The Sultan of WTF Did He Just Say?! generally focuses his attention on one woman in the office. Let's call her Sprite.
Sprite is an undoubtable cutie. Brunette, runner, probably a size six, if not smaller. I'm not a very good judge of thin people's sizes. I would've guessed that Petal, for instance, was a size eight or so and, to my surprise, she occasionally wears size 14 jeans. Of course, she also lets everyone within earshot know that THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY FALLING DOWN OMG DID I MENTION THESE ARE A 14?!? CAN YOU *IMAGINE* SOMEONE WEARING PANTS THAT ARE SO, SO LARGE?? DID I MENTION THEY ARE JUST SPILLING OFF MY BODY? DID I?!?!?
Ahem. I'm just saying I've heard that speech one too many times.
Anyway, Sprite is thin without being sickly looking. She wears the occasional dress, but mostly average leggings and shirts, flowy shirts, jeans, cute flats. Shows just enough cleavage to make a gal a little warm. I sat across from her for about a month and my God, I'm surprised I turned in any articles at all.
Back to Prince Icky.
Imagine someone in training to become creepy as shit, just like Herman Cain's slow, nightmare-inducing "smile" at the end of that video. (I watched that ad in the morning before I'd even gotten out of bed to go to work and I experienced that maximum level of creepy IN THE DARK. Dude. It was like waking up to find Stephen King has been sitting at the edge of your bed all night, watching you sleep while he rubs a loaded gun against his naughty bits.)
I'll use something Jerry said to me because I
Last week, I was wearing something I used to wear to Verbose & Co. Pinstripe blouse, peekaboo tank underneath, black slacks, flats. More dressy than Kata requires but it doesn't kill a gal to look nicer than necessary every once in a while.
(I was also out of clean laundry.)
I was sitting in the break room and the Duke of OMG NO came in and started helping himself to the free lunch that Kata had provided. That's a nice bonus of working there. You can actually forget your lunch and three out of five times luck into some form of free food. It might be an apple or it might be Qdoba and all the fixins. You never know.
He's spooning something onto a plate and he says, "You look nice. As always."
Given that he has never complimented my outfit before, because I have been suspicious of boys since the third grade, and because he is the Despot of Duuuuuude, I snarked, "What do you want?" with a raised eyebrow and half-smile and went back to reading my magazine, glancing over my glasses for a response.
He smiled and I was soon happy that there were witnesses.
As he continues getting food, he said, "I want one night..."
"Stop." Not especially forceful but, I felt, said with enough WTF that he would get the hint.
Spoiler: Nope!
"Just to feel your breath in my..."
*strangled sound of disapproval and shut it now GROOOOSSSS that I cannot figure out how to spell*
He smiles. He walks away. Several people hear him say these icky, icky things but I think we've become desensitized to it because we certainly didn't huddle and have a Lifetime TV moment in which I got lots of hugs and therapy. We all shuffled back to our desks and went back to work. That happened last week and I'd still kind of like to shower off the feeling of uggghghuuhhhhh.
Whenever he compliments a woman -- and it's often -- it has this overlay of skeeze. I notice that at least one woman will say thanks without smiling, her voice curt as she walks away. So she knows.
The biggest problem, besides the fact that Jerry is so clearly violating company policy, is that his words appear, on paper, to be innocuous:
You look so nice today, Sprite. But you always look nice. You really, you know, dress with care and class. I like that blouse.
He may be the most brilliant man on Earth because what he says would read exactly like a compliment if, say, he were turned in for sexual harassment and there were transcripts of the proceedings.
*cough*
The delivery and tone make it into the kind of thing that many of us have chatted about on Skype. The problem is that the general reaction of everyone in the office is just Oh... that's Jerry. Shrug. Boys will be boys. Puppy dog tails and all that. Have you met your quota yet?
Even I haven't discussed what he said to me with anyone besides my peers because I'm not sure I know where I want this to go.
I want him to stop. For my sake, for Sprite's sake, for the sake of the other men in the office who might get the idea to start acting in kind, for the sake of women who need to be able to come to work and not see a coworker and shudder -- for all those reasons and more, I want to say something. I really want to say something now because Jerry is one of the younger people at the company and there is time to modify his behavior. He clearly thinks it's okay -- or doesn't give a fuck -- and I can only imagine what he'll be like in 20 and 40 years, perhaps as a high-level manager with several subordinates, at least one of whom who will not have a problem suing him for all he's worth.
I don't know if this means he would get written up. I don't want him to get fired. I don't want to have to be deposed or even say that it's me because, yes, I fear retribution -- as a woman, a fat woman, a gay woman, and as a whistle blower in general. Ugggh. Things at Kata can be tense enough without having to deal with some kind of backlash. I want Jerry to go back through the company's sexual harassment prevention PowerPoint (SRSLY) and to understand what the examples and quizzes were about, not use them as training manuals.
What would you do?
4 new best friend(s)!:
I know what I would do....
I'd say 'either shut the fuck up or I'm going to kick you in the balls.'
Document. Like you're doing here. What he said initially is fine, but the rest is weird and gross.
When creeps like Jerry are allowed to behave the way they do, they will continue the behavior, thinking it is perfectly acceptable. Flat out tell him next time that his comments are considered sexual harrassment, and that you will not tolerate that kind of behavior. It isn't cute, it isn't funny, it isn't appealing or flattering. It is flat out gross. Seriously. GROSS!
Definitely document... also say something about it, like - "the way you say that sounds very inappropriate when addressed to co-workers." Because it's not the specific words, but the tone. And say it in front Sprite specifically.
And if he asks why, say "your tone of voice seems like you're making an innuendo, and that would the wrong sort of thing to imply to co-workers."
And if you say it not as "you are being a sexist creep" but as "what you are saying *sounds inappropriate* because your tone sounds like an innuendo"
He can't say much in response to that; he can claim he didn't mean it that way, but you can come back with "But it sounds that way, so try to phrase it differently, or make sure what you couldn't be misconstrued. I know that I'm not the only one wondering what you mean sometimes."
Post a Comment