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.

@LikeYouWantIt I would reply saying you prefer to keep your business and personal lives separate but didn’t want to appear rude so accepted the invite, however, you realise now that for transparency business comms should be through work email etc so you shouldn’t have accepted. Then unfriend without waiting for a response. Hopefully he’ll have got the message by the time you get back to work and things will have settled down.

This thread just goes to prove that the slightest bit of anything that could sound like agreement "haha, sounds good" or even anything in the least bit positive rather than a very clear "no thanks" can be taken as a green light to apply more pressure/persuasion to agree to stuff you really don't want to do. Sales and marketing people are so manipulative.

this is absolutely true which is why people shouldn't say it. There are loads of ways of politely indicating "not interested" None of which is "haha sounds good"

It also illustrates quite well why women so often leave men scratching their heads.
Man: "How about a drink sometime?"
Woman: "Haha sounds good"
Man: sends Facebook friend request
Woman: accepts Facebook friend request
Man: pursues woman
Woman: "Oh, why is he doing that? I thought I'd made it clear I'm not interested?", blocks him
Man: baffled, scratches head

But a married man, with a family, approaching a client in a situation with an uneven balance of power? in a business culture that encourages social interaction?

Oh no, this is apparently completely irrelevant, as is the additional context of other posters involved in negotiating business contracts that it's actually quite common for drinks to be offered and accepted as part of non-sexy time business development.

Um, yes? What's your point?

@LikeYouWantIt hindsight being a beautiful thing, the best response would be 'nah, just doing my job'. Glad your work is backing you though.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing, I agree. I've responded to multiple "I owe you one / a drink" comments with "See you at the pub!" or "mine is a large Sauvi B" as per pp, and it has always been taken in the good humoured nature in which it is intended. Had I known this married guy was going to take it so literally, I would have acted differently.

My point is that it would take an absolute boundary-pushing dunce (or worse) to misinterpret OP's response in this situation and I don't think she should be blamed for a light-hearted comment that would be perfectly well understood in the context by any normal person, just as she assumed his was harmless.

I don't think she should be blamed but I do think that she should take the learning.

Possibly. Although I do think that normally it would not have been a problem being informal in these circumstances. He has chosen to push his luck in an unexpected way that I don't think most normal people in that situation would be doing.

that's part of my point....you don't know until you are in the "uncomfortable position" Even after the "I'll hold you to the drink thing" she still accepted him on facebook and didn't do anything to limit what he could see.

Well, yes, but she did say that she doesn't have much of a profile on FB so it's not as though she was sharing bikini shots.

Social networking is normalised in many business situations and the boundaries can be blurred. As I see it, that doesn't entitle someone to abuse that for their own devious purposes. Normal people don't.

and again I agree. All i am saying is that there are ways to avoid these things and to extricate onesself from them and none of those ways are saying "haha sounds good" followed by accepting a social media friend request. The limiting what can be seen thing is not just to avoid sharing bikini shots but to send a boundaries message.

So, he's a boundary-pushing dunce (or worse). He'll still find OP's interactions with him baffling when she rows back after giving him all green lights.

And I agree with you! 😊 but to be fair to OP, it was only by doing those things that she learned that this guy is a predator. Lesson learned, yes, but I don't think the same rules usually apply to normal people. That said, I am sure OP is going to be super dismissive and assertive in future, even if it requires some tweaking of her natural disposition! We all learn the hard way that there are some nutters around.

I will most definitely be modifying my behaviour in future.

Tbf, the Facebook thing was neither here nor there for me - I've actually got quite a lot of our contractors and colleagues on my Facebook (hence why I have very little personal stuff posted on it) so it's not particularly unusual for me. But yes, lesson learned.

Oh for goodness sake! Regardless of who's 'fault' it is, the OP just wants advice on what to do now!

I would just keep ignoring any non-work-related messages for as long as you can, but if you really feel that you need to do something about it why not reply to say something like 'the team and I are going out next Friday evening, and it would be great to meet you and your team socially if you would like to do that'. Then he will either back right off, or you can arrange a team thing, making sure you are never alone with him.

He does sound like a particularly pushy chancer, yuk!

It's easy to get drawn into a more informal style of communication when using short emails and texts.

'That's very kind but there is no need. It's my job to ensure things run smoothly'

The snag is that 99% of the time that would be a sniffy answer that wasn't warranted.

Navigating these situations can be a bit of a minefield thanks to social media.

Literally one of the first 5 replies states ‘it’s your fault op’….

mea culpa. One person did and got shouted down.

This. Good luck selling this to HR.

You've done nothing but encourage this man and now go running to HR claiming poor ickle female victim being "harassed" by bad Menz.