I (30M) got sexually harassed at work in a kinda indirect manner. I work in manufacturing, and I'm essentially the lead for the QA department. This means I usually have to interact with the leadership of every other department to ensure processes are followed and product meets customer expectations. I also have the authority to delegate tasks to other members of my department.
A few nights ago, during our shift hand-off, I spoke with my QA guy on night shift and asked him to speak with the night shift manager of a department and let him know one of his team members wasn't doing their QA checks. This isn't anything out of the usual, often I try to have QA discuss things with leadership before putting them on blast in emails which can lead to write ups. Well, this manager also happens to be the resident “good ol' boy” who's fallen from grace. But before we get into that, I'm gonna give some context to the whole interaction:
Once upon a time he was the department head for one of our oldest departments and I was one of his employees. I didn't interact with him much and eventually transferred my way out of his department. Over that time I became a tech in a department he managed to worm his way into as he saw the writing on the wall for his old department and knew he needed to jump ship. As the head of the new department he tried to be much more… hands on with his leadership style. The old department essentially ran itself by virtue of being 40+ years old, but the new one was still in its infancy. His “hands on” style really only amounted to him creating a “good ol' boys” club and rewarding them with the best machines and screwing with those who weren't in on it. It was around this time he gave me my nickname “sissy-britches.”
He was careful to never say that name directly to my face, nor to anyone who'd actually be a credible source if I reported him. But he was always a bit too proud of himself for being clever enough to insult someone for their perceived sexuality. He'd take the opportunity to insinuate I'm gay and a girly man at every opportunity. As a slightly effeminate man, this was stuff I'd been dealing with since middle school and it only bothered me in the sense that I knew he'd be saying and doing shit like this to members of the lgbtq+ community if he had the chance. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do without witnesses who weren't his cronies.
A silver lining was that over time, his toxicity led to him losing his department head status, and eventually he was demoted all the way to night shift. Which is where we get back to my actual story.
When my team member went to inform him of the QA issues the manager lost his shit. He was upset that neither I nor my team member who identified the issues told him ourselves, then said something to the effect of “those two F—-ts can go suck each other off for all I care, and you can tell them I said that!”
Finally, after 7 years he'd finally fucked up and given me the ammo I needed to go to HR. Once I alerted my managers to what had been said, HR was brought in and a full blown investigation is taking place. I'll find out on Monday what the outcome is, but so far it looks like this may be the nail in his coffin!