Firstly – I know now that I should have never made that HR complaint, please don’t remind me!
So I’ve been at this company for 9 months now. My first few weeks of working, this executive level employee took an obvious interest in me to the point where other people were noticing. He’d constantly come into the lab (where I work with 11 others and is not his workspace) and pull up a chair to talk to me. He sent me a weird message on teams (that I still have a picture of) asking something like “how many moons ago did your lovely presence Grace this earth and make it more beautiful” (lol). One of the lab managers noticed my discomfort and asked me about it to which I said yes, it makes me uncomfortable. Apparently that was reported to HR (by my boss, not me) and he mostly left me alone after that.
Fast forward a couple months and he’s slowly started to talk to me more but in a professional way so I figure he’s stopped being a creep. After he notices I’m okay with him (professionally) he starts being weird again. One day I’m having a conversation with another coworker about energy drinks and the creep executive starts talking about aphrodisiacs and how women are mostly turned on by them. Then the next day another coworker tells me the creep keeps staring at my butt and made a suggestive look to him when he caught him staring so I finally have enough and tell the manager of the lab. She then tells me she’s going to report this to HR and I can accompany her so I can make the report myself or she can do it. I decide to go with her to make the report.
That was about two months ago and since then the lab manager has been extremely rude and passive aggressive to me. This is a huge change from the girl who would invite me out to drinks and tell me she’s considering me for a leadership position in the company eventually. I saw a message she sent to my team lead during one of our work planning meetings to have me focus on documentation for the next duration. For people in software development, you know this is a huge red flag. Other people at work as well as one of the lower level lab managers agreed that was weird and something to worry about.
So now my question…what can I do?? Do I have to just wait it out and see? Should I reach out to a lawyer prematurely? Is there even a case here?
UPDATE: was fired today. I made another post in here about it but essentially they tried to give me a severance agreement of 2 weeks pay as long as I don’t sue and I refused to sign based off legal advise. Currently in bed thinking wtf is life.