I don't know whether to report my boss or not. Help me with my dilemma please, long sorry

[sweetcat]

Bit of background:

The most senior man in my company works in the same office as me and although I don't report directly to him he involves himself in all aspects of my work simply because he hears everything.

He is old style management - non PC, aggressive, nasty and I have put in a grievance about him once before when he reduced me to tears after months of haranguing and lecturing. It did not do any good and the atmosphere in the office was awful.

HR told me to ignore him - "that's the way he is" so I don't know what to do about what he said today.

Convo as follows, not to me but in earshot as it's a small office (manager in question I will call J):

A: XXX is on long term sick
J: who's he?
A: He's the gay one
J: what's he off with, AIDS ha ha ha ha

I know I should have said something to him but TBH he frightens me. I have decided to tell him on Monday that what he said was totally unacceptable but I don't know whether to go to HR about him.

Thanks for reading, what would you do?

do you not have some sort of harassment policy in place? like equivalent of reporting racist incidents? I'd def report this, I certainly wouldn't want to have to listen to shite like that at the workplace.

I would say 'I overheard what you said on Friday regarding X and I found your comments completely unacceptable. I will not report your comments to HR in this instance - however I wish you to be aware of my feelings on this matter for future reference'

Could you go to HR and share your concerns in confidence? I would feel more comfortable with this than confronting him directly - he sounds vile and nasty.

Thanks all. I am definitely going to tell him on Monday that I thought that what he said was unnacceptable. But, I am undecided about whether to make it official or not. I am looking for another job but until I find one I have to be in the same office as him.

He makes me very unhappy but, as the most senior person, everyone seems to put up with him.

dustbuster - he is vile and nasty. The amount of other senior people who have complained about him is in double figures and I am quite lowly in the organisation. He can make my life even worse. HR have been useless in the past.

I will think it over....

If loads of people have complained, it does seem fairly unlikely that a formal complaint from you will actually result in much action against him. Have these other complaints been actual formal grievances, using the grievance procedure? If not, that might be the only way to get some action, but you might understandably not want to be the one that initiates that.

I think your plan of telling him is a good one. I would suggest you also at least consider recording your concerns formally with HR. Even if you don't want or expect them to take any action, or if you don't want it to be a formal grievance, records of complainst/actual details of incidents like this might be invaluable later on should action eventually be taken.

Thanks flowery. Yes, the other complaints against him have been formal grievances. One manager I know was off with stress for 6 months and cited this boss as the reason. Still nothing was done.

I don't think he will ever change, he sees nothing wrong in his techniques. I think I will go to HR and see what they say. Like I said, I am very unhappy at work and it shouldn't be that way should it?