? and then my superior was literally watching it, and fully complicit in it happening. anyways, all of that to say, sometimes the customers are just as shitty as the coworkers. and it fucking sucks when you don't have anyone around who's got your back.

i'm gonna stop here because this is already a lot of stories and i don't really want to bring back any more shitty memories at this point. 

[lostinthelightss]

thankfully i've never been harassed physically at work yet, although the word 'thankfully' shouldn't have to be in that sentence, nor should the word 'yet', but here we are... when i was 20 i was working at a company and my mentor was a couple years older than me (i think about 26-27?). at one point i had mentioned i had a boyfriend and he mentioned he had a serious girlfriend he was going to propose to after she was out of school. there was also another coop who was working hardware (i was on the software team), but because they didn't have much work for us, i would usually go hang out with him a bunch throughout the day.

the day i got dumped was really rough. the next day at work was even worse because i barely had any work to do, but the hardware coop let me just hang with him and showed me what he was doing, we chatted, snuck out at one point to get ice cream. my mentor asked why i hadnt been doing much work that day and when i told him he was really sweet about it and even told me that if i needed a day off he'd vouch for me to the supervisor. over the next two or so weeks the hardware coop and i got closer and he was a really good friend throughout the whole ordeal.

but then just about two weeks later, my mentor (whom i had added on facebook because why not?) started messaging me these really weird things after work. things like 'wow, ur glasses today made you look like a hot librarian' (which is funny because i was wearing my glasses to hide the fact that i had bags under my eyes from crying always), and other suggestive things. at work it was business as usual but after hours he would keep messaging me. i mentioned it to the hardware coop and he was super amazing about it, told me that i should ask him to stop, if it continued that i should go to hr, and promised he would back me up every step of the way. i was so lucky that he was there and was fully on my side because without him i probably would've still gotten the courage to tell my mentor to stop, but it wouldve taken a lot longer than the week and a half i dealt with it.

so i mentioned that i wasnt comfortable with these questions and flirtatious behaviour to my mentor because he had a girlfriend. his rebuttal was that his girlfriend knew. (lol, yeah im sure she did). but i doubled down and said that i wasnt comfortable flirting with someone who was unavailable. i phrased it that way because i was worried that if i was upfront and just said 'hey im not interested', it would end up poorly for me because my mentor would take it personally. it sucks, and im in a place now that im comfortable in myself and confident in the work i do, but at the time i still wasn't sure what path i wanted to go in life and didnt want to close any doors or cause problems in my workplace. thankfully though, my insistence that i was monogamous got my mentor to stop. i still had about a month of working there where it was clear there was some strange tension, but the good thing about coop is that it's only four months and i never have to see the guy again.

i was really really lucky that all of this happened online, that i was able to shut it down so quickly, and that i had someone, a man even, in my corner. the software industry is making big strides in becoming more inclusive, but there are still so many issues. i wish i couldve been more direct, wish that i wouldnt have had to worry about what position it would put me in by pissing off my mentor. but thats what happened and i cant change it, even if it sucks and i can still remember exactly how uncomfortable i felt, 3 years later, and will probably continue to remember it for years to come.

[beyond the rain]

This is something I'm a bit scared to talk about for a lot of reasons: 

Spoiler

I still work there, the person was never officially dealt with, brings up old stuff. 

However, I'm gonna talk about it. I spoke about it a bit when I didn't think it was harrassment, then closed up when other people took over the situation - so I guess we're full cycle. 

 

My experience as a woman in a male dominated workplace has not been kind. My body has been up for discussion by male workers, even when mine hasn't been I've seen men make horrible gestures and jokes about women. I have been poked and prodded by strangers, and been subject to strange comments relating to taking advantage of me and other women. 

Prior to my one of the worst experiences of my life, I was involved in a situation where a guy obsessed over me for a few months. Not a lot of people talked to him, I felt bad, and I used to give him lifts home because we lived really close. He then started telling people we were together. He followed me around on shift, if I visited on my days off he'd follow me then too. I got messages if I hadn't spoke to him demanding to know why I ignored him and why I hated him. I dealt with that by asking my supervisor to keep us apart, I also spoke to him personally - and it worked. 

 

TW: assault - 

Spoiler

I was groped by a coworker outside of work. I was drunk, but he was very sober. Even being drunk I did not want him to touch me (which is not to say being drunk = consent!! I just remember freezing and thinking nope, do not want). What was worse, for me, was that he told EVERYONE at work he had seen up my skirt. 

So I dealt with a separate incident (see spoiler if youre ok w the trigger warning) by...not dealing with it. Roughly four staff members knew what had happened, and I had convinced them to not say anything. Sometimes you feel like it isnt worth all the fuss. At the time I didn't want him to lose his job, I wanted him to know what he did was wrong. Idk, it sounds dumb - that's what went through my head. Then I had some shifts with him. He followed me around work, if I was alone in a part of the building he would just appear and he'd be watching me. I was really worried about working with him at night in case it was just the two of us. I sent an email out to my manager asking for that NOT to happen. I said I'd work with him during the day, but recent events have made me uncomfortable and I don't want to work with him at night. I got no response to that email. Then a few weeks later I was put on a night shift with him. Just me and this guy. Cue me losing my rag, a panic attack, threatening to quit -- it was all very chaotic and messy. By this time I was really stressed because my friends who knew were threatening to tell everyone at work if I didn't tell management. Which happened anyway, the manager never got to hear my side first hand because she heard a different version by a coworker instead. I was informed that because "I" had started telling people, I could get sacked. He could file a report for slander. Nevermind that it was the truth. The reason they believed me is because he wasn't a nice person. No one at work got on with him, and it felt like even my friends were pushing me to tell management bc they wanted him sacked. In the end I filed a report and nothing happened, he left of his own accord I believe a few months later. I haven't talked about this in a really long time so I'm sorry if this is really incoherent or seems rambly? 

 

I know I'm not the first or the last to experience sexual harrassment in the workplace. Honestly, at the time it didn't feel like it. I dont know if I was avoiding the subject or if I just, didn't see what had taken place as sexual assault? Unfortunately, something I wanted to manage and keep to myself and a manager is now public knowledge amongst the entire staff and I spend almost every shift feeling humiliated