HR rejected grievance I made against Colleague

[RockNRoll25]

Looking for a bit of a hand hold. I submitted a grievance against a male colleague for a comment he made about me which was sexual in nature. HR have investigated and closed the case after speaking to him and accepting his explanation that his comment wasn’t sexual. It absolutely was an inappropriate innuendo and I’m really surprised by the response.

Has anyone been in a similar position - would you try to find another job, or ask to be moved teams?

Sorry yes - I am referring to you.

I think if he had said 'the surgeon is going to pump her lips' then that would have been a bit more suggestive.

Maybe you can expand on this statement then if the gender if of the surgeon isnt relevent - then why is it be suggestive?

For me its only suggestive if the surgeon is assumed (without explicitly saying it) to be male.

"I complained about a colleague that made an inappropriate sexual comment"

"I had a random day off and one of the things I was doing was getting my lip filler topped up"

"and he said ‘she’s getting her lips pumped’."

I'm confused, wasn't what he said factually correct?

You're being unreasonable, it may have been an innuendo and it may not, it's not obvious enough imo for any sort of action to be taken against the man.

It's people's minds that jump to a sexual innuendo, I would have taken it as perhaps a, 'things women do for beauty' dismissive comment, a bit irritating, but to get to sexual inuendo is a bit of a jump. I'm sure HR have better things to do than pursue every off the cuff comment. Is that the worst thing you could find to complain about if he is well known for suggestive comments?

I know that phrase as 'humped and dumped', though I haven't heard anyone say it since 2000 and the Wheatus song!

I'm in Scotland and that isn't the case.

Don’t be so ridiculous!!

Now that IS a comment that should be reported. Did you support your colleague in reporting him for that?

This seems like the inevitable result. You find this man's general attitude obnoxious, but this remark on paper doesn't look offensive, just a bit blunt. I didn't get the meaning you attributed to it until it was explained. If he doesn't check himself, though, he'll be in trouble, so it was a positive step.

Context is all - he might well have said it in a way that was suggestive but HR would have struggled to reach that conclusion because the phrase itself is ambiguous.

But going through the grievance process will have unsettled him even though it wasn’t upheld. It’s less likely he’ll make stupid comments to you again. Try to see that as a win.

I'm with all the posters who think that you can read 'having her lips pumped' several different ways, with the sexual connotation being quite far down the list. There has to be unambiguous evidence and this is very ambiguous. With a bit of luck he'll watch his behaviour from now on, but otherwise you'll need to wait for him to say something really unambiguously sexist and offensive.

Well said @Pluvia

It's quite telling that some posters immediately thought of this as sexual innuendo while a number of others didn't. Some of this may be down to regional language variations.

Agreed- I am not surprised HR didn’t take it further

We as an HR department normally know which of our colleagues are neurodiverse. Sometimes they need adjustments or more support at work, often they don't. If a ND employee "had no filter" and inadvertently upset someone else then their condition would be an explanation of their behaviour but not necessarily an excuse. It isn't a get out of jail free card to enable people to say whatever they like and their comments could still be harassment even if that wasn't their intention. The new legislation around sexual harassment in particular is really clear on that.

The issue for OP is that her colleague's comments could be vulgar sexual innuendo but there is also a perfectly plausible explanation that the comment was innocent and factual. Given what she says about his other behaviour, I suspect he was making a crude joke but I can't prove that was what he meant. I suspect half of my HR team wouldn't even see the innuendo and would need it spelled out to them.

There is no way with this comment an HR team could uphold the grievance. That would usually mean he would get a written warning on file and all he'd need to say is "I didn't mean anything sexual at all, my exact wording is factual regarding her getting lip filler." It doesn't stand up to scrutiny by a third party.

Now, if your colleague had complained about the comment he had made to her which definitely was inappropriate and then you made your complaint subsequently suddenly there is a pattern of evidence regarding his behaviour emerging.

I think at this stage you just have to hope that having spoken with HR that's enough to make him more careful about what he says at work.

I see his comment as factual not offensive. They do pump it in your lips to give your lips a pumped out effect. It's not liposuction it's pumping stuff in not withdrawing it.

I wonder if the variances in opinion on this thread come from regional language differences. Where I live, getting pumped means getting fucked. Absent a bicycle tyre or a airbed being in the vicinity, the first thing that springs to mind when I hear the expression “pumping” is having sex. If this incident happened locally to me, then I’d say your HR have been overly generous in giving him the benefit of the doubt as I would have construed the comment exactly as the OP did.

If pumping is used crudely I think of it as referring to farting rather than sexual intercourse. pumped/ trumped. If he'd said getting her lips humped it would be different that is a sexual reference

You've just described what 'innuendo' is.

It's all in the tone as well. If he said what he said in a leery fashion, the innuendo would be a lot more obvious. That doesn't translate on an internet forum.

I think most people on here know, really, what he was implying by what he said. They just think that because she gets lip filler, she deserved it. Also, all these threads about HR issues are always attacked by what I can only assume are small business owners without an HR department who clearly think HR is 'woke'.

Yes it’s disappointing that there appears to be more judgment and pearl clutching directed towards the OP for daring to have lip enhancements, than at the sleazy arsehole who is almost certainly belittling her with innuendo.

He’s a sleaze. He makes sleazy comments and thinks he’s hilarious. Ugh. People just don’t say ‘she’s getting her lips pumped’. They say she’s getting lip filler/she’s getting her lips done’ and he should have kept his mouth shut anyway as nobody was asking him. I believe you OP.

Anonymousbleep - Are accommodations to ND employees also woke?

Playing devils advocate, say this was your ND young adult male child (who had form for speaking before thinking, stating factual statements because they are true) who said this in the workplace (and had previously told HR that he had challenges but wanted to keep that private to himself) and he been disciplined /lost his job on the basis of upholding this grievance, would you think that was ok?

Who would be ‘woke’ in this instance?

many people do say pumped for Botox - it usually implies a certain distaste for the whole thing

what I find off is that the whole idea of lip fillers is to make you look more sexy - the full lips are strongly associated with sex in I think every culture

you are adjusting your body to appear more sexy including in the workplace but object to sone words ?

That is incorrect. If OP found the remark to her colleague offensive, she could have complained about it herself.

That's just whatabouttery. There's no suggestion this is the case. Why wouldn't we just take the OP at her word - she says the guy's got form as a sleaze and why would we not believe her?

BTW I am ND and, strangely, have never been accused of making inappropriate comments in the workplace.

You do realise that's the same argument as 'women who wear short skirts are asking for it'?

It's clear that the actual crime here for a lot of MNers is the lip filler.