Have been put in a really uncomfortable position.

[LikeYouWantIt]

We're on the brink of landing a huge contract at work.

I don't normally meet our customers face to face but as it's a government contract, our customer requested a visit to warehouse they're being supplied from.

Customer rep visited with me, and our sales guy. All fine, no issues. The rep then emailed me asking for various information and procedures. He replied saying "thanks, I owe you a drink!". Thought it was a bit clumsy on his part, but I emailed back "haha sounds good", then moved onto another work-related topic in the same email. He ignored the work related stuff and replied back "I'll definitely take you for a drink, it would be my pleasure. No backing out now!" I didn't respond.

3 days later, I got a Facebook friend request from him at 1am. I spoke to our sales guy about it, and we had a nosey through his profile. He has hundreds of friends, and his wife and kids are all over his profile. He's also the type to post pictures of his dinner, so assumed he's maybe just likes to add people on his socials.

I accepted, and you already know where this is going... I've managed to swerve his flirty messages up till now, while still keeping things fairly lighthearted, but now he's messaged saying he's coming back to the warehouse to "have an excuse to see me", and has pushed why I haven't responded to his messages.

I'm furious that this married man has put me in this awkward situation where I can't tear him a new one due to this huge work contract. I'm going to HR on Monday but how do I politely fob him off over the weekend?? I'm thinking I'll just have to block and ignore.

Fully agree the Sales Manager is at fault here.
If your Sales Manager told you to accept the request then he/she should be spoken to by HR and possibly given a verbal/written warning about encouraging staff to be non professional, in order to secure a contract!

What am I reading? Is it now feminist to blame a woman being harassed by a man blatantly manipulating an obviously skewed power dynamic?

Don't get the "Is it now feminist..." angle, but if she'd taken any of at least two opportunities to head this off at the pass she wouldn't now be being harassed, or if she was she'd be holding all the cards. She didn't, she isn't; she's made this rod for her own back.

@LikeYouWantIt hi OP. I’m negotiating contracts all the time and it’s often mentioned to do drinks or lunch at the end in order to celebrate. I normally give a generalised non specific response that agrees that that would be nice but don’t suggest dates and the idea fizzles out. It’s just the other party being polite or overly enthusiastic most of the time. I don’t think you were wrong for hazily going along with it.

I suggest taking a different approach re taking control of this situation and getting it back on track… Email him from your work account to say that a drink to celebrate getting the contract over the line sounds great, and suggest several other people who would attend from your company who have also worked on it, and a couple of his colleagues. Say you’re looking forward to getting everything signed off and then will circulate some suggested dates. You could even copy in a colleague.

It’s a shame you already accepted him on Facebook rather than just not seeing the invite, but you could mention in the email that you don’t really use it, and then just stop responding on Facebook.

This. Just because the guy has been inappropriate and unprofessional doesn’t mean the OP also couldn’t have handled this better. The people surprised that he’s messaging her on Facebook after having said she’s interested in a drink and accepting his friend request need to give themselves a reality check!!

The best advice

Cheeky you are also someone with unprofessional boundaries if you don't see what he's done wrong.

Unfriend him / block him on socials.

How to defer politely, rather than inviting personal contact.. Haha, sounds good! Should be replaced with ' oh, no need, it's a pleasure to have a company such as yours on board'.

No ambiguity. No blurring of lines. Shut down any personal communications.
As for your sales manager suggesting you accept friend requests...LinkedIn is the only possible place that should happen. You don't need advice as to who to add to your personal Facebook. Absolutely bonkers.

I think you’re getting a lot of unfair heat because a lot of posters on this thread have 9-5 jobs and don’t understand client pressures and the constant need to win work.

I’m a lawyer, I get it.

Because he didn’t like his fee estimate I had a tirade of abuse from a client last week, including some lovely misogynistic “don’t you fucking sorry me darling” 🙄 and then when he text on sat morning to say “sorry I think I was a bit harsh yesterday” I had to say “not at allllll Joe Bloggs no need, it’s me who should be apologising”. Because the man brings us about £2m a year. Some jobs pay you to turn a blind eye to shit, incl flirting.

