Firing seems unjustified for flirting. I hope you get sued and beat up should you go that route
Firing seems unjustified for flirting. I hope you get sued and beat up should you go that route
In reality, where it would behoove you to join us for your own sake, no legal argument that the fact that the conversation happened off of company chat and time means it doesn't affect work would be taken seriously.
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Ideally, yes. Why? Because he is a loose cannon and a liability to her company that her company needed to be aware of. Ideally she would advise her company of this liability.
You keep citing general dictionary definitions, which aren't relevant. What matters is the legal definition. Which makes no such requirement for sexual harassment.
Still not "mind reading". And yes; those examples are comparable, as they are examples of attitude. You not recognizing that your actions are illegal is not a legal defense.So, mind reading it is... Because, no two persons will agree with what a certain social cue will mean, nor is everyone skilled in the arts of social skills. Everyone will interpret social cues differently, and everyone will have different social cues. It is nothing like "stealing" or "hitting someone" quite frankly, those are horrible examples and don't even come close. You do not accidentally hit someone in the face by offending them and stealing something by accident because you talked to someone doesn't happen either. "Social cues" are a way to vague concept specially if you going to have "feelings" as a measuring point.
It isn't a subjective standard. You keep pretending that it is, but it isn't.
The who is important here not what he did. He could go do that with any random non coworker, get turned down and move on with his shit but he decided (as a new hire, mind you) that it would be a genius idea to ask this coworker to speak after work hours (she agrees but only if its in a work context, as friends) and he takes that as an invitation to hit on her or "flirt" as some of you want to call it. At the very least he could have had some subtlety to his approach and it probably wouldn't have been an issue but instead we get "You're a milf" which is about as forward as you can get.
Hell if it works for the guy good for him but he should have had the foresight to know that would have been a very very bad idea.
Last edited by Dug; 2016-05-11 at 04:50 PM.
No way you're saying that if someone agrees with the thing you said, than its a non-issue? Duh?
MY point is that you probably shouldn't go around telling random women that they are "MILFS", and you'll never have to worry about this.
Do people not understand things like body language? Knowing your audience when you go to say things goes a LONG way.
Once again, this dude can and should be fired for gross unprofessionalism.
Does this open them up to liability? Fuck anything these days can be brought to court. However the facts of this case dictate that a civil suit brought by the woman would be laughed out of court.
Right, definitions of words are not important, that is just a crazy statement. In the law they will make whole stories about something like the "definition" you linked earlier, but the still use the common definition of words as they are. Just because they have to explain everything to the letter doesnt make thing magically mean different things.
Yes, it is mind reading, and no, those are not comparable one bit. They are not examples of attitude, as the one thing is measured by "feelings" and not attitude, nor is saying that you didn't know that you could not steal or hit someone is rather stupid. The sole reason for the illegality of the man's actions is what the woman "feels", if it was another guy that she did fancy then it would not have been harassment.
It's not mind reading. "sure as friends in work context" is a clear statement that I don't want you hitting on me or flirting with me. It's just put more nicely than flat out saying "I know what you're doing and I'm going to stop you right now and say theres no way in hell".
Right, come join our side, i can't give you any reason for it, but come join us! We are better! /s
Really, its obvious that not everyone will react the same on stimuli, just like the world is not black and white, right? If you let something trivial like that affect your work then you won't be very productive, you will spend most of the day being offended instead of working.
Given the facts it seems the woman came to management because she didnt want any problems on the team ie perverts who refer to coworkers as "MILFS."
She was alerting them to his gross unprofessionalism, not because she felt offended or harassed.
That's not cryptic at all, what the hell? "Sure as friends in work context". How is that cryptic and a possible invitation to hit on her? For all you know she only agreed to talk to him outside of work because he's a new hire, she's an existing employee and maybe she thinks he had questions. But she realized real quick what he was really getting at, tried to nip it but he continued after "sure as friends in work context" to go on to call her a milf.
But even then it's not the issue that he hit on her, cause that isn't the problem. It's how he went about doing it in such an unprofessional and sleazy way that prompted her to inform HR that this new hire may be a problem in the future.
From my understanding, an employee hitting on another is not illegal or punishable, but an employee hitting on someone after they said no severely is.
I wouldn't go with the fire fire without context, but comments like milf depending on context, idk.