But it’s actually not easy at all to demonstrate that conduct is sufficiently severe, or sufficiently pervasive, to succeed in a claim of sexual harassment. It’s important to emphasize this because otherwise many people will take the attitude “what’s the point in trying to conform my conduct to the law if any stupid little thing can break the law?”
A certain unnamed intelligence agency has a “zero tolerance policy” towards sexual harassment. They state that they will take action the first time it happens. I not so innocently asked (no I not an employee, but they made all contractors take the course) if it occurs only once then how can it be sexual harassment? That caused the government compliance officer to hesitate for a moment before he answered that we take sexual harassment very seriously and therefore we will not allow it to happen even once. I said that is your prerogative but by definition it is not sexual harassment. He responded by repeating that that was their policy. At this point I decided that discretion is the better part of valor and I shut up.
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Ken is just priceless. His wit and wisdom are very funny. Its a rare thing to be able to combine the two together.
But it’s actually not easy at all to demonstrate that conduct is sufficiently severe, or sufficiently pervasive, to succeed in a claim of sexual harassment. It’s important to emphasize this because otherwise many people will take the attitude “what’s the point in trying to conform my conduct to the law if any stupid little thing can break the law?”
A certain unnamed intelligence agency has a “zero tolerance policy” towards sexual harassment. They state that they will take action the first time it happens. I not so innocently asked (no I not an employee, but they made all contractors take the course) if it occurs only once then how can it be sexual harassment? That caused the government compliance officer to hesitate for a moment before he answered that we take sexual harassment very seriously and therefore we will not allow it to happen even once. I said that is your prerogative but by definition it is not sexual harassment. He responded by repeating that that was their policy. At this point I decided that discretion is the better part of valor and I shut up.