A sexual innuendo, some social media and a smart phone walk into a bar one night… Sexual Harassment 2.0 comes out the next morning. A cautionary tale…
I was at a conference in the fall and was having dinner with a colleague and she noted the time (9:00
pm) and said… “Well, this is when all the drunken texts will start to roll in.” I thought she was full of crap and I told her so. But then she handed me her iPhone. And BAM! A new text every five minutes would roll in… “Whatcha wearing?” “Need some company tonight?” “You are so hot and funny…” and my personal favorite… “You’re a D-cup, right?” And I’m not doing the seedy texts justice. Note: three of them were from married guys… two of them I know personally. I was floored. I had no idea this sh!t happened. Evidently, not being a part of the beautiful club has its privileges… I’ve never received a drunken text. No one has tried to sext with me. Quite frankly, I’m not sure how I would react. I’m still amazed at how graceful she took the unwanted attention. At that point, I didn’t think about whether or not this “action” was conducted on a company’s phone… but eesh. Think about that mess.
Flash forward…
In February I was hanging out with a dear friend of mine in Dallas. She’s extremely active online and has been for years. We got in to a heated debate about Twitter and her associated profile (bio & pic). She bet me that she could garner 200 followers while we were at dinner… if she made some slight modifications to her profile. By slight changes, I mean – a bio that was flirtatious (not raunchy) and a pic that was equally flirtatious… take that for whatever that means… (shhh your inner deviant). So, after her changes, we went on with the dinner. Lovely conversation… and she garnered almost 500 new followers while we talked politics and religion. That many people “judged” her during that time period and decided to follow her. Really? Are we that shallow? Really?
Flash forward…
Last week, I was in Austin for the SXSW Interactive Conference. A friend of mine called me out for “liking” a comment on one of her Facebook photos. I had no idea what the hell she was taking about… so, she pulled out her iPad and pulled up her photos and someone had made a (kind of) flirtatious comment about a photo of her at the beach and sure enough… I had “liked” said comment. In my defense, I thought I was “liking” the album… which was cool but alas I looked like a total douche. Then she went on to show me about 200 other douche-like comments on her photos. Not cool. Not cool at all actually… and I was especially hurt because I was lumped in with all the other jerkoffs.
Flash forward…
Are you asking the obvious question right now? Who the hell does this guy hang out with? No, not that question… the question you should be asking is… does this routinely happen to people I care about and/or my employees? If you say NO… then do me a favor and test that theory.
I believe this happens more than we care to admit. Unwanted and/or unsolicited sexual messages happen every single day… it happens in your place of work… it happens with your employees… AND on the company’s dime. And, you own it… kind of. IMO, you can only play stupid for so long. I’m just now getting over stupid, so I know. So before you get busted because one of your lame-ass employees harasses another one of your employees… get your 2.0 house in order.
Here are some things to look at…
- Review your harassment policy… especially the sexual harassment part of said policy. Does it cover texts and/or social mediums like Twitter and Facebook?
- Talk with an employment attorney… see if your policy will CYA and/or what needs to change in your policy.
- Once changes are made, communicate to the team and people managers… what is and isn’t appropriate via these “new” mediums. Leave no stone unturned… make sure everyone knows what they can’t get away with.
- Train everyone – yeah, everyone… top to bottom, side to side… no pun intended, or maybe not.
- Document, document, document… all existing employees and add this to your onboarding process.
Lastly, Google – “Sexual harassment 2.0″ – you’ll find some nice online tips for this important discussion. Anyone can make a mistake. One drink too many at a conference… But that’s why we need to talk about it. We need dialogue about this topic and we need to establish expectations and/or social norms via these mediums. Nothing funny about sexual predators and, IMO, social mediums make it “almost” okay to do things people would never think of doing in person. Trust me, six months ago… I would have laughed at this article much less penned it. Not anymore. I’ve seen this behavior with my own eyes. Not cool. Decidedly not cool.
