For the first time in my life, I wish I had a reaction gif ready to hand. So I'll just let someone else find an image to put to this:
They make really sleek and comfortable golden handcuffs these days, don't they? It's like the golden age of handcuffs.
I don't get anything about this post. Are we a community of YouTube stars?
I would watch the Minivet-unboxes-things show. You're much less likely to be a secret white supremacist than most youtubers.
Oh, I think it's attempting to link to "Carson, Cruz or Trump?" but jumped to the youtube link instead. I was responding to the job/life-satisfaction question in the youtube post.
Oh, I see. Yes, that post is the one the link is pointing to, but I think the embedded tweet in one of the above posts pushes it down making it look like the destination is "youtube famous".
We had a choice between Carson, Cruz, and Trump, and we chose the wrong one.
I seem to have sensibly not taken a position, but the one that catches my eye is RT's:
If there was an actual organized for real American fascist party behind him I'd feel differently
The flaw with this (in retrospect, granted) is that things don't necessarily build in the exact same sequence as Nazi Germany. Right now Trump would probably be Hitler if he had millions of blackshirts behind him, thankfully he doesn't, but the way things are going, he might be the catalyst to such a force existing in, say, ten years' time.
I dunno. If you think all Republican administrations would have been equally awful, then at least Trump is spectacularly ineffectual and shoots own goals all the time. Which will not console me if there is a nuclear war.
Follow-up to make up for my mistake: did anyone read the Jane Mayer Pence profile? (It's pretty dull! She tried!) Does that affect your feelings about your previous position?
I seem to have sensibly not taken a position, but the one that catches my eye is RT's:
Apparently I was even more sensible. I didn't take a position, and replied to push back on the quoted comment.
Even in retrospect I don't have a good answer to the question.
Norwegian income tax forms are public records-- yours, your neighbor's, your horrible coworker's. I think this practice would sharply reduce the incentive to spend for appearances. Snooping is not anonymous; looking at a tax form generates a message to the subject of the query.
One suitable gif might be 50 cent posing with piles of (what turned out to be) fake money.
It doesn't exactly sound like the "mid-level" youtube personalities are exactly enjoying it.
I have considered making a youtube recording of a prose poem I really like, Auden's Caliban to his Audience. It shouldn't be a talking head video, but I can't decide what's suitable visually-- maybe footage taken out of the window of a moving train, or a fire.
I would pay plenty of real money to see footage of you (unharmed) reading Auden from inside a burning train.
10: Well, you were certainly paying attention to the right kind of things.
7: Per my 43 in that thread, that RT quote "suggests that he is more sanguine about the ongoing evolution of the Republican Party than I am."
I'll stand by that. Like RT, though, in that scenario I favored Trump, for reasons that Megan describes in 8.
All three were nuclear war risks. Here is Cruz in today's NYT being dumb about North Korea.
Here is Trump in today's NYT, randomly fucking around with rich people's tax cuts in a way that is unimaginable for Cruz.
I would pay plenty of real money to see footage of you (unharmed) reading Auden from inside a burning train.
If you don't want to go that far, maybe something like this Scroobius Pip video.
Whoops I see we are discussing the next thread. I see Carson, Roy Moore, and Trump as linked-- many people are voting for the most outrageous candidate on the ticket, or maybe the one that they think will most anger their percieved enemies.
I think I stand by my position: Carson best, then Trump, then Cruz. But I was already pretty sure that Trump would be as bad as he has been.
In that thread we avoided electability discussion, but FWIW, I think Trump was the only one of the three who could have won. Carson simply had no appeal, and the press would have treated Cruz completely differently.
And of course Trump only came close because of Comey (which, to be explicit, I think plays out very, very differently with Cruz or any other ordinary pol opponent).
I think I shared a fair number of delusions about Trump with Charley - mainly that Trump was a rational actor. A businessman!
