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Mini Article on
Sexual Harassment from
"A-Womans-Life.com"
My Almost Sexual
Harassment Case by Tami Marple
Back in the 80's, while living in Southern California, I worked for a
large Japanese company that was part of a huge family of businesses. I
would tell you the name of the company, but I don't want to have to
worry about the legalities. I worked there for over four years until my
employment took a turn and not for the better. After those first four
years, I started working for a gentleman, and I use that term loosely;
let's say his name is Barry.
Barry had a horrible reputation at the office. I think everyone was
tired of his lack of respect for them, his fellow co-workers and
employees, especially the women. He had made it no secret that he had
dated several and had one night stands with a few of the girls that
worked in our office.
Barry was the kind of person who always had to be the life of the
company parties. He was one of those who always seemed to drink too much
and then get wild and crazy. No one I worked with would have been
surprised to see him dancing on a table with a lampshade on his head. He
never had a hangover at work the next day and still seemed to have the
energy of the Energizer bunny.
I had spent 4 years working on my career at this company and had made a
name for myself. I was the first one in California to be placed in this
particular position. I was a liaison for the company and the resellers
of our products. I was there to relieve the salesmen of having to deal
with problems so they could concentrate on selling. It took the first
year just to develop all my accounts and to adapt myself to the
challenges we would face on a daily basis.
I spent most of my time working out in the field covering the SouthWest
territory and only visited the office every other week or as needed.
That first year included working on weekends, as well as a full load
during the workweek, all to get the accounts up to par and to get me
caught up in a neglected territory. My friends would get angry with me
because I would work when they came to visit, but I was very anxious to
prove myself and had planned to move up in the company as soon as I
could. Meanwhile, I was well respected in the workplace and in the
field. I worked well with my fellow employees and my customers as well.
My problems started the day Barry became my manager. The announcement of
his promotion came while we were on a business trip along with the rest
of sales, marketing and management. We were at our company's National
Sales Meeting in Hawaii. While we were there he decided that I should
sleep with him right off the bat. I rejected him and the next thing I
knew, it was the beginning of the end.
I had worked with this man for 4 years as a peer and knew him fairly
well. I also knew his girlfriend very well. She happened to work for one
of the resellers I visited on a regular basis. She was a lovely girl and
I admired her very much, except her taste in men. I knew Barry had
cheated on her several times with different girls in the office and I am
sure several out of the office. I was not one of those girls, but he
wanted to add me as another notch on his bedpost. She didn't trust him
and rightly so. She asked me when we returned from Hawaii whether he and
I had slept together. I told her, of course not, and at that point we
became allies. She knew that I could be trusted and she also knew that
he could not.
Now that Barry was my manager he became a slave driver to me and his
five other employees. He and I worked in the USA headquarters office in
Southern California. The other people who worked for him were spread
throughout the country. Regardless of where we were located, he wanted
all of us to report into our home offices every morning and at the end
of the day. Working in cities across the country such as Los Angeles,
San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Dallas and Atlanta made this
almost impossible. Some of us would have to drive an hour or two to get
to our home offices, because we lived in the middle of our territories
not close to our offices. Then we would drive 30 minutes up to 2 hours
back into the field to do our jobs. Then at the end of the day report
back into the office. All this while doing a whole day's worth of work.
Late in the day, usually around 5-6pm PST he would call around the
country to check in with his employees to make sure they were all still
working, not taking into consideration that some of these people were 3
hours ahead of him in time. Not only did he want us to work after hours
and be on call, but he also wanted us to work on weekends. He would take
the liberty of scheduling meetings for us on Saturdays.
All six of us were unhappy working for Barry. Even our secretary was
having problems with him. He would always want to look down her top and
he let her know that. A couple of the other girls in the office had the
same feeling of harassment. We all wanted to do something to make him
stop what he was inflicting on each of us. His expectations became
totally unreasonable whether they were work-related or not. After all,
he expected 200 percent, not 150, but 200 and this comment came straight
from him.
My life was becoming more and more miserable as each day progressed. I
began losing sleep, waking up in the middle of the night crying. I loved
my job, but knew that I wasn't going to make it much longer if I
continued to work this way. He had written me up for grumbling at my
desk and he didn't think I did a good enough job of saying hello to him
in the morning.
