Hi all,
I recently was hired as the office manager of a small business. To give you perspective on how small, I'm the only person in the “office” and I work from home doing logistics, customer service, software organization, scheduling, etc. Given the nature of the job, I haven't met practically anyone besides the owner and one other worker. I was hired just over a week ago, so I'm very new to the company.
Here's where the problem comes in. Recently, an employee who works in the field sent a text to the professional work chat where scheduling and corrections and anything like that is brought to the attention of the whole team. The text said “Hey [tiredexpression] since you are [owner's] secretary (I am not, I'm the office manager) can you see when he has time to give me a blow job”
I was absolutely taken aback by such a hugely inappropriate and disgusting, out of the blue text from someone I've never met being directed at me. I texted the owner straight away about how I'm not going to dignify that kind of comment with a response and told the owner that this small business won't expand healthily if that's how I'm treated and others will be. The owner said they'd address it and I received a quick reply in the group text again that they apologize and it won't happen again.
I'm still upset by it for several reasons and need advice on what to do. Since there's no HR department, I think that makes me the defacto one until things get bigger. I have studied HR courses in college, so I have some theory to fall back onto, but I didn't think I'd have to do anything like this so soon. I want to make a meeting with the owner and discuss it further, but I don't know the right path to go. All I know is, I refused to work the rest of my shift because I was so unexpectedly affected by this (my sexual orientation being what it is also means I'm easily distressed by this kind of language directed at me, especially in a professional environment).
Any advice would be welcome on what to do. I really hate modern work culture.