But part of my calculation in favor of Trump was a clear-eyed view of the total fucked-upedness of the remainder of the Republican Party. The fact that Cruz was closer to standard-issue Republicanism than Trump carried no weight with me whatsoever. Standard-issue Republicanism distinguishes itself from Trumpism primarily through its comparative subtlety, and not through its policy goals.
In retrospect a whole lot of people were super-infected with Hillary-hate which the media allowed itself to stoke, somewhat unwittingly. That would have helped Cruz too.
I mean, we always knew it was a lot of people in absolute terms, but I don't think we realized it would be so determinative for so much of the less politically engaged population.
Plus all the voter suppression, I guess.
No idea if Russia would have pulled for Cruz.
Cruz is too Cuban/Canadian for the asshole-vote.
23: But a Clinton-Cruz matchup would have treated policy as a topic worthy of discussion, which the MSM essentially ignored entirely IRL. Also, I don't think they would have taken the "HRC is going to be president, time to start opposing her now" take with a relatively conventional opponent.
And then there's the countless hours of free coverage they gave Trump. Given how repulsive Cruz is, I think it's a given that CNN wouldn't have cut away to his every speech no matter what.
ZOMG. Do you think Mitch hates Cruz enough that he would have allowed Obama to go public with the Russia stuff?
ZOMG. Do you think Mitch hates Cruz enough that he would have allowed Obama to go public with the Russia stuff?
If Cruz looks like he's losing Mitch doesn't want to have the situation get worse because a blow-out would hurt down-ticket races.
But a Clinton-Cruz matchup would have treated policy as a topic worthy of discussion, which the MSM essentially ignored entirely IRL.
What's the mechanism for this hypothetical?
Tangential, but there have been so many cases of pure projection by Trump ("there's a tweet for every situation") it wouldn't surprise me if he turned out to be a black Muslim born in Kenya.
What's the mechanism for this hypothetical?
Cruz actually having a basic understanding of policy is a start.
11.1 is interesting. How did that happen? How do people use it?
I think this is looking pretty good in retrospect:
the point about a US president (an outside observer writes) is that he can apparently do virtually nothing he wants to within the US but virtually anything he wants to outside it. So surely that's the lens you should be using. Carson, of the three, is the least likely to have an insanely aggressive or accidentally catastrophic foreign policy, so surely he's the right choice?
Tangential, but there have been so many cases of pure projection by Trump ("there's a tweet for every situation") it wouldn't surprise me if he turned out to be a black Muslim born in Kenya.
I've been saying he's a secret Muslim for some time now. Look at those early-morning tweets. Really, does he strike you as the sort of person who leaps out of bed at six in the morning out of sheer energy and joie de vivre? Nope, he's got some good reason to be awake before dawn every day.
You can't use it from outside Norway, is one important point. The tabloids, in Sweden, publish annual lists of which bastards have paid most tax, the bastards. You can't seriously, run a moderately egalitarian society without harnessing envy.
If only 34 could get the traction of Marian Hyde's "Melania's double" joke
38: exactly.
And he has several wives.
And he never goes to church.
And he seems to get on really well with Muslim leaders, while being on really adverse terms with people like Trudeau (Catholic) and Merkel (Lutheran). Almost like he's got something really important in common with them.
And look at the way he decorates his home! Where else do you see something like that? In the palace of every Arab leader in the entire Middle East.
And I never saw him eat anything during the day in Ramadan.
In fact, we could probably back out an estimate of his actual income if we assume that his public charitable donations are no more than the 2.5% zakat.
My point about the kind of advisers Trump would pick has held up all too well, although I'd still take a buffoon like Bannon over David Addington.
Bannon's face has that nice waxy, mask look of somebody who is managing to not quite drink themselves to death.
So, Comey is standing in a field in Iowa and calling himself "Reinhold Niebuhr".
Just a traditional rite of passage that must be undertaken by white American men before they can ascend to elder status.
dalriata has spent the last month lying in a field of barley and calling himself William Butler Yeats, but it doesn't seem to be working yet.
39 - remember when he refused to shake hands with Angela Merkel?