Now we are getting to the really bad part. After working for Barry about
three months, everyone in the sales and marketing departments were again
at a National Sales Meeting, this time in Phoenix, Arizona. The first
night we were all there, there was a huge reception dinner. I sat with
some of my friends who worked on the opposite coast from me. We had a
little wine and great conversation, which consisted of a little talk
about spouses and children, then a lot of talk about work and everyone
sharing experiences that had happened since the last National Sales
Meeting. The night was late and we were politely removed from the hotel
conference room since it was closing time for them.
After dinner several people including myself decided to visit the
swimming pools. This particular hotel had the most amazing pools that
were all connected to each other in one way or another. Some were
through little tunnels and others by simple walls that you could swim
over. We all went up to our rooms and changed into our swimsuits and had
agreed to meet at the pools. I was one of the last ones down.
I was in my swimsuit carrying my towel and a glass of wine, which I know
was a no no. As I came close to the Jacuzzi, which you had to pass to
get to the pools, someone attacked me from behind. I didn't know who it
was at first, then I discovered it was my manager, the jerk. He actually
picked me up over his head and threw me into the Jacuzzi, which had
several employees in it at that time. Needless to say, the wine glass
broke in the Jacuzzi and I landed on the bottom hitting my ribs on
the side of the seat going down. When I came up everyone had their
mouths hanging open in disbelief and horror as they watched what was
about to happen next. After coming up gasping for air I was then
snatched by my manager who held me from behind with his back up against
the rim of the Jacuzzi. He then tried to rip my bathing suit top off
saying everyone wanted to see my boobs. No one came to my rescue. I
assumed it was because they were all afraid of cutting themselves on the
broken glass or getting fired by a manager. I also think the guys were a
bunch of woosies. I did escape and without
being exposed.
I was in shock over what had just happened. I don't even remember
jumping out of the Jacuzzi and running over to the pool where my friends
were. Next thing I knew I was by myself hanging onto the side of one of
the corners in one of the pools. I didn't talk to anyone and almost
immediately decided to go back to my room and have a good sob. Luckily,
I was able to sleep a bit that night.
The next morning I looked like hell. Although I had gotten some sleep
the night before, it sure wasn't very peaceful and I was in pain from
hitting the side of the Jacuzzi with my ribs. Anyway, I went over to
where everyone was eating breakfast and made sure that my manager, the
beast, wasn't there. He wasn't, so I went in and talked to some of the
people who were at the Jacuzzi the night before and had seen what had
happened. I had decided to pursue the matter and not let Barry get away
with harassing me the way he had. Only problem was that no one wanted to
back me up and take a chance at losing their job. They all had made a
pact not to tell. This was back in the 80's when people didn't talk
about harassment and abuse like they do now.
I continued on with the sales meeting as though nothing had happened,
because I wasn't ready to lose my job either. Then as if it were magic
my manager came up to me and apologized. I accepted and we both went on
about our business. The only thing I did differently was to keep a large
distance from Barry.
When we returned back to the office I decided to do something about the
way I was treated at the National Sales Meeting. I went to the manager
of the HR department. He listened to my story. I was obviously upset, so
he proceeded to ask me what I had done to make Barry want to do what he
did. I guess I am dating myself, since all this happened before sexual
harassment came out of the closet and became such a nationwide public
problem. So the HR manager was able to say to me that it must have been
my fault and not have to worry about repercussions from the company. The
woman I wanted to approach next about the incident, who worked below the
HR manager, was out of the office on a business trip and I had to wait a
week for her to return. When she did I made it very well known that I
wanted to speak with her. When I did finally see her and told her my
story, she said there was nothing she could do. Now possibly there was
something she could have done, but she had not been able to tell me
about it.
Now all this information was spreading through the work campus like a
wild fire and of course made its way to my manager. It was then that my
life became a living hell, much worse than it had been before. Barry
would call me out in the field to check on me and he would embarrass me
in front of my peers. He made arrangements to travel with me out in my
own territory, which would have been fine, but he told a handful of
people he had plans to drive me out of the company. He was ready to find
any and all reasons to write me up; even if it was something he had to
create (no witnesses).
I had had it. I gave a one-day notice and at the end of that day I left.
I spent the next day in tears, extremely depressed since I had just quit
the best job I had ever had, excluding the experience with my manager.
While I was sobbing, the HR department called to let me know I needed to
come back into the office to sign paperwork, turn a few things in and
pick up my last check. I agreed to go in with one condition that Barry
was not allowed to come near me. They said no problem.
