delete if not allowed, I just made this account to ask these questions, if you don’t want to read my word salad I’ll have a tldr before my questions. Thanks!
So I probably will leave out some details just because there is so many in this story, but feel free to ask if I missed any necessary info. So like most cities we have our fair share of weirdos & just creeps. I went to highschool with a kid who had some social issues. I mean like, severe social issues. He is a smart dude so I don’t know if he genuinely has problems adjusting socially or if he is just pretending. Some examples of what I’m talking about are, he had to be escorted by a teacher when he was on school premises to ensure he wouldn’t stalk or harass a select few girls in our classes. Another instance I remember he was getting in trouble for trying to figure out how to get on the school roof, which isn’t that crazy but to me it’s just odd behavior… like why would a high schooler have any need to go onto a roof? Especially one that’s locked and off limits to all students? Another time he actually tried to stab a girl in my class with scissors, I heard he did worse but these are the only things I actually witnessed. He also has this like…. Odd stare if that makes sense, like he won’t stop watching you until you’re completely out of sight and it’s very unsettling. But those instances are old and I had almost forgotten until with my luck, he landed a job at the retail store I work at. I actually didn’t even recognize him until he came up to me and starting asking me questions like “did I remember him from high school”. Ever since he noticed I was somebody he went to high school with he started hardcore harassing me and just in general from my perception trying to intimidate me subtly. I thought I was the only one until I talked to my other coworkers, mostly female but a few males and they also had similar stories. When I say harassment I mean things like getting so close that he’s in your personal space, and ignore how uncomfortable he’s making the person he’s standing so close to. And it wasn’t just once or twice, it was an ongoing thing. Every time I’m at work I feel like I have to watch my back. Say you’re standing at a computer printing something, he’s within your arms length breathing down your neck not saying anything. Just standing there breathing on you staring at you from behind. I’m the only one who’s even said anything to him about staying out of my personal space because the other employees are afraid he’s going to have an outburst. The instance when I’ve had to actually tell him to stop getting in my space, he confronted me during work when I was fixing an aisle and asked if “my personal space varies from person to person.” When I explained that not only does personal space vary from person to person, he makes me very uncomfortable to be around he got visibly upset and said “okay I think I understand” and huffed off. The rest of the shift while we were just waiting for our manager to finish counting tills he crouched alone in a corner and was huffy the rest of the time, and visibly mad. Clearly any functioning adult would know person space varies by closeness with another individual, I don’t just let random strangers (coworkers or otherwise) in my arms length space. And not just for personal space purposes, but also he could be spreading covid because my store had run out of masks for a bit while we were waiting for a shipment of them. It’s unsanitary during this point in time, and secondly just rude and intimidating. And it’s not as though me and the coworkers experiencing this haven’t mentioned it to him and other managers. There as an instance of him threatening violence against a male coworker, and we were told he was trying to impress the women at work and we should be nicer to him. We’ve had multiple instances of him yelling about how he wants to die and even throwing a radio at a manager. This sounds like I’m exaggerating but I promise you redditors, I’ve given this person every benefit of the doubt and I’m at my breaking point. He will do things like pace back and forth in an area you’re working in and just stare, and I understand in a workplace you glance at your coworkers and may even speak to them but his stare is intimidating and it’s all shift long, and not reciprocated. I understand maybe goofing off with a coworker if you know them outside of work, but not with a stranger you’re already wary of being around. It’s like he’s intentionally trying to make you feel like prey by pacing around you and staring everytime he comes by. He’ll follow one of our more shy girls around in her work area (he works across the store from her but constantly goes to her area to follow her and get in her space and also will force her into conversations because he knows she can’t leave her spot.) more customers are in her area then his so she has to stay put.)
