I've been WFH three days a week till recently, but due to departmental changes and someone off on maternity leave I've been required to go into the office four days a week for at least the next six months. There's a newish office manager, who's often the only other person on site when I'm there. We're in new premises, with individual offices only for the two senior managers who drop in a couple of times a week. I have to work in an open plan area where Madge, the office manager, also works.
I've never encountered a female colleague who has made my flesh crawl before, but she does. I've taken to sitting as far away as possible from her (I've said it's so that we don't keep overhearing each other's phone calls and can focus on our work) but every hour or so she rocks up at my work station and pulls up a chair so close that her knees are touching my leg and touches my shoulder or arm and launches into some wildly inappropriate conversation. 'I'm thinking of standing as a Reform councillor' was today's first foray. 'You wouldn't like that, would you, with your politics...' She doesn't know my politics. I try not to get hooked into conversation and end up every time having to say 'Look, I'm busy, this'll have to wait for some other time' and turning away, which leaves me feeling as if I'm being rude. A couple of times recently I've just held up my hand with my palm flat to her as she's approached and said, 'Unless it's a work-related issue, NO' and she's called me rude. It's not just the constant interruptions, it's her insinuating, sexualised banter. She always speculating on whether colleagues are sleeping together or looking for salacious gossip. I've told her I really don't like sexual innuendo and it's best kept out of the office, so now she comes up and says something vaguely smutty to me and then says, 'Oh, sorry, I forgot you don't like that kind of thing.'
Last week, when there were a couple of other people in the office for a few hours. They laughed when she did her dirty-old-man style jokes, though I'm not sure they enjoyed it. At once point she came and whispered into my ear rather than talking to me normally. Bent down so that she had her cleavage in my face, put a hand firmly on my shoulder and whispered something — not sure what, I was so stunned — within an inch of my ear. Hot breath on my cheek and neck. It was horrible. I was so repelled I was too slow to respond.
I'm not normally like this, I'm quite a tactile person. At work I can do a bit of appropriate shoulder patting with consent or a reassuring hug if requested, but I felt violated by her. Perhaps for clarity I should say I'm a woman.
Yesterday I talked to my manager and listed several inappropriate incidents like those I've mentioned here. He thought it was funny at first, then when I said how harassed and uncomfortable I felt, said he'd pass my email listing her behaviour to our HR person. But he also said that it's important that we all try to overcome our personal prejudices and get along with people, even if we don't like their politics, which left me feeling as if I'm the unreasonable one and have lost perspective. Am I being over-sensitive?