Ask HN: Victim of an unfounded harrasement accusation. Your thoughts?
I will try my best to keep this post brief, so please ask in the comments about details I left out.
Swift action has been taken against me by management, due to an accusation by an anonymous female co-worker. All management could tell me is that I made this person "feel uncomfortable", I am guessing in a sexual way. My desk was moved across the building away from where my immediate co-workers sit, and I was told to be not talk to women at the office unless absolutely necessary regarding business matters.
The extent of my non-work-related conversation with female employees has been saying hello/goodbye and making small talk on occasion (How long have you been with the company? Do you have travel plans for this summer? Are you doing anything fun this weekend?) I realize some of these questions could be viewed as hitting on someone, but that was not my intention, and believe that question was cleared up once they responded to me that they were going to see their boyfriend/girlfriend.
I am a male in my mid-20s on an internship ending in a few months. (The company has told me they do not have the budget to hire me full-time or extend my internship.) In the grand scheme of things, I understand this is small potatoes. But what has kept me up at night is the worry that I could be accused of sexual harassment or rape in the future leading to job loss or criminal charges.
I am frankly quite scared of talking to or approaching any women in my office, even for a work-related purpose. This is not a good long-term strategy, and I am not sure how to proceed. I would love your thoughts or advice on this topic. Thanks in advance!
148 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadIANAL
Charges? I don't think you mean criminal charges, but you may mean a more formal HR investigation.
I'd recommend approaching HR (or management) keeping this in mind. You could tell them that these are serious accusations and that it makes you sick to even imagine you made someone feel that way. You could show them you genuinely don't understand what was wrong but are willing to improve and to work on yourself so you don't ever make anyone uncomfortable again.
My 2cents, but again: I don't know you, the company you intern in, nor have I ever been in such a situation. So please take my post with a grain of salt.
Its basically like he almost raped her.
This is not within OP's (or anyone's) power.
Have you told management this? Can they offer advice?
What you are advocating is that in cases like this we should just accept that the burden or proof lies on the accused.
That's a total subversion of democratic principles.
What about that sane principle where is the ACCUSER that actually has to record/gather any evidence of wrong doing and present it? You know, like we do in every other case that doesn't involve sexual misconduct?
Question: did they provide you with any substantial evidence?
Anyway, ultimately your case and many others is why the law is at it's very core based on an innocent until proven guilty paradigm. Once you take that principle away, you put all the power in the accuser and none in the accused, which is objectionably unjust.
I've recently seen a few very disturbing comments on HN and from similar people (above-average education, born into privileged conditions, politically left, etc.), who naively believe that this is a bad or somewhat ineffective paradigm, and that we should "just believe" rape accusations, because ???? shrug. It disheartens me that some people can be so blindly ignorant about the law and human nature. We only need to take a short walk down history lane to explicitly see that if you give one side of anything human-related an enormous amount of power (like in this case if accusers are believed before evidence), there will be many who abuse it. It is human nature, and the law prevents it from reining free and causing utter chaos.
In your case, by the sounds of it they did not present to you any form of evidence (right?) to show you your misconduct. No sexually harassing text transcripts, no internal email transcripts, no witnesses, nothing. What this is is chaos and injustice, under the guise of some very malformed concepts of "progressiveness", and it's unfortunately ever-more prevalent.
My actual communication skills were not the issue, mind. The company frequently asked me to write and give presentations, either in public conferences or to the rest of the firm.
Anonymous accusations that sink careers are a plague of the modern workplace and are entirely due to a culture of "always believe the victim".
There is not even the testimony of that person. They don't told you what she say, they don't allow you to confront her.
For all that you know they could be making up all the thing. I don't think this is the case, but it's a possibility when everything is done in the dark.
Don't take this as advice, please, because I can't predict the results, but in your position I think I would feel compelled to confront them. Maybe with the help of some worker representative if that it's available to you. What I would avoid is to confront the woman, that could backfire very fast.
Furthermore, for those with very thin skins (SJWs) whom see microaggressions everywhere, it's fine for them to use whatever tools are available because the ends justifies the means, as a person, in their mind, is guilty merely for being born with innate identity privilege attributes. SJW behavior is disproportionate retribution combined with stereotyping.
I think it's totally bizarre that they would restrict you from talking to any female co-workers. If I were to guess at this situation with no more information than you have given, there is probably some consensus from many employees that you are 'creepy', and since they aren't willing to fire you for 'creepiness' they are just going to put you in the basement until your contract is up.