I also would have told a client “yes” to a drink, and I wouldn’t have suspected anything untoward at that point, i would’ve though I was being friendly and that I’d risk awkwardness if I ignored the offer but it was daft to accept a Facebook invite. That’s him moving it away from professional and you could and should just have ignored that. How does he know you’re active on FB? You could be someone who checks it 5 times a year all he knows, I am.

This. You have behaved unwisely and been given bad advice about accepting this person as a friend on Facebook "Ha ha sounds good" is NOT a brush off. The way to swerve the flirty messages is to ignore them and only answer professional enquiries. You can also unfriend him on FB or limit what he can see. Take the lesson and move on.
Final comment is that your sales manager sounds like someone out of the 1960's

When he invited you out for a drink instead of saying "Sounds good!", you should have said "thank you for the invite but I don't mix business with pleasure!" Simples!

OP were you actually quite up for going for a drink with him, until you saw he was married? Because there’s nothing wrong with that. People meet at work all the time.

The mention of the drink should have been ignored by you, along with the Facebook friend request.

Gosh this thread is so depressing. Married man makes inappropriate comment, married man hunts down op on socials, married man continues to contact her even though he’s being ignored…but obviously it’s all the op’s fault.

Why can’t it be the married man’s fault? Why is he not held responsible for his own actions? His pestering? His clear attempts to try to cheat on his wife?

Op tried to maintain a good professional relationship and clearly didn’t take his initial drink comment literally. It isn’t her fault she’s in this situation. It’s his fault for creating it and continuing to push it. Women shouldn’t have to put up with this shit when they are just trying to do their jobs.

Not in the slightest. He's old enough to be my dad.

Absolutely. The situation as a whole has developed because of a culture in which men feel entitled to behave inappropriately whereas women feel compelled to contort themselves into ridiculous shapes in order to turn them down without offending them.

If a sales manager ‘advised’ me I to accept someone’s friend request on my own personal (non work related) facebook, I’d be putting in a complaint against that manager. I’ll decide who I have on my own personal facebook, it has nothing to do with any manager who I chose to have on there and who I don’t. Nobody tells me who to be friends with!
You really do need to be more firm op and set clear boundaries rather than pleasing everyone else.

But you kind of did, by accepting the Facebook friend request. Facebook isn't a professional platform. He sent the request which was testing the waters, you accepted. I do have sympathy, you asked your sales manager for advice and their advice was absolutely terrible. And I know men can be incredibly pushy and inappropriate and it feels horrible when you're in that awkward position, especially when it's someone from work. But at the same time I do think accepting the friend request was a green light saying go ahead and PM me.

For the future, you can change your Facebook settings so that only people with mutual friends can send you a friend request. Then creeps from work wont be able to look you up and they'll have to stick to emails. If you don't want to change your Facebook settings, just ignore any unwanted friend requests. If he'd asked why you hadn't accepted, say you don't use Facebook and hadn't seen it.

Well, I could probably trade stories with you, but I would like to set the bar far higher for the young women coming up behind me.

I get it's tricky trying to appease customers or whatever but why on earth did you accept a friend request! Loads of people don't check their Facebook so it wouldn't have been a slight or perceived slight at all. Not your fault he is a sleaze but I think that gave him a massive green light to blur personal and professional. You need to work on your boundaries.

You're furious with him, but you replied 'sounds good' to his drink offer, then accepted a Facebook request and continued to message him back.
You've behaved unprofessionally and got yourself into this situation.

I would just put something like “just seen you’re married so think it’s best we keep this strictly professional “

I don't think that anyone has said "its all the OP's fault" just that she made some unwise choices and took bad advice. I think (and I rarely want to blame stuff on someone's age) that in a young person this would not be surprising and it does sound to me that, at least in sales, there is a dodgy environment in the business, People should not be being encouraged to blur professional boundaries in the interests of making a sale no matter how big. I also think that needing to ask for advice on how to get control of the situation MN also shows a certain.....well lets call it innocence.....

The problem OP has in this situation though is that she hasn’t turned him down. Nobody is saying this man has acted appropriately, he clearly hasn’t. What people are saying is that OP has suggested she’s interested, which is why he keeps pursuing her.

They should expect a higher bar in the culture of the company they work for but I think that also they have to set their own bar higher. No one can do it for you.