I work as a department manager at a store for a rather large corporation. Not long after being promoted, two of my employees came to me complaining about another employee sharing explicit details about his sexual encounters. He’s even showed them photos of his hickeys.
When we talked to HR, they were hesitant to move forward with any disciplinary measures because the man is Latino and Homosexual, and they want to avoid any allegations of racism or homophobia. “As he is a minority in two different ways, we have to move forward carefully.”
I was so shocked, but there wasn’t much we could do. Essentially corporate told us to issue him a verbal warning. He vehemently denied the allegations, and went on an explosive tirade about how homophobic and immature all of these girls are, how he sees them flirting with all the straight guys, but they don’t get along with him, so “what does that tell you?” (Obviously we aren’t allowed to disclose who submitted the complaint, but one of them was a Lesbian, so I had a hard time swallowing his homophobia pill).
After we spoke with him, he texted one of the two young women who came forward and told her to delete his number and never speak to him again. We had to issue him another verbal warning because this breaks our companies Anti-Retaliation policy. (Again, corporate wouldn’t let us write him up.)
Then things went quiet for a while. Last week the woman (she’s 18 btw, and he’s almost 40) who initially submitted a complaint came to me and said the behavior hasn’t stopped, that he continues to share explicit sexual information, telling her about three ways he is having, and times when he’s recorded himself having sex.
We called corporate again. This time we read aloud every single complaint we’ve ever received about him (there were about ten, from coworkers and customers). Corporate still wouldn’t let us fire him. They told us we could write him up, and due to the nature of the situation, we could issue a Final Warning (which only lasts 60 days, mind you), and if the problem persists, he will be fired.
This time he admitted to the wrongdoing. Again, he became aggressive, cussed out my boss and I, saying he’s been doing so well, but the one time he “makes a mistake,” he gets punished for it. I drove home the point that this isn’t a “mistake,” but is a form of sexual harassment, and it is inexcusable. He walked out of the room before we dismissed him and then sent my boss a series of texts about how much he hates working here.
I’m baffled that corporate would be okay with allowing someone like this to continue to work with us. Just goes to show, despite all the anti-harassment training we have to go through, Corporate really just cares more about protecting their own skin rather than looking out for their employees.