MY OWN EXPERIENCE WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT

The legal definition of sexual harassment tends to be vague, and can define almost any sexual behavior in the workplace as sexual harassment if it is unwanted or uninvited by the person who feels he or she has been sexually harassed. No doubt individuals need protection from unwanted sexual advances at work that could interfere with their work performance or career futures, as well as add stress and fear to their employment life. Those who might actually benefit from offering sexual favors to employers in exchange for unearned promotions and other favors in return, also create unfair conditions in the work environment for those who are not willing to do so. I won't attempt to deal with the legal implications of sexual harassment here, but will deal with my one and only experience of what actually felt like sexual harassment to me.

From a personal perspective, any man coming on to me, or making sexual advances towards me does not constitute sexual harassment, though the same behavior may well be sexual harassment from a legal point of view. As a twenty-five year old female, I moved to South Bend, Indiana, from Athens, Georgia, mostly out of curiosity to see what living further north would entail. I became sexually involved with my sales manager there who was single, but living with a woman, and a good bit older than I was at the time. While a stormy relationship followed that caused me a great deal of emotional pain, it was not sexual harassment in the sense that my employment was not threatened by the affair, nor was I harassed into becoming involved through promises of advancement or threats of termination. It was simply another story of a young woman a long way from home, and an older man. I thought I was in love with the guy, while I'm sure he felt merely sexual attraction for me, and perhaps some fondness with an added ego boost.

Joe, my boss and lover, was a very popular manager, a dynamite salesman, and a successful supervisor in spite of being something of a good timing Charlie. He received a promotion and transfer to Michigan, thus ending the affair with me as well as many comfortable work relationships with others of his sales force. The man who took his place was not charismatic, nor popular, and he also did not measure up as a salesman to my original boss. He appeared to resent my former boss, and competed with him on every level with a seeming air of anger and arrogance.

Even had I been attracted to this person, after the pain of my first encounter and of keeping it a secret, it is doubtful I would have made the same mistake again. I was not attracted to this person; however, so involvement with him was not even a temptation for me. Pretty soon after he became our sales manager he began treating me as someone he was dating, rather than someone who worked for him.

I never spent time with this guy outside of the required work situation, still he insisted on holding our supervision sessions in bars, and would purchase me one drink after the other expecting me to drink them. As is true today, I do not drink with men I do not trust, and would leave the drinks sitting on the table. I just ignored his requests that I "drink up," and though I was somewhat of a hard partier in my personal life during those days, I never had over one drink with him. I never told him of my affair with my former boss, and even if he had known about it, being attracted to one man does not automatically mean a woman is going to desire the next man who holds the same position. I had actually looked forward to working without the emotional drama my former affair had caused, and had no intentions of dealing with the same again, especially for someone I did not even like.

In my mind, the actual sexual harassment end of it did not begin until after I refused to kiss the guy following one of those supervision sessions held in a bar. I did not expect anything to change, as I have told many men no in my life, with few resentments or great consequences. In this case the guy began open harassment of me in sales meetings, and it was obvious enough to cause other salesmen to ask me what was going on. He screamed at me about small matters. In one case, he shouted at me repeatedly in front of other staff when I did not turn the pages of a spec sheet booklet fast enough. With prompting from Andy, a male friend and fellow salesman, I shared the situation of the supervision settings held in bars, and the boss's attempt to kiss me after one of them. Andy informed me in no uncertain terms that this was sexual harassment and that I should report it.

The following morning, the same behavior on the part of my boss continued, and intensified. When the humiliation was more than I could stand, I got up to go to the ladies room where I hoped to cry in secret; however, he began to shout after me, asking me just where I thought I was going. I continued walking with him shouting after me, and in a feeble voice managed to say, "I'm leaving."

"You're through," he shouted loud enough to break glass. "You're through!"

"So are you," I said still in a quiet voice, "because I'm reporting you for sexual harassment." You could have heard a pin drop in that room in spite of five other sales reps being present at the conference table. When I glanced at Andy, he winked at me. I never looked back. I filed a sexual harassment suit and won, and my former boss helped me find a lawyer. Later, I went to work for Hoover's biggest competitor, Eureka, and won a number of sales contests for them as well. I still remember my words when I accepted my first sales award for the Eureka Company before hundreds of sales representatives in Chicago. I said, "This one's for Hoover."

Unfortunately, my novel, Undercover, reveals some of the story behind the end of my sales career with Eureka, and the drug problem eventually leading to my Substance Abuse Counseling Career later, but none of that changed the fact that I did manage to get some small amount of revenge satisfaction on the Hoover company, and my second sales manager there for assuming I was stupid enough to need to hand out sexual favors in order to make it to the top in my chosen profession.

Hoover had not terminated the man, and hardly awarded me enough money to notice when I found another sales job before the case was even complete. Still, I went on to bigger and better things, completed a Master's Degree, and continue to have a competitive spirit today. I never looked back, but the memory looms large in my mind. People need to be aware that sexual harassment is real, and involves more than sexual attraction. The H word is harassment, not foreplay, and it is serious business that threatens careers, livelihood and years of career advancement in some cases. Don't do it, and don't allow it.