I think you can make a better case that Trump is the anti-Christ than that he's a Muslim.
I thought the Antichrist started out by uniting all races and nations?
47: good point!
And all those times he tries to sneak away from signing ceremonies before actually signing the executive order he's there to sign? That's because for it to be legally enforceable he'd have to sign it with his real name, which is Haji Donald Abdullah Trump.
I think maybe that's just what the premillennial dispensationalists say. If Trump stands at the Wailing Wall with Netanyahu, I think maybe it's all over.
51 is also one reason why he hasn't had any major legislative accomplishments; the other is, of course, that he disagrees fundamentally with legislating, since all law and wisdom is already encompassed in the sharia and hadith.
If Trump stands at the Wailing Wall with Netanyahu
I fully expect to see Trump awkwardly shuckling. (Rocking whle davening.)
46: Such is the way of my people.
Jesus, pre-ministry, was a carpenter. The one who actually builds: you know, a patsy. Mohammed, however, was a merchant. A deal-maker.
That said, I can't imagine Trump decreeing the abolition of television any time soon...
I can't imagine Trump decreeing the abolition of television any time soon...
The only reason he doesn't communicate entirely through blurry videos posted to YouTube is that tweeting is less effort.
And this will cease to be true once someone shows him how to use Siri.
Sounds too Hindu. Someone will have to rename her first.
(That's the Microsoft one, d'oh.)
"I see you're trying to calculate the Qibla..."
"It looks like you're trying to avoid Xenu. Would you like help removing your engrams?"
How are you feeling about your position?
I'm afraid I'm not clear on why the earlier, linked post posed this as a question between Carson, Trump and Cruz. A thought experiment, no doubt.
Among those three, I'd still go with Trump, alas. Widening the field, I'd go for Rubio or Jeb Bush. Or John Kasich.
Trump's greatest form of damage is in outsourcing his cabinet and administration in general to people who are .. not good. They're strokers. Not good at all. I'm thinking of the EPA (Scott Pruitt), the Dept. of Education (deVos), Interior Dept. (Ryan Zinke), and, well .. he hasn't actually filled the top positions at, as I recall, HHS, FEMA, DHS. I'm losing track.
So I guess part of the question is whether an alternative Republican candidate would at least have staffed the federal government. And if he had, would it have been an improvement over what we have now. I'm not sure about that. (Long-time federal government employees - civil servants -- actually do run things, which may be for the best.)
Nope, he's got some good reason to be awake before dawn every day.
I hate to be a naysayer, but he's 71. He has to pee.
69 is great, but not as good as watersports.
College watersports is better than professional.
People only watch those for the accidents.
Pro watersports seemed like harmless fun among consenting adults, but recent studies have shown that the regular and sustained application of force can cause damage to the skull.
We're closer to the pee tape than we ever have been before.
something something p-value something
But it turns out that the peeing hookers were Hillary's idea all along, so it's not his fault. Benghazi!
he hasn't actually filled the top positions at, as I recall, HHS, FEMA, DHS. I'm losing track.
Well, he did fill HHS, but the guy turned out to be so dodgy he resigned. Similarly, he had appointed a DHS secretary, but had to bring him in as chief of staff because he appointed a hedge fund manager as head of communications who immediately told a journalist that the chief of staff was a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, and that his boss's chief strategist was trying to suck his own cock..
That was less than three months ago, by the way.
79: Tom Tomorrow described how the subjective passage of time has changed under Trump.
On the bright side, by distorting our sense of time--lengthening each week into agonizing years--Trump is making us effectively immortal.
Isn't that the definition of hell, you're immortal but living in a reality where you wish you could die? Another piece of evidence on the Anti-Christ side of the argument.
Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβνλλα τί ϴέλεις; respondebat illa: άπο ϴανεΐν ϴέλω."
Can they imagine the darkness that will fall from on high
When men will beg God to kill them and they won't be able to die?
