A woman has told of how she dealt with a creepy colleague in the best way.
When her married colleague sent her inappropriate text messages, she waited until her next shift and responded to them via work email.
When he angrily responded by text, she attached a screengrab of his irate text and again asked him to only contact her about work-related matters.
She has now discussed the matter with HR and other women who work at the company. Others have also told her that he has behaved inappropriately towards them.
Taking to Reddit, the woman explained that he sent her inappropriate texts at 3am on St. Patrick’s Day weekend. He asked her to “come over” and “have some fun”, and said he had been into her for a while and “knew [she] felt the same”.
She said she doesn’t and added that she is a lesbian but is not out at work.
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He followed up the creepy texts with a naked selfie which thankfully, cut off right before his manhood was visible.
As she has a strict rule of not working or dealing with colleagues outside of office hours, she shrugged it off as a “Monday problem”.
He followed up by texting her to apologise and say he was drunk before adding that he “hadn’t said it how he wanted to but was still into [her] and had a feeling [she] felt the same.”
Come Monday, she penned a very direct email to him using her work email address.
She wrote:
“Hi 'Coworker'
I'm writing to follow up on your messages from the prior several days (See attached)
Please only contact me through work channels during regular business hours, I do not use my personal number with colleagues.
Additionally, I found the content of your messages unwelcome and inappropriate. Please only contact me regarding work.”
She didn’t forward a copy to HR at this point, but CC'd her personal email “just in case”.
She wrote: “He got really mad, he texted me back saying I had crossed a line attaching his picture to a work email, was I trying to get him fired?
“I screenshot that text too and attached it to an additional email saying ‘As per my prior email, please only contact me about work matters, and only on my business email or Slack.’
“He stopped texting me but he came to my desk to speak to me and before he said anything I asked ‘Is this a work question?’ and he said I knew what it was about, and I said that I wasn't available for a discussion at the moment, if he did need to meet with me for a work matter, could he please schedule a meeting on the calendar and include a readahead to brief me on the topic of the meeting?”
She said he walked off at this point. She said she feels like she dealt with it like “a bit of a b****” but said she’s “sick of dealing with this s*** at every job”.
“I feel like my patience to use my own time and energy to gently ask guys to cool it is worn thin. And I want to set the precedent that I won't engage at all, outside of work hours or work accounts,” she said.
Reddit was overwhelmingly on her side.
The top comment, with over 20,000 upvotes, urged her to go to HR immediately.
Another said the woman’s post was a “perfect guide to dealing with inappropriate workplace behavior”.
“May I say, you have brass ovaries, and I admire them,” another remarked.
In an update, the original poster said she had met with HR and they assured her that she wouldn’t have any more contact with him at work.
She also said that she went to a happy hour with a couple of her female work pals to vent, and one of them revealed the same creepy colleague pulled a similar stunt before.
While at a professional conference, she gave him her business card with her phone number on it. He took her number and sent her a “nasty pic”.
She told him it was inappropriate and said she was married, but the creep “said something about her husband not having to know”. When her husband called and left a voicemail telling him to “f*** off” he didn’t contact her again.
The Redditor asked the other woman if she could share her experience with HR, too, and she said she was happy to do so.
She said: “She even wrote that she met him at a professional conference where he was representing the company, she gave him a business card for networking reasons, and he sent her an unsolicited lewd picture. And that she needed her husband to intervene to stop the harassment.
“I haven't checked my email again, I'm trying to leave work at work and not dwell on this any more tonight. But it seems like HR will have even more to go off, before meeting with him.”
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