So as of writing the rest of this, a month or two has passed and four(4) of the involved coworkers that reported harassment to our management have quit due to hours being lowered to oblivion. I went from working 20-30 hours a week and a check from $200-$300 a week to 10-14 hours a week and my checking being almost $80. All my coworkers that have quit, have quit due to being lowered to one(1) working day a week and just couldn’t afford to pay their bills. At this point the offending harrasser has had his hours barely changed. He went from a consistent 26 hours a week to 21 hours a week. I also haven’t mentioned up to this point that this person also has access to our lockup. If you don’t work retail, that’s the code and password only managers know to get expensive stock out to buy. The only person in our entire store, and in my entire 9-10 months of working here, he’s the only person that isn’t a manager who has lock up access. I’ve never actually heard or worked at a place that let somebody working at a place for less then six(6) months and get keys to expensive stock lockup. I didn’t notice my hours being slowly lowered because me and my manager had come to an agreement I would work 4 full days a week due to working a second job. Recently I quit this second job, so I really need hours to work. At this point a workweek is 15-17 hours if I’m lucky. This is just to get you caught up on the situation. I’ve also been told my a coworker that he was warned by a male manager that he should “watch who he hangs out with because (managers name) is cutting peoples hours for going on a witch hunt”. Which is most certainly referring to the multiple reports of harassment directed at this same person, and I know this for sure because when I first brought this up to my manager her first words were sarcastically “so he bothers you guys by.. talking to you??” And then proceeded to tell me I was arranging a witch hunt over nothing and exaggerating. I actually want to laugh at the term being used in this context because although I heard the name of this person, and remarked that I hoped it wasn’t the same person I went to high school with, I genuinely tried to be friendly and be a good coworker. This person would take advantage of that and try to abuse the privilege of being new. An example is I would repeatedly show him how to do a task, and the next few days I worked he would say he doesn’t know where the objects for the task are, doesn’t know how to do the task and needs help finding where something obvious goes (a folder, when the only place for folders would be on the back wall very obviously placed so customers can see). And it wasn’t just once or twice, it’d be the same thing with the same person, or same thing with multiple people so much so that me and other coworkers almost didn’t want to assist him because he’d command you do a task and “show him how to do it” when in reality you’re just doing the job he was assigned to do for him, AND he gets the credit for doing a good job. He frequently would tell my female coworkers to “start the sign out process” for him using commanding words, not asking. I remember once he actually yelled towards me that there was a customer at the front (there was a customer, he had JUST helped bring up a chair so the customer had walked up with him) and to go ring him up. I genuinely have never experienced a person barking orders at me (atleast not somebody on the same pay grade as me) so I just looked at him, then looked back at my manager (this isn’t the female main manager fyi, totally different lady) finished what I was saying, and then walked up to the register once I was finished in no rush. I have no problem with customer priority, but you aren’t going to bark an order at me as if you have the authority because you’re a favorite of the main manager, and especially not in front of a customer or another coworker to assert some sort of dominance. I rarely take that disrespect from my bosses, let alone a peer. These are just examples to paint a picture of what sort of person this harasser is. Domineering and entitled, he absolutely hates me because I’m dominant but not in the way that I have to intimidate or scare people, but in the way that I don’t take blatant disrespect from anyone, and if you respect me I’ll respect you. I don’t let him disrespect me or disregard my personal boundaries and it upsets him. (At least from what I’ve experienced and seen). But to get back to the point of this post. I have reported multiple incidents of not just me being harassed, but my coworkers being threatened and harassed. When he gets upset he throws tantrums and shouts about suicidal ideation and how his life is horrible, and as I’ve mentioned during one of these he threw a radio at a male manager. (Again not the main manager handling the situation). All of these details I’ve mentioned to my GM to no avail. My coworkers have reported it to my manager, but only verbally. Thankfully I do have texts and snap photos saved of where they also agreed with being harassed by the individual, but also shared personal stories. (I have names, dates and faces along with the stories so they’re accurate and able to look back on the cameras if needed.”) But other then that the only proof they experienced anything is that they verbally mentioned it