A day later I went into the office to do the paperwork and pick up my
last check. It was nice and quiet at first, then the people started
walking by the office I was in. It was a manager's office so it was
mostly windows that looky loos could peer into. Then I noticed Barry was
hanging out just close enough to see me and watch what was going on. You
could tell he was using a lot of constraint not coming to the office
where I was. And you could see the wheels churning in his head that he
might be in real trouble this time. Fortunately, I wasn't there long and
when I was finished I practically ran out of the building.
After I left the company, I met with my replacement in a restaurant.
There was no way I was going to meet with him at the office. Anyway, he
was a wealth of information. I found out that Barry was the company drug
dealer. And he had managed to get one of the sales women fired after he
stole some of her undergarments from her room at a National Sales
Meeting and then hung them outside of the hotel for all to see. What a
jerk!
Barry eventually got fired about a year after I had left. It was
discovered that he was stealing from the company. He would authorize
products to be returned that were in good condition and then he would
resell them instead of having them destroyed as the law required.
After all this happened I ran into a good friend and confidante, who
happened to be a member of management and had worked with Barry. While I
was talking with him he mentioned the he was very surprised that I
hadn't sued the company after all I had been through. I told him I
didn't want to ruin my name in the industry and not be able to find work
again. Remember this was back in the days when women were the cause of
harassment cases. Instead of the man being put on trial, it was the
woman who went through the mill. Not that it's much better now, but
there has been some progress.
In the next decade, the 90s after my incident, one of the sister
companies of the one I worked for was sued by EEOC on behalf of several
women on a sexual harassment case that helped open the doors to women's
rights. The lawsuit was a victory, not just for the women who sued (to
the tune of $34 million), but also for all women. There were over 350
women at the plant in IL who received compensation under this lawsuit.
And a lot of men were exposed for the animals they can be. More info can
be found on www.courttv.com under
the archive section.
So why did this happen to me? Was it time for me to leave the company
and this was nature's way of pointing that out to me? Why did this
happen to all those other women? Were they put on this earth to prove a
point and open up more rights for women? Was I meant to become a
trendsetter in sexual harassment cases like all these other women, but I
chickened out? Was my life story meant to be out there for the entire
world to see (how humiliating)? Was this supposed to be a growing
experience for all of us? Did we all need to be toughened up? I wish I
could have made a difference with my experience. I am still upset with
myself for not pursuing justice for this incidence. But I sure am glad
the other women stood their ground and showed the public that it is not
OK to harass anyone.
A thought: Is it true what they say about men acting one way at work and
the opposite at home? Such as the man who has very domineering women in
his personal life, say his wife, mother, daughter, grandmother, teachers
etc. So he overcompensates at work by being very dominant with the women
in the office? Could he possibly be suffering from such low
self-confidence and self esteem that this was his only way to feel
powerful and in control?
Interesting Facts About Sexual Harassment
Statistics from the EEOC not including the FEPA:
Sexual harassment cases from 1980 to 1989 brought to the EEOC were
5,849. And from 1990 to 1999 were 37,725.
Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII applies to employers with
15 or more employees, including state and local governments. It also
applies to employment agencies and to labor organizations, as well as to
the federal government.
Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal
or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment
when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly
affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an
individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or
offensive work environment.
Sexual harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances, including but
not limited to the following:
=> the victim as well as the harasser may be a woman or a man.
The victim does not have to be of the opposite sex.
=> the harasser can be the victim's supervisor, an agent of the
employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee
=> the victim does not have to be the person harassed but could
be anyone affected by the offensive conduct.
=> Unlawful sexual harassment may occur without economic injury
to or discharge of the victim.
=> the harasser's conduct must be unwelcome.
It is helpful for the victim to directly inform the harasser that the
conduct is unwelcome and must stop. The victim should use any employer
complaint mechanism or grievance system available.
When investigating allegations of sexual harassment, EEOC looks at the
whole record: the circumstances, such as the nature of the sexual
advances, and the context in which the alleged incidents occurred. A
determination on the allegations is made from the facts on a
case-by-case basis.
Prevention is the best tool to eliminate sexual harassment in the
workplace. Employers are encouraged to take steps necessary to prevent
sexual harassment from occurring. They should clearly communicate to
employees that sexual harassment would not be tolerated. They can do so
by establishing an effective complaint or grievance process and taking
immediate and appropriate action when an employee complains.
It is also unlawful to retaliate against an individual for opposing
employment practices that discriminate based on sex or for filing a
discrimination charge, testifying, or participating in any way in an
investigation, proceeding, or litigation under Title VII.
From the EEOC 2-12-05
Ms Independent, Tami Marple
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