HR rejected grievance I made against Colleague

If he had said filled that could also have been taken the wrong way. I have never known pumped, or pumping to be sexual innuendo.

Nope. This whole post screams that you have no idea how this law is applied. Just because someone takes offence at a comment, doesn’t mean it breaches the law or qualifies as harassment. The bloke in question is protected by the same law and the company HR needs to demonstrate an even hand. Which they have. The comment does not meet the threshold for sexual harassment. People taking the piss with something that was designed to address actual harassment is the problem here. OP hasn’t shown herself in a good light. At all.

Oh yes, I had an absolutely terrible time when I returned to work following a hysterectomy. A male colleague commented on the amount of time I’d had off. I took it to my team manager who was incompetent and unable to manage the situation appropriately. The man had been a professional footballer back in the day so the whole team supported him and I was discriminated against for months until I eventually left. It really was a terrible time for me and one I find hard to forget even now after many years. I feel for you and hope you get a better outcome than I did.

Because the comment in itself didn’t meet the threshold for sexual harassment. This isn’t rocket science - there’s a law to be applied here so you can’t go bandying these kinds of accusations around for just anything. It’s not about whether you were offended by the comment, it’s about whether it breached the law. And the very fact that the majority of posters here couldn’t find the innuendo is a fair indication that it didn’t. If HR had taken action based on this exchange the company could well have found themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit. I swear there are some posters here who would have men sit in silence for rear of causing offence.

This is sound advice - one inadvertent comment aside ( and I’m not suggesting your OP was / is one) but a series of innuendo directed towards another colleague is a different matter.

Wow, I work in HR and would struggle with this. Sadly people are being more and more offended over things nowadays, it doesn’t mean the other person has necesssrily done anything wrong, but you’ve construed it a particular way. Hopefully a brief chat with him has made him understand the reality of how things could progress, if he is as you say he is.

From a personal point of view, you were getting your lips pumped, so if you’re going to get offended over someone describing it this way, then maybe don’t do it, or don’t advertise it 🤷🏼‍♀️

How in hell can 67% of voters think you're being unreasonable. Every one of them need to take their diversity training. Any racist, sexist, gender related or bully tactics are unacceptable in the work place. Your HR dept. are very wrong. Regardless of whether he thought it was OK or not, you took offence to it and your HR dept. should have backed you and he should have had, at least, a verbal warning.

The reading comprehension on MN really is at an all time low isn’t it ? Someone mentioned a surgeon upthread and was immediately taken down for misogyny in assuming that the fictional ‘surgeon’ was a man !!

This. The law is intended for actual harassment, it’s not a stick with which to beat colleagues you don’t like or who irritate you.

Agree. If he has a history of making questionable comments it’s only a matter of time, but this incident doesn’t meet the threshold for sexual harassment - that’s why HR rejected it. Personally l’d have reported him for the comment about the ‘spring in the step’.

They will if the complaint is as spurious as this one.

I’m sorry but I think you have lived a very sheltered life if you think that’s sexual innuendo. I think he just stated what you were doing didn’t he? 🤷🏼‍♀️

It will probably happen again, possibly with someone else and HR won’t be able to avoid it.

The right is to be protected from sexual harassment at work, and have perpetrators dealt with appropriately. Your mother and grandmother didn’t have that right, or at least, it wasn’t a right that could be effectively exercised.

This right is undermined when women try to use it to make spurious complaints such as the one raised by the OP. Had this happened to your grandmother she likely wouldn’t have even been able to raise a grievance in the first place, even if the issue had been something far more serious that actually constituted harassment.

Im sorry but I don't get how that's sexual. Personally I don't talk to the whole office about what beauty treatments Im having. I get on with my work.
I mean if someone said I'm getting my tyres pumped that wouldn't be sexual either.
It would be sexual if he'd said are you getting a Brazilian as well. I find this whole thing really bizarre.

Sorry OP, I can't see anything wrong with this, someone has tried to explain it but to be honest for it they are streching things to try to find some way to make it an innuendo. As to someone saying they think pumped is only used in sexual terms, well I often refer to my tyres as pumped up, to DS's muscles being pumped. I have never hear of pumped being related to anything sexual before.

Oh my word, but nobody said anything about a flipping surgeon!!!

The surgeon doesn't exist!

The difficulty is that you can't raise a small grievance and then expect that to become a full complaint about repeated behaviours. If the OP had reported the repeated behaviours, which was within her rights, then they could all have been looked at together. But she didn't - she chose one ambiguous (at best) example of his sleaziness.

I say that to anyone- be really thorough and go all Columbo when you raise a grievance, because HR cannot bring anything into consideration that hasn't been mentioned in the grievance letter. They just can't - that would be victimisation of the person on the other side.

Okay, and? What OP perceived isn’t automatically gong to be taken as the reality of it, or actually even be the reality of it. Even if he is the office sleaze, saying ‘getting her lips pumped’ in response to the question of what OP was doing cannot be read as definitively sleazy when considering how ubiquitous the term is to describe augmentation. An allegation isn’t proof.

HR can only deal with issues brought to them, with evidence to support any claims. ‘Knowing’ he’s the office sleaze is one thing, actually proving it is another. HR did do their job here and investigate, that they didn’t find in OP’s favour does not mean they didn’t.

Full disclosure - I only worked in companies with warehouses for a few months in total. However, I think that did give me some perspective on how to do these things well (given one of them did everything badly). I don't think you leap into a process. I think you go to HR - a couple of you can go if that feels comfortable - and simply ask some questions. "We've noticed that * is taking charge of our group? We think/feel this way this because he does a, b and c. We wanted to ask is this what the company is wanting him to do? Is he lined up to take on the managerial role? Or is he being a bit bossy?" And if you need to justify the question, just say "we don't know if we're supposed to do as he tells us, or if he is taking that all on himself". I think that's a good early conversation to have because if he has gone rogue he could be causing the company issues and not just your team. Don't over justify yourselves for asking the questions, don't be aggressive - just ask openly.

I don’t know who you’re arguing against. You suggested I’m misogynistic for saying ‘the surgeon pumped her lips’ would be worse because I’m implying the surgeon is male, yet you have no issue with OP / her colleague implying that the surgeon Op Is getting her lips pumped by is male.

Can you explain why?

What are the 'rights' that have been hard-won that women are throwing away by reporting the office perve for harrassment?

I've never reported anyone for workplace harrassment but I HAVE been on the receiving end of it and it really isn't fun at all. I've now been educated by you to keep quiet, in case I undermine women's hard-won rights to what? Work? Have rights? I'm just not clear. But anyway, thank you!

Unless HR aren't doing their job at all, they should be aware of that.

How would HR be aware of that? We don’t live in Orwell’s 1984!

The fact remains that there was nothing inappropriate in his words. HR can't just discipline someone because someone else took offense to their tone, it is too nebulous. In a way I do feel bad for OP because if he is in the habit of making genuinely leery comments (like the one he made to her coworker) I can understand why she was frustrated. Unfortunately, though, she picked a nothingburger to take to HR.

It was clear to the OP it was sexual harrassment. Clearly, it could plausibly be an innocent comment, if delivered as such. But it wasn't, hence the complaint. The OP has also said that the bloke in question has form as the office sleaze, and not just towards her. Unless HR aren't doing their job at all, they should be aware of that. It's their job to work out whether that sleaze really was 'accidentally' brushing up against someone instead of grabbing their arse (for example), or whether that comment that definitely could be taken as harrassing actually was just an innocent statement of fact, and then deal with it appropriately.