Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

HR rejected grievance I made against Colleague

642 replies

RockNRoll25 · 30/06/2025 18:11

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?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
5
Holdonforsummer · 30/06/2025 20:17

I’d be more embarrassed that I was actually getting my lips pumped. What are women doing to themselves (and the feminist cause) these days?

Loopytiles · 30/06/2025 20:17

I’m a bit slow on getting innuendo, but it seems clear! His explanation would - at a stretch - make the specific comment plausible in isolation, and presumably and unfortunately no one has reported him for the other comments you have mentioned and no one they interviewed brought them up.

His boss sounds weak.

KrisAkabusi · 30/06/2025 20:18

Nobody refers to lip filler as getting lips pumped. Nobody

Google "her lips pumped". You'll get dozens of articles from the Mail, Sun, Mirror etc, referring to celebrities who have had "her lips pumped with fillers". It's a very common phrase.

Annalouisa · 30/06/2025 20:18

Boutonnière · 30/06/2025 18:29

But It’s a reasonable description? After considering it again I can just about see where you could call it innuendo, but frankly it’s a stretch and you are putting obscene meaning into something that may or not have been meant. You are being ridiculous.

"frankly it’s a stretch" is a good summary of what the OP was doing with her lips on her day off. And no, this is not an innuendo. 😆

NiftyGreyRaven · 30/06/2025 20:21

Seeingadistance · 30/06/2025 19:26

"Pumped" also, per the dictionary, has the very non-crude meaning of something "being filled with liquid or gas". And "lips" are also the ones everyone has on their face, and which the OP was having filled.

Show quote history

Yes, hence the innuendo.

harriethoyle · 30/06/2025 20:23

RockNRoll25 · 30/06/2025 18:20

Apologies, reading back it’s probably difficult to comment without the context.

Basically - I had a random day off and one of the things I was doing was getting my lip filler topped up. Most of my colleagues knew this. Another colleague asked me what I was doing with my day off (in ear shot of the colleague I complained about) and he said ‘she’s getting her lips pumped’.

He is the oldest member on the team and makes inappropriate jokes most days which people pass off as ‘that’s just X being X’. He knew exactly what he was doing making that comment.

I’m really sorry but even knowing that your view is it was innuendo I’m struggling to see how it was sexually inappropriate. If I were your employer I would have rejected your complaint too unless there’s more to it…

BelindaCardAisle · 30/06/2025 20:24

You clearly don't like the man, and want him to stop the comments (and he does sound like a creep) but honestly I'm not surprised HR dropped it.
If anything, your colleague should have complained about the performing comment.

Madcats · 30/06/2025 20:25

In the nicest possible way, there is no need to take your “authentic self” to work. “I just want a day off” would have sufficed.

Christ0nABike · 30/06/2025 20:26

BunnyVV · 30/06/2025 19:21

I can’t believe everyone here who doesn’t understand. Nobody refers to lip filler as getting lips pumped. Nobody.
nobody has a right to answer a question intended for someone else.
the fact he did interrupt and ensure he answered first shows he knew his intention was for everyone to hear the innuendo.
the only reference I know to pumped is sexual. The common word for facial lips is filled and nothing else.
this man intentionally used the word pumped. And he interrupted as he wanted everyone to hear.
HR have a duty to protect you from sexual harassment.

Ok, but I have personally never heard of ‘pumped’ meaning a sexual thing, so no I wouldn’t take it as innuendo at all!!

Arseynal · 30/06/2025 20:27

I’ve never heard of sex called pumped. Like a pp it means farted where I come from and isn’t a bit sexual. I understand that labia are lips but who refers to their vagina as lips? Nobody says “I’m having my lips pumped” to mean sex. If this unfunny and rude man is constantly making sexual innuendos you should have picked a far less ambiguous one to try and get his sacked over.

Lovemycat2023 · 30/06/2025 20:27

if there is a pattern of behaviour keep recording it - exact words, people involved etc, and then go back to HR and ask how they are complying with the new obligation (came in in October I think?) to protect you. www.gov.uk/government/news/new-protections-from-sexual-harassment-come-into-force

samarrange · 30/06/2025 20:28

I don't know what the standard of proof is to uphold an HR grievance. It's probably "balance of probabilities" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt". But I don't think this even meets "balance of probabilities".

As PP have shown, there are many people, most of them presumably women, who don't see anything wrong in what the man said. So that's where it's going to end. The HR committee will have asked, "Is it proven that this remark was offensive", and they will have decided that there is a very reasonable chance that it was innocent. On that basis, the system stops and the grievance is dismissed. That might in fact be objectively the wrong decision, but only in a universe that we can't visit, where we can look inside the guy's head and find out what he actually meant.