Good luck, consider whether you are generally creeping people out (maybe privately ask some male co-workers that you know if this might be the case), make sure your personal hygiene is good (shower every day, wear clean clothes everyday), etc. Maybe you do all this already and you are just a regular guy getting a bad deal, I don't know obviously, but you wouldn't be the first stinky guy in tech if that happens to be the issue.
For example, you might be sitting opposite of some female co-workers and frequently meeting glances might be interpreted by them as "staring" etc. while you might not even be consciously aware that you do it ... Solution: put up some optical barrier after talking with all people involved together.
Do we want to legitimize starting at a particular direction as a crime?
These are my eyes. I'll look wherever I want. If someone is uncomfortable, they should move their face away from me.
Basically the company I worked at was taken over and me and some others were forced out. The others rage quitted. I had false complaints made against me, and I was suspended while they 'investigated', I just quit.
My advice would be to walk away. If you know you've done nothing wrong and there's no evidence, you don't want to be in that kind of toxic environment.
... How? If he's leaving, exactly what they could do against him for you to say "it would turn against him"? Nothing, of course, that's the point of quitting, but I'm all eyes to your take on it.
Also, what is the point of leaving as parent suggested? It is that you get to look like a good guy in the end and she gets to feel bad/look bad in the eyes of the management. If he ends up looking like manipulative asshole, then he won't get that.
He was looking for advice how to make his situation better. This is not it.
Also, there is big difference between saving mental resources by not thinking about impact of your words and spending effort looking for "a chance to talk to a nontrivial percentage of the staff and explain ...". The latter does not save mental energy. The latter is major project instead. Nor does it build trust. Characterising it as causual "saving energy from managing petty issues" is ridiculous.
By bringing it up he is giving the company a chance to be aware of its mistake. As long as he is respectful in how its done that's a very selfless thing.
FYI the open-and-to-hell-with-it strategy works well for me, I am very successful by most measures.
Exactly how many of your jobs have helped you in any way in getting the next one? Hell, I have never even been asked references. Maybe we just work in entirely different industries and you're making too many assumptions.
> It is that you get to look like a good guy in the end and she gets to feel bad/look bad in the eyes of the management.
Perhaps and whoever accused him should feel bad, but won't, people who take advantage of the power that a false accusation gives tend to be sociopaths, they don't care about the person they're accusing nor about actual victims.
> If he ends up looking like manipulative asshole, then he won't get that.
He won't.
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 never. Avoid starting any conversation that don't have a business matter. If the other people in the office start doing small talk to you, then you answer, don't engage the other way around.
Don't try to flirt. Don't stare at woman that are trying to do their job. It is awful to be stared at by men that find you attractive while you trying to go through you day to day to get a paycheck and be back home.
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. Try to pay attention to that on your next job. That sometimes you might think you are being friendly and people see you as creepy. Again, don't seek a lawyer, you were not accused of sexual harassment, you were accused of lack of professional social skills.
So what? nobody makes you feel uncomfortable at your job?
If nobody is accusing him of sexual harassment, what is he being accused exactly?
It seems like an important point that they forgot to tell him. The guy don't even know about what he is being accused.
When that started to be OK?
My perception is that the woman complained about him, he is not important in the company and HR don't want to deal with the mess, specially in the current climate of political correctness. So they inflicted an injustice on him.
How I know it was an injustice? because they punished him but they didn't tell him what he did wrong.
The real problem is that OP wasn't even given the details of the accusation. Because even assuming that the accusations are correct, there is likely no malice involved here (not by OP, taking his word on this, and probably also not by the other person, given that he's in an internship). Without the details, OP has no opportunity to correct his behavior and might make the same mistake in the future, whatever it was. That way, everybody loses.
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.
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.
Don't let your head down too much and just keep in mind that we can't get along with everybody, it's not always all your own fault. Sometimes personalities just clash and it's best for everybody to just stay out of each other's way and do their own thing.
This does not mean that somebody is a "bad person" and the other a "good person", it simply means they just don't vibe with each other with no particular fault of anybody involved. So don't feel too guilty about this whole mess, at least as long they can't even be bothered to offer you any specifics about your supposed misbehavior.
I honestly didn't expect to see something like this in this thread. But, in hindsight, I'm not surprised, the narrative requires everything to be made about you (and with you I mean SJWs in general, not you in particular).
