Update: Called to HR for behaviour at an after-work event.

[DrLoveHandles]

Morning MNers. I wanted to say a massive thank you to people who replied to my panicked thread on Tuesday about being called to HR. And thank you to people who DMed me as well. It was such a big help to get some perspective and to know how to prepare. Thank you!

Here’s the original thread: Page 40 | Called to HR for behaviour at an after-work event. Thoughts, please... | Mumsnet

Right, an update:
I had the meeting with HR this morning. It was a fact-finding meeting. I took a colleague from another department who made copious notes.

Basically, a complaint has been lodged against the guy who asked me “Why aren’t you drinking?” because he made inappropriate and unprofessional comments to a junior female member of staff after I’d left the drinks reception last week.

In response, he’s lodged a counter-complaint to say that he was ostracised and bullied at the event by several women. I am one of the women he's named, saying that I spoke unprofessionally and condescendingly, citing a couple of Respect At Work type policies. He hasn't lodged complaints about individual women but, I think, about the event and event organisers itself saying that they/it created a non-inclusive and hostile atmosphere for men, partly perpetrated by the women who were mean to him. The event itself was about a "woman's issue" so, yes, it was mostly of interest to women.

HR wanted to hear my side of the story which I told them as recommended by several posters (thank you again!). I told them he asked me an intrusive and unprofessional question which could raise issues re. several protected characteristics. I told them that I tried giving “soft no” answer as a social cue to avoid social awkwardness or embarrassment (i.e. the thing he’s accusing me of), then moved to be firm and clear (as taught on the leadership course) before I left the conversation.

I said that if my experience is anything to go by, his perception of being “ostracised” or “bullied” is very likely to be women setting professional boundaries – there are a few policies that talk about this which I cited.

HR said that its very unlikely his complaint will go anywhere, but they have to hear everything that happened that evening and fully investigate. I’m just waiting to hear back about that.

They’re going to use what happened to me (him persistently asking why I’m not drinking) as evidence of a pattern of his behaviour that evening in support of the original complaint about him.

But he hasn’t been out in his place. @DrLoveHandles has said it will all be swept under the carpet.

This site is infested with them. It has been for years.

Funny, isn't it? The last thing I'd want is frequent the manosphere to lecture men about the errors of their ways. I've no wish to see anything they have to say.

That seems to me the fundamental difference between women and men. Men are simply incapable of leaving women alone.

That's academia. I've seen this happen on myriad occasions.

In one of the more serious cases of harassment I've experienced, the man was eventually forced to leave (after a long and very emotionally gruelling PRF procedure). But boy, was I made to suffer for it. Apparently my correct course of action would have been to put up, shut up, and simply absorb his behaviour. Or, more conveniently, I must have been lying. Women lie. Men don't abuse. That's the message society has absorbed: no doubt relevant to the comments about the patriarchy which are like swiss cheese further upthread.

I read the reports of some of the witnesses to the fact, and they were nearly as devastating as the harrasment itself. Thankfully most colleagues who even remember this sorry episode have long since moved on. One hasn't. I afford that colleague the minimum possible basic courtesy required to do the job, and this is someone I always got on well with before.

It was a long time ago but this is something I can't look past. That colleague knows exactly what the score is.

He was put in his place when OP told him what was what. He cried and told on her and several other women.

Picking on women and then coming unstuck and his colleagues knowing about it is his him being put in his place.

You're welcome 🙂

He didn't cry on her - someone else reported him!
He was put in his place by OP, I agree.
It remains to be seen what HR will do, but it wasn't him that cried to HR.

Oh whatever 😂 When questioned he claimed he was ostracised by several women etc. I'm not going back and reading it all again to be exact for you, I don't care.

Is this thread not over and done with? Why hang around here with the incels while they desperately tell themselves stories about patriarchy and academia and what HR will or won't do?

He went to a work event with a plan to bully women and it didn't go his way. Live with it.

He’s not been put in his place. Quite the opposite. HR isn’t going to do anything so he will very smugly say that it’s proof that he was the wronged party.