Hello all,
Sorry for my first diary to be an ask for help, but I have a situation at my workplace and I simply don’t know what to do and how far to push things.
One of the senior staff has a long history of telling sexual jokes. From almost the first day I started working there (I’ve been there almost 6 years). For awhile, the jokes stopped, because this individual got mad at me over something stupid, but recently (like 3 months ago), he popped off with another sick, sexual joke.
At first, I didn’t report it because I was new and he was senior staff. As I got more time at the company, I realized that our HR director has a history of going very easy on this person, for reasons no one understands (I’m not the only one to notice that he gets treated with kid gloves.
Recently, I decided to report him, and it went the way one might expect. They are going to give him the lightest slap on the wrist and that’s it.
They don’t seem to care that they have a person with a history of offending people in there and they refuse to do any investigation to turn up other incidents.
My own supervisor, who I thought better of until today, basically told me I should have just told him to stop (not knowing if he’d take it out on me isn’t a consideration for him, apparently). He also admitted that this same individual has made off-color remarks to him, which means I’m not the only one, but my supervisor essentially told me to get a thicker skin and stop being “too sensitive.”
My question is because I didn’t keep exact records of dates/times/what was said, am I screwed? It seems if I can point to a number of events over a long period of time, that should be enough. I know it would be better to have those details, and if it ever happens again (doubtful this will happen, because I’m on his “not nice” list again for reporting him for not going his job), I’ll keep better records.
But to me, it seems like that shouldn’t stop the company from wanting to excise an individual that says crap like this to everyone he thinks he can get away with it to. Worst part is I told them I’d be happy with a written reprimand in his record, but that was still a bridge too far.
Reading between the lines, they seem to think that hiring someone to fill his position would be a lot of trouble (and would likely cost more than they are paying him now, he’s a VERY-long-term employee). So that appears to be the major motivation in looking the other way.
I didn’t have a lot of faith in corporate America, this blew what little faith I had out of the water, so to speak.
Am I being too sensitive? Or should they take this person’s history of crude sexual remarks in the workplace more seriously?
I’m open to either interpretation, so if you’ve gotten this far, I would appreciate any advice anyone cares to give.
I have to go make dinner, and do other things, so I may not be able to check on this until much later, or even possibly tomorrow at this time (this is the only time of day I have to myself).
Thanks.