Great piece! I mean, uh..good article. I never really thought about this in the workplace until just now. I guess everything evolves including the forms of workplace harassment. Thanks for sharing and bringing insight to a subject that many may avoid.
There is a reason that, despite actually being female, my avatar is a male online. I have a lot fewer followers, but I will live.
For the longest time there was a picture that someone took of me at a pool party and tagged on flickr in the top 10 images when you searched my name. It was awesome (not) to think that every time I walked into a sales meeting someone in the room might have seen me in a bikini. After a couple of years of nagging I was able to get the acquaintance who took the pictures to delete them but by that point half the business world had seen me mostly naked.
Great article, William. Your examples are right on. The small things are what lead to a full scale sexual harassment investigation by HR.
Keep up the good work.
Jessica
http://www.blogging4jobs.com
We too have been affected by this. One of our sales people (female) was propositioned in front of her boss (our president) at an event and also invited to go back his room and home country of Nigeria. (WOW!) This customer then proceeded to follow up via email, voice mail, and texts.
Naturally, she was totally embarrassed and we’ve had to take some steps to be able to deal with this customer and not offend/expose our employee.
Nice huh?
Just brilliant, William
Very interesting article, William! Why people think they can hide behind their smart phones is beyond me – helloooo! I know who you are. While I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced sexual harassment via a sext and I’m okay with that, I have friends and colleagues who have been – or were they drunk texts? Either way, I am definitely going to think twice before I poke someone on Facebook – yikes!
Is this where I publish my phone number for conferences?
Great article William, I guess awareness that this is going on is the first step, but very hard to work out the next step of solving for it.
Fortunately I’m way to ugly to receive sext myself.
Hey – wait a minute! Aren’t you the guy who talked about my looks in a LinkedIn reference? Why I outta…
I kid. This is great, William, and shocking at the same time. Wow.
Nice piece William!
Really pathetic that this is still happening. Training everyone as a solution just feels so overkill though. Can’t we simply say don’t say (text, tweet) anything to anyone that you wouldn’t say to your grandmother (or grandfather)?
Who among those that commented on this post would be interested in helping to lead a Twitter chat on this subject Wed. night at 8PM Central on TalentNet Live -hashtag TNL?
Let me know. It will be a great topic.
Love the post William.
Great post William! Way too many comments to put them out here. See you in San Diego next week.
(un)funny because it’s so true–I get these solicitations ALL THE DAMN TIME. Seriously, you’d think the world would be tired of me in a bikini by now. Just kidding. Definitely interesting to think about how much crap women must overcome that guys don’t even have to think about. And disturbing, too.
Marc’s right, though: training won’t get us there. It’s a question of maturity… which leaves me… underwhelmed by our chances to fix this anytime soon.
@ Alex – Thanks and peace out.
@ Wellnesssucks – Thanks for the comment… you really made me think about my own digital footprint (specifically photos). Thanks for sharing. In truth, I had a weird sensation come over me after reading your comments… like a challenge or somesuch… to find said bikini photo… you’ll be happy to know that I resisted the temptation to scour the interwebs. Just FYI.
@ Jessica – My examples are G to PG rated… I’m assuming that folks have some R to X rated examples. Don’t share… I’m okay with not knowing certain things. Thanks for the comment btw.
@ Alicia – Wow. Wheels off behavior. Thanks for sharing… now, I’m going to go take a shower.
@ Michael – Thanks Mike… very kind of you to say.
@ Carol – You make me laugh. I’ll never look at the poke thingy on the Facebook the same. Ha.
@ Mike – Maybe all the non-beautiful people need to send each other mercy sexts? Or maybe not.
@ Martin – For the record, you do have amazing blue eyes. Nuff said.
@ Amanda Hite – Thanks Amanda.
@ Marc – I know… seems like common sense should apply.
@ Craig – Thanks Craig.
@ Sarah – Thanks Sarah. It was great hanging out with you in San Diego btw.
@ Jason – You know… I think women get the brunt of this but guys also have to deal with this. #cougarbait
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