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?

I doubt it is a positive step for the OP. She has just made herself look rather ridiculous.

Not at all. I wouldn't associate pumped with sex at all.

In terms of judging lip filler and suggestions 'she deserved it" .... Never.

I do have an opinion on lip fillers...it's sad that women can't accept their appearance and alter what is normal plus many lip fillers look awful. That's an opinion ...I'd never feel she deserved any insults however.

It’s not about what she or anyone else professes to ‘know’, it’s about what can be proven. Yes, it can be meant and perceived as innuendo, but it’s also a very common description of lip augmentation that someone could quite innocently use when answering a question about what they or someone else is doing or has done (as is the case here). As a standalone comment it is not enough to constitute sexual harassment.

I’ve had lip filler and used ‘getting my lips pumped’ to describe it, as have other women I know. Hell, my aesthetician has even used it to me. It isn’t only, or even commonly, used within a sexual context.

”Pumping” in a sexual context tends to refer to sexual intercourse, so yes, the clear implication was that the surgeon was a man.

Sexual harrassment isn't just about words. It was clear to the OP that he was making an inappropriate sexual comment. It's in the tone and delivery. You can turn virtually anything into a sexual innuendo if you're that sort of person! And 'pumped' very much is a euphemism for 'fucked.'

I don't know why we can't just believe the OP when she says she was offended by it. It's a shame HR didn't take it seeriously. Most of us don't want the random office twat making leering innuendos about us. It sounds like her office has one of those unpleasant 'banter' cultures where 'banter' treads a very fine line with 'harrassment' and you have to be able to 'take a joke' to work there (if you're a woman).

99% of the time when people use the word “pumping”, they’re not referring to sex.

And 99%+ of the time when people use the word “lips”, they’re not referring to vaginal lips.

Also, “pumping lips” in a sexual context makes as much sense as saying I’m going to pump up the valve of my bike tyre.

OP, I’m sorry, but you really picked the wrong hill to die on by trying to bring a grievance for this.

Oh, I don't think so. I think the complaint was fair enough given her perception of what he meant, especially if she mentioned the previous remark to another colleague, which was inarguably offensive. Nothing for the OP to feel bad about at all.

Yes they do. There's been loads of examples given in the thread, including the use of the phrase on the BBC.

No one has said they don’t believe the OP wasn’t offended by it. Of course she was, otherwise she wouldn’t have raised a grievance.

I happen to be VERY offended by the fact you’ve hurt my feelings by not validating the opinions I’ve expressed on this thread… I’ve said I’m offended, and that should be enough! Or are you going to refuse to believe me and are calling me a liar? If we were in a work setting, I’d absolutely raise a grievance against you, and I’d expect HR to believe that you have genuinely upset me and uphold my grievance for your show of disdain and disrespect for my opinions, and reprimand you accordingly.

Obviously what I wrote above is nonsense, but hopefully it made my point. Being offended isn’t grounds in itself to raise a grievance as it’s so damn subjective!

As a single comment it wasn’t gonna go anywhere. It’s grey enough to dismiss as a misunderstanding. However he knows now “you can’t say anything” or some other statement he’ll tell himself. If you’d written down and dated more comments you might have had some mileage especially when they’d asked other staff if they found he regularly made sexual innuendos. Make sure you guys write them down individually and ie
i.e don’t make it look like a bullying witch hunt) if you want to take it further in future.

Agreeing with previous posters… you were getting your lips pumped, it’s entirely factual what he said

No, I don't get your point. I haven't said anything to you that constitutes a sexual innuendo, nor have I delivered it to you in a leering way that makes it obvious it's intended to be sexual innuendo. The OP isn't 'choosing' to be offended by some innocuous comment. Any sexual harrassment in the workplace is obviously unacceptable. It's disappointing how many posters - on MN of all places - are choosing to believe the office sleaze over the OP.

What I mean is don’t be setting up innuendo watch WhatsApp groups to record. 😄 you’ll need to be more circumspect in your gathering of info

Well said.

And to a PP pump and dump has always meant expressing breast milk to me.

So, it just goes to show how ambiguous some expressions are.

Who is denying that OP was offended by it? She obviously was, but her being offended by it does not make it sexual harassment. Sexual harassment isn’t only about words, no, but an allegation needs to be evidenced in order to be proven, and neither OP nor her colleagues that would have been spoken to during the course of the investigation provided that evidence.

I’m not denying that pumped can be used as a euphemism for fucked either. What I’m saying is that it isn’t at all clear that he was using it as one here when he could very believably have merely been using common vernacular to literally describe what OP was doing.

First, unless I missed something, the OP didn’t give any indication that he delivered the remark in a suggestive manner.

Second, as should be clear from this thread, most people wouldn’t recognise this as sexual innuendo in the first place!

So it is all about being offended by a highly subjective interpretation of words that a clear majority wouldn’t interpret as innuendo. By your own admission, almost anything could be turned into innuendo if you really wanted to, meaning that no one is safe to say anything in your world, as:

1. Almost anything said could be interpreted as innuendo.

2)If it’s perceived as innuendo it must be recognised as such, and the perpetrator hung out to dry.

The shame here is that some women take the rights that have been hard won, and distort and stretch them too far, undermining those rights in the process.

I did understand the innuendo, but only after I'd sat here and scratched my head for a minute. It could be perfectly innocent, and coming from any number of my own colleagues, that's the assumption I'd have made. But as op knows this colleague well, my assumption is that this is the kind of thing he's 'known' for. I've known a few of these over the years, who will make something mucky and inappropriate out of seemingly innocent things. Some are so good at it double meanings that it's never obvious to 'outsiders' why someone (usually a woman) felt uncomfortable about it. It can be very subtle, so HR departments struggle unless it's a pattern of reported behaviour.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.