So OP, I think you're going to have to file this under "shit happens" and move on, because there does not seem to be anything manifestly unreasonable about the decision, and that's going to be the appeal criterion. An appeal is not just asking for another roll of the dice, you have to show that the original decision was wrong because of specific reasons, and those reasons can't just be "I had a really good case", because the case was presumably examined.

PulchritudinousLycanthrope · 30/06/2025 20:28

PaterPower · 30/06/2025 18:24

Maybe it was the way he said it but, on the face of it, it’s a stretch to see sexual innuendo in “getting her lips pumped”

I agree with this. He was factually correct.

Leave it.

PinkyFlamingo · 30/06/2025 20:29

Hopefully he wont be making any more inappropriate comments to you now as he knows you will complain again. But it's not HRs fault he had an explanation and they couldnt do anything.

Eldermileniummam · 30/06/2025 20:29

I think if it was a one off comment you're overreacting even if it was possibly said with hidden meaning. I'm not saying it's right but I don't think I'd be raiding a grievance for a one off comment like that.

godmum56 · 30/06/2025 20:29

I an sorry to say that I think that the problem is that you chose the wrong comment to report. HR have to be impartial, and while this walks right along the line IMO, it could be arguable that the comment was not made with intent. I am not an HR bod but was an NHS manager for years and liaised with HR over many complaints, some against me and my fellow managers, some as an independent investigator, some made to me by staff about other staff.

Sunshineandoranges · 30/06/2025 20:29

Surely what he sad was true. I don’t get the sexual innuendo,?

TrainGame · 30/06/2025 20:30

I also wouldn't have thought much of it, as it never occured to me to think of other lips. I wouldn't have liked a man commenting on what I was doing to my body but on the other hand, I'd never get my lips filled.

Also we don't know how full your lips are, perhaps they do look 'pumped'? I mean some do look very over the top.

I'd also never share with anyone any of the cosmetic treatments I'm doing... it's a bit odd isn't it? It's like saying I'm not happy with this aspect of myself in everyone else's eyes, so to please you all and make myself less insecure, I'm going to alter myself so I fit the world view of what beauty is.

Just weird. I've found people who share their stuff like Katie Price really insecure about their whole physical self. It's almost like some sort of competition to show how much needs changing to somehow achieve 'perfection' - but in whose eyes?

Bigcat25 · 30/06/2025 20:30

It can refer to orak too, which makes it less of a stretch. I would have reported what he said to the other woman as well.

ArabellaScott · 30/06/2025 20:31

LittlleMy · 30/06/2025 18:27

The fact the colleague has form for this and answered on behalf of OP even though Q was not directed at him so he must have been pretty fast and so desperate to reply and the way that he termed it is clear innuendo wordplay for for vaginal (lips) intercourse (pumped).

However, yes technically that it was OP was having done but in the context of how it was said you can see why OP had an issue with it.

But I also see HR pov and he could argue nothing was meant by it so it’s difficult to be shocked by the outcome because of that.

Edited
Show quote history

Seriously?! I would never have got that from his comment at all. And I don't think I'm all that naive.

I guess it's hard to tell without context and tone, OP.

silentlyleavetheirlife · 30/06/2025 20:31

Without knowing what was said there’s no way to give my opinion on what I think x

Bigcat25 · 30/06/2025 20:31

Sunshineandoranges · 30/06/2025 20:29

Surely what he sad was true. I don’t get the sexual innuendo,?

They are being filled not pumped.

Arran2024 · 30/06/2025 20:32

Are you hoping to get him sacked?

samarrange · 30/06/2025 20:32

KrisAkabusi · 30/06/2025 20:18

Nobody refers to lip filler as getting lips pumped. Nobody

Google "her lips pumped". You'll get dozens of articles from the Mail, Sun, Mirror etc, referring to celebrities who have had "her lips pumped with fillers". It's a very common phrase.

Yep, even the BBC!

BBC Three - Face The Consequences, Series 2, Lip Fillers

A woman risked her life getting her lips pumped and now meets two lip filler enthusiasts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07vb39k

GoldPoster · 30/06/2025 20:36

LittlleMy · 30/06/2025 18:27

The fact the colleague has form for this and answered on behalf of OP even though Q was not directed at him so he must have been pretty fast and so desperate to reply and the way that he termed it is clear innuendo wordplay for for vaginal (lips) intercourse (pumped).

However, yes technically that it was OP was having done but in the context of how it was said you can see why OP had an issue with it.

But I also see HR pov and he could argue nothing was meant by it so it’s difficult to be shocked by the outcome because of that.

Edited
Show quote history

This is totally stretching it. Some people clearly have dirty minds and it’s not him