Also, the pervasive drive-by meddling of SJWs to brow-beat FOSS projects into accepting their Code of Conduct is further bullshit that is reinforced by well-meaning people that think it's a good thing to state the obvious, but then add a bunch of vague powers that can kick people out without due process.
"In 2013, Sarah Sharp, who then ran USB-compatibility efforts in the Linux kernel, urged Torvalds to stop verbally abusing fellow kernel developers and encourage more civil conversation with developers of any gender."
So, Sharp urged Torwalds to be less verbally abusive (because she considered him being role model for whole culture) and generally delusional dude had unnamed source about someone attempts to target open source programmers. Which never happened, Torwalds was never accused of harassment (he was accused of being rude which is much different).
IMO, ada initiaive is not above lying, but theirs lies are in exactly the same category as claiming the above means "Linus Torvalds was targeted."
If he was my boss, I would sue my company for allowing abusive behavior happening in the work place.
There's no excuse to do what he does, and it saddens me that a lot of good developers may choose not to work on Linux development just not to have to deal with him.
But I guess that this is what he wants. He built his little "kingdom of terror" and that way he can make sure that in his team there will never be developers who can diminish him.
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 view. If not, forget about it and move on.
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 worst thing for your career after being a felon.
Actual evidence of wrongdoing is not a prerequisite for your conviction in the court of public opinion. It may seem unjust, and if things went down as you describe, it is. But you're best served by walking away from this situation in an orderly and professional fashion. Don't feed the trolls--shift attention and energy, both yours and others', on positives ASAP. The sooner you that happens the less chance this will come back to bite you one day.
Some more everyday activities that might make someone uncomfortable in the workplace even without direct interactions:
- wearing T-shirts with scantily clad women in the workplace (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/13/living/matt-taylor-shirt-p...)
- wearing other T-shirts deemed inappropriate (heavy metal T-shirts with pentagrams or whatever; once, in the US, I wore a T-shirt referencing marijuana to a casual restaurant and was told off)
- displaying political preferences or religious ideas not shared and potentially considered dangerous by others
- having a desktop background image deemed inappropriate (scantily clad women, again)
- visiting websites or watching YouTube videos deemed inappropriate during your breaks
I'm not saying complaints about any of these are justified (although I don't think the workplace needs to be sexualized), but these are things people do complain about, in the real world. If you "feel innocent", and even if you pass the famous "I asked my female friends and they said it was OK" test, that still doesn't mean that nobody can complain about these things.
Displaying scantily clad women in the workplace in any shape or form would most certainly warrant an HR action. As a manager of an offending individual I'd certainly be the 1st one to react.
Then again, perhaps displays have sexuality too.
If for whatever reason, person X makes person Y uncomfortable, shouldn't Y tell X about it, and X stop the behavior/languages that caused the situation?
I think people make mistakes all the time, and some of them are quite honest/unintentional. What happened to "Let's learn from our mistakes?"
Not to be confused with people who make the "same mistake" all the time, in which case I think their behavior should not be tolerated.
This took time for me to understand. I had an acquaintance starting at a company who was interested in my separate traveling job. When I moved to SF she said we should have dinner, we were cool, invited to her birthday. She suggested I find a souvenir for her on my next trip. Months later I gave her a nice scarf and never saw her again. She probably forgot that it was her idea! I asked her to meet up, and she'll agree, but then it never happens. If I say, "hey, why don't you tell me why we didn't meet up? I need to talk this over in person, you need to believe me", that's exactly what a harasser would do. So I've had to let this go. It might be a little uncomfortable, but no one really gains anything from fixing it, except trying to feel like I'm always right.
1. Ask them to put everything in writing, if it isn't already in writing.
2. If you're thinking about quiting, talk to a lawyer.
3. If you quit, consider making a case against them for constructive dismissal.
I'd probably quit. It sounds horrible, and I couldn't work in that environment.
Professionally, stick it out with your nose to the grind stone and leave with work experience on your resume, or part ways now on good business terms if you're really worried that something else is going to happen.