to the manager multiple times, and now they’ve quit, due to hour cuts and just hating where we work because it’s just different having to watch your back every second because you’re worried the “creepy guy at work” might snap on you. I’m mentioning all this to say that I’m the only employee documenting everything, and trying to have these conversations over work texts in order to have confirmed conversations and that I did my due diligence trying to handle this issue, and backup in case my GM tries to ever claim I never reported the harassment. Even though there has been multiple reports by different employees, and I even went as far to writing a letter to HR expressing my concerns, nothing has changed except for the blatant retaliation from my manager. The two other female employees that reported harassment were lowered to working one(1) working day a week, and have both quit. (which I already explained the reasons for their leaving above) The two other male coworkers that have experienced harassment were lowered to 1-3 days a week, lower then 20 hours a week. Which would be fine for a teenager just making some extra cash, but for a lot of employees here we’re adults paying bills and we need the hours and pay. They haven’t quit, but one of them has put in a notice to quit soon. My question for this thread after giving as much info as I can think of off the top of my head, and also shortening this as much as possible; is what my manager currently doing legal? She hasn’t gone to any of the employees, and didn’t when they still worked here even when we had multiple conversations where I told her they were afraid to come forward in case of retaliation like being fired. (Which didn’t happen, but lowering your hours after you report harassment and raise the reported harassers hours sure seems like retaliation to me.) She hasn’t done a single thing other then give this specific employee access to lockup, raise his hours AND hire him with more pay then any of the workers who have been here from ten(10)months- over a year. And I’m a hard worker. I take pride in working hard so that I’m never questioned or fired because I never even want to be put in that position. But I’ve become more and more unmotivated and I want to quit because fighting with my GM everyday and having to watch my back constantly in case Im attacked or something crazy that I can’t afford financially, let alone mentally.
TLDR: I work with a harassing domineering coworker, and after filing reports of harassment to HR me and anybody who reported harassment hours were lowered drastically. All other coworkers have quit due to this.
Q: Is there anything legally I can do? Am I handling this incorrectly?
this is an update before I post this, I apologize for any mistakes I was planning on proof reading this and posting it at a later time but there has been developments. My manager and I got into a verbal argument, I was asked to leave and was arguing more with her as I did. I wasn’t “fired” but I was asked to leave, but I assure you my words were fireable. I got a message to “not return to work” from a DM. Which in all fairness, I’ve been losing motivation not only for this constant harassment battle at work but because every new hire is making at-least a $1 more then I am, and I’ll have been working here for a year in 1-2 months. We actually had a regular associate get promoted to manager after breaking two computers, and not just store computers. It was a customer getting her two laptops fixed, said manager never even put her name or contact info in our system, then proceed to recycle the computers by breaking them. We had to give the woman two free computers totaling about $2000. My mind is just blown at management. I’m not saying every single worker deserved a raise just for time spent at a company, but I do work really hard and I’ve only called in three times my entire time here, and for two of those times I have hospital notes. But back to the story, I got a text from a “district manager” as I know her, she is my bosses boss. She would like to “discuss” the situation, but personally I’ve never trusted companies and this just seems like a stint at gathering whatever information I have against them, things such as blatant retaliation at harassment reports, favoritism, and my manager not doing her sue diligence to fully investigate the multiple complaints from multiple employees. Here’s the message I got from said corporate manager in quotes.
Hey (removed),
Your voicemail box wasn’t set up to leave a message.
This is DM (removed)
I was trying to get ahold of you and let you know myself or one of my corporate partners will be contacting you to discuss the situation that occurred as we want to hear it from you.
Please do not return to work until we have spoken with you.
Thank you
It’s safe to say I have multiple questions now.
Q:Was my harassment claims handled correctly on her side (and also me of course, if you all have any constructive criticism I’d love to hear it, thank you) and
Q:what should my next steps being regarding the matter?
Q:And if I’m fired for this incident, are there any steps I can take legally against them, and how should I handle responding, or ignoring this recent message.
All responses appreciated, thank you!! And if this wasn’t the right place to post apologizes!