Sexual Harassment off the clockI'm a single guy, no girlfriend, and I work at a place where sometimes I work closely with other single women. This can include taking trips out of town for weeks staying at hotels and so on. Can one get away with sexual harassment if: 1. The lunch hour, when you're out with your lady co-workers during your lunch hour 2. You are sent off to a seminar that lasts say appx 2 weeks, yep, there's a weekend between those 2 weeks for "off the clock" fun, sometimes happy hour in the hotels, where one can get pretty "Casual" with their words. 3. Off the clock, but you all go out to dinner together after work Do you still have to watch what you say in these cases?
As long as you are on the company' s dime consider yourself on the company' s time. Yes, you can still get in trouble for this. If you do get in trouble, you will be fired and have a huge problem to try and explain. What are you going to say? I knew it was dumb and risky but I thought dumb and risky are different at 5:03pm than they are at 4:59pm? ' Sexual harassment' is wrong be it during or outside work hours. Harassment indicates that the receiver does not want it. Especially wrong when a manager or supervisor abuses their position of power. When you mean sexual affairs based on mutual consent and with equal postions of power/status, when those occur during work hours / business trips it poses a risk for both (or more) people involved. I agree with Valdean that "As long as you are on the company' s dime consider yourself on the company' s time." What does it matter if the women are single or married? Sounds like you don' t respect women at all, but your respect husbands enough to leave their wives alone. Um...Mair...what in the world gave you the idea I had no respect for women?? And of course I respect marriage. I was just wondering if one could get away with flirting off the clock. At my workplace, there' s some guys that had made some pretty off-color remarks to women, but apparently these ladies are comfortable with him enough not to take issue with it, plus he' s worked there pretty long. It' s pretty much a back and forth thing, so it seems alot of people can get away with it. And sometimes these remarks are made ON the clock. it seems you don' t understand what the word "harassment" means. I don' t understand why you' d want to "get away with" harassing anybody, on the job or off the job. Now, having an affair with a co-worker is a whole different subject. Whenever you are on company business, you need to abide by their rules. The timeclock does not apply when you' re traveling - you' re on business the whole time. Even if no one else acts like it, you need to be careful of what you say and do. It might sound really boring, but it' s not a bad thing to be thought of as a professional and a gentleman, especially if you want to have a career with that company. Maybe those women only react politely to this guy' s remarks. As far as he does this once or twice and is respectful and stops when there is no mutuality (politeness is not the same as consent), no big deal. When a woman receives a respectful compliment thatis meant for her and not because she happens to be female, that' sfine. But when the guy uses sexist remarks indiscriminately, in front of male co-workers and he repeatedly does that, it is very annoying and discomforting. How to handle that politely in the work place where women have to work with the guy and can' t remove themselves from him or his remarks. What they would actually want to do in a free setting is tell him "Not interested man, try somewhere else" and walk away. | |
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