If you are really worried about communication via the stick-it-out option, just try to keep it via email and business oriented. There's nothing wrong with dropping the pre-tense of small talk in conversations and keeping an email just to "Hi [name], I'm working on X and was wondering if you could provide Y for me as it will help a lot. Thank you, fjfkdjfjfjd"
I must confess it's very hard not to project my own prejudices and biases here; I tend to be of the opinion that a company wouldn't bother with such a PR disaster if there wasn't something that troubled an employee - my past managerial experience with such situations is that most are caused by well-meaning but socially awkward and oblivious young men not realizing that what they say or do makes people uncomfortable. (Luckily for our business, all parties were able to come to a mutual understanding that it was a misunderstanding after my investigation, and the issue was forgiven and a friendship established by the parties) We also had several cases that were genuine harassment and punitive action had to be taken.
With how little there is for anyone to go on here, everyone is going to be relying on their own past experiences - my experience is "where there's smoke there's fire", others see false claims, but neither is going to be right because we can't comment.
So, if you're worried professionally, just weigh the benefits of actions here - you can pursue it, make noise, and maybe get a pyrrhic victory of principal while damaging your professional career, or you can let this one go, focus on your professional life, and move on. We don't have the information to give any better options; you do. If you share more (honestly), we can advise more, but if this is what you feel safe with, then just take the safe approach, stick it out and/or move on.
I am happy to provide some more detail. Is there something specific I can provide?
This sentence is kind of interesting. So, you were 'just making small talk', until they told you they had a boy/girlfriend, and then, you just ... stopped 'making smalltalk'? :-P
Because since he now knows she has boyfriend, therefore he is not hitting, therefore logically she is unlikely to interpret further conversation as hitting. Incidentally, that is remarkably similar to the way people on spectrum "logically" interpret humans - have hard time imagine other person perspective (here he knows he is not hitting therefore she knows too) - and get into trouble despite really not having bad intentions.
Were you told this AFTER these apparently unfounded accusations?
This is the correct behaviour in face of any kind of accusation between employees. This protects the company in face of justice, and gives some insurance that the truth comes out. Relying on an independent company gives some garantee (not full) that the investigation is impartial.
While this is not perfect, it is the most optimal and fair reaction in such situations.
Regarding your situation, it is understandable that it is worrying because you just discovered that you are very exposed. From what you say, it appears that what you considered small talk where questions on private activities. A normal person would simply skip it or make you understand that this is not your business. But some people can't handle that because they are socially disfunctional.
I would suggest that you keep a low profile until the end of your internship. The human resource did simple put distance between you two. So there is nothing dramatic.
Regarding the small talk, I would suggest that, in the future, you try avoiding asking questions. It is better to let the other person drive the talk so that you can easily deduce what is ok to talk about. Stay in the ok subject domain. Eventually you may share some of your private info but be attentive to the other person reaction. If he/she switch subject, it means private life discussions are to be avoided. Even that could already be enough to make socially disfunctional people inconfortable.
The fundamental rationale is just a matter of respect. Some people don't like to share private matters at work. People complaining at HR are really disfunctional because they can't handle everyday situations themselves. These kind of people are toxic in their way and potential source of problems for the company. That person who complained about your behavior has raised a red flag about herself. It's for your own safety that I suggested how to avoid being confronted to such situations again. For now buck down and let the wave pass. Good luck for your future.
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 that person. Maybe the person signaled that she is not interested, but you did not get the clues.
In my experience, level of directness required when talking with people who have less social skills is level that would be rude when talking with anyone else. Some people have hard time to overcome that. I have been accused of being rude by third party when I talked to my college like that - third party did not knew the guy.
That is not to excuse going to hr instead of directly talking to you, nor excuse that hr left you confused, but to emphasis that you want to ask for feedback someone who will speak frankly to you - and will keep the discussion private.
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.
This kind of torture may be more frequent in europe than USA because it is more difficult to let go an employee due to employee protections. Some manager then use these techniques to push employee to resign. Otherwise, it's just psychpaths who do these things.
France Telcom was a french public company that was privatized. The new management did put a lot of pressure on employe to get rid of some of them. They, for instance, moved them alone in an office in a distance place without any furniture, missions, no phone, no internet, nothing. There were many suicide in that company in that period which is not long ago.
My broder is not in such company. He is in a good company handling employees with respect so as he does.
Thank you for the answer.
They don't know because you're mistranslating from the French -- not all terms are subject to literal translation simply because they can be translated literally.
The proper translation for "harcèlement moral" in US/UK English is "workplace bullying". No English-speaking country (with English as a native tongue) commonly uses the term "moral harassment".