There was a sketch on some sketch comedy show (maybe "The State") about a guy who wakes up from a coma, and find out that his wife has remarried, and the Earth has been taken over by aliens, and a bunch of other stuff. It turns out he's been in a coma for half a day, and his wife shouts "You missed the most dramatic half a day in human history!" I feel that way about the Trump administration.
I'm sure this will all be worth it for the manufacturing jobs.
|| So there was a company party the other night, and one of my direct reports - a woman - and I were chatting, and the Weinstein business came up. And she said that there were similar people in senior positions at our company, harassing women, even assaulting them, and all the women at the company knew but none of them bothered to report it because they didn't think anything would be done because none of the other senior managers would take it seriously including the ones who are explicitly supposed to deal with issues like this. And I said rather loudly well, here I am, I am a fairly senior manager and I give you my word I am going to take this seriously, who are these harassers, give me names. And she wouldn't. She described the harassment and assaults in detail, and she dropped hint after hint about the perpetrators' identities that were obviously intended to point me in the right direction but weren't specific enough to be unambiguous (as in they narrowed it down to maybe half a dozen possibilities but no further), but every time I asked her for an actual name, or even to confirm my guess at a name based on her hints, she refused to give one. In the end I gave up.
What was going on?
|>
89: Isn't it pretty obvious? She's clear-eyed about the likelihood of retaliation. It doesn't take much for execs to snap back to "Witch hunt! Witch hunt! Crazy attention-seeker!" From how you describe it it doesn't sound like you're necessarily senior to all the people she's pointed you to, and even if you are, there could be other protectors in higher places.
I thought about that, but a) I am still senior enough to be able to make a considerable stink and b) she didn't mention retaliation either actual or potential, just a belief that complaints would simply be ignored, and c) in that case, why bring it up at all?
Feeling out the landscape before deciding to bring something into the open or not?
Yeah, lots of reasons are possible. Frustration. Hoping you could keep your eyes open for other women who are ready to come forward, or be better able to notice these incidents yourself.
Anyway, naming names in front of somebody senior is losing any ability to control the situation and increasing the risk. Plus, you're asking her to report other women's stories, not her own, thus asking her to take a risk that would rebound on them.
I think you'd be better off asking her to let people know you're available and open if anybody does want to come forward rather than asking for names.
I did also try (hopefully successfully) to get 94.2 across. I didn't just storm off in a huff.
It also sounds like she's not necessarily one of the victims, which could make her uncomfortable about being the one on the record when it's all second-hand and so unlikely to stick if she's the only one on the record.
The feeling out comment makes sense, I mean now you know there's a problem and maybe if you have a few more conversations like this you'll be able to piece together enough to not just know who did it but have enough info to do something about it.
I've wondered for a little while whether there's a good context to ask about whether there's anyone with a sexual harassment problem in my department. It seems too on-the-spot-putting to ask a current graduate student, but maybe a recent graduate who I know well or maybe some women postdocs would know and I could ask after they had a job.
One shouldn't be too literal about the word "ignore." It may well not mean 'won't take the complaint seriously' but instead mean 'won't take action sufficient to sanction the people involved to in a way sufficient both punish offenders and deter others.' Can you promise *that*?
Ramsay, I'm curious, if she named names, what would you do with that information? What's your plan?
You'd "make a considerable stink," but to what end? Even in a sympathetic corporate culture -- something she says doesn't exist there -- there's a lot of process to go through to deal with one abuser. And she contends there are more than one.
From what you've said so far, I think she was sticking her neck out to broach the subject with you at all, and from your reaction, it's easy to understand why she wouldn't want to share anything further.
You seem to imagine a scenario where your interlocutor 1.) believes that nothing would be done, and 2.) doesn't fear some form of blowback.
In an organization that doesn't deal with this sort of problem, the possibility of retaliation against whistleblowers is simply assumed by anyone with any sense at all. The fact that "she didn't mention retaliation either actual or potential" is evidence of nothing except your lack of empathy for her situation.
