Prudish or rightly offended

[Winedanddined]

Moved into a new team at work and not too sure what to do. It is a professional role and a shared office. Most of the team are great but one member makes explicit sexual references and comments all the time, anything innocent gets twisted. The others ignore or humour him, but I find it really uncomfortable and it seems I am the only one. What would you do.

It is possible that the other members of the team genuinely aren't offended - people have very different tolerance levels for this type of thing.

However, it is of course totally inappropriate for him to make this type of joke in the workplace and if it offends you you have every right to ask him to stop, and if he doesn't, speak to HR.

If you don't feel able to ask him yourself, that's totally valid (it can be intimidating). Just go to HR/a superior and ask them to intervene. I would make it clear to them that you haven't asked him to stop yourself, and why you haven't, so that they can, if they deem it appropriate, speak to him first off and tell him it's making members of the team uncomfortable and needs to stop immediately, rather than moving straight to any form of disciplinary..... Ultimately that is their call tho, depending what your workplace policy is and how badly he has breeched it.....

You are not being prudish, it’s totally unacceptable.

I worked with a man who was always finding double entendres. It got so that I found I was constantly checking everything I said so that I didn’t give him an excuse for another sleazy remark. Our manager noticed it, and I don’t know if he said anything but it suddenly stopped. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was quite unpleasant and made work much more difficult than it needed to be.

I bet there are others in the team who feels the same but scared to speak up. Sometimes it just takes one person.

Yes. Sexual comments you don't want to hear constitute sexual harassment.

Thank you, I thought so.

In my previous job, this kind of behaviour was normalised by my male colleagues and explained away as "just banter". Eventually one of the men was so emboldened by his comments and "banter" being accepted and laughed at by his other male colleagues that he sexually assaulted a female colleague on a night out.

He still works there.

Urgh I hate the ‘just banter’ excuse. It’s not appropriate and not funny.

If you don’t want to actually complain to HR or him and I do see why you might not want to, look him straight in the eye and without any sarcasm or “tone” say, “I dont get it. Why is that funny?” He will probably cringe if he has to explain. If he says you have no sense of humour just say lots of things make you laugh but they have to be funny repeat the question

That is TOTALLY unacceptable in any workplace. Really not OK. It’s sexual harassment. In a lot of places it would be instant dismissal.

that's just awful
but not that surprising I suppose
what happened to your female colleague?

She left her job eventually - she told the employer what happened, but all the other people on the night out either denied seeing it or backed up the guy.

I saw it happen, but despite me and a couple of others providing witness accounts, he got a slap on the wrist.

She developed some quite severe mental health issues understandably, got no support, and quit a couple of months after.

Tell him he reminds you of Colin from the fast show.