(Do I sound nasty here? I'm not trying to. I know your heart is in the right place, but you seem really naive.)
Because of the nature of the organisation, there's very limited scope for blowback. Most of the conventional avenues for revenge (such as blocking promotions) simply don't exist.
(You're just going to have to take my word on this one. Or just accuse me of being an ignorant naive sociopath again because you think you know way more about my organisation than I do. Either's good.)
As for my plan of action: one of my responsibilities is to deal with this sort of issue when it arises. I'm not just some interested senior person, I'm actually the person (or one of the people) that she should be complaining to, hence my wanting to get names. There is a mechanism for complaints of this kind against senior managers, I've seen it used in cases of bullying and discrimination against senior people and it functions well.
Because of the nature of the organisation, there's very limited scope for blowback.
A few years ago, I had a problem with one of my coworkers (which I've discussed a bit in these pages). I was very, very reluctant to go to my supervisors about it. I had no realistic fear of adverse employment action. But, I thought it was very likely that my problem co-worker would remain in the same position, would stay in his office a few yards away from mine, I would have to continue to interact with him on an ongoing basis, and he and his buddies would make my life still more unpleasant in more careful, more undetectable ways. All of these fears except the last turned out to be true. I'm still glad I eventually spoke to my supervisor, and she did some things that improved my situation somewhat, but I knew she wouldn't be able to entirely fix the problem and I was right.
TLDR, I'm not at all surprised that your co-worker is reluctant, and regardless of the likelihood of material blowback, I don't think her reluctance is necessarily irrational.
Also, you were at a company party at the time. Was there a reason that you "rather loudly" asked for names then and there, rather than ask her to speak to you and HR at a more appropriate time (i.e., not a social event where presumably some of the perpetrators may have been present)?
104: Look at 96 and "I didn't just storm off in a huff." Or 104 and your suggestion that I called you an "ignorant naive sociopath." Or your original comment that you challenged her "rather loudly" when she came to you with this sensitive, private information.
I don't know you and I don't know your organization. All I've got to work with is what you say here.
What you are saying here is that when facing a challenge, you get defensive and have trouble assimilating information. Just using the incomplete evidence of this thread, there's no way I'd trust you with the kind of sensitive information you're seeking.
But you may have answered your own question. If meaningful retaliation isn't possible, then Weinstein-style coercive behavior also can't happen, and the woman is leading you astray.
I'm curious: What's your theory? Why wouldn't she name names?
Late to the party, but if she is your direct report, here is my suggestion. Have a private meeting with her, and tell her you are distressed to hear that there are problems. Walk her through what the reporting process is and what could reasonably be expected for both the accuser and the accused. Reiterate that you are very interested in helping create a better, safer work environment. I'd say she is trying to help both her coworkers and you. She was feeling you out to see how you would respond. I suspect she would convey to her coworkers whether you might be a safe person to approach for help if she thinks that is true. It sounds like you were too aggressive in the moment. I am sure none of the accusers want to feel as if they would lose control of the situation (which, by necessity, they will), and the more forceful you are, the more they feel like you would step in and steamroll their preferences for handling the problem.
Agree with those who say it wasn't her place to give you names, but she was probably trying to give you enough clues that you would be looking carefully for troubling behavoir that you could see for yourself, which would leave the victim a bit more protected from professional repercussions (either real or imagined).
Also, concrete examples of previous outcomes might be helpful. And can you listen to stories and maintain confidentiality and advise on options? That might be a useful thing to put out there.
When I was having trouble with an increasingly alarming coworker, I first wanted him to do his job. Then, I wanted more distance. Then, I wanted him fired, to be honest. He was, and I was so relieved, but I initially wanted a much less severe solution. Nobody wants to ruin someone else's life/career unless they are truly awful.
That works regardless of who the "they" refers to.
People are being kind of hard on Ramsay here, aren't you? That is, I understand why the employee complaining to him is being cagey, but I also don't think he's done anything wrong yet, and the general tone of the response he's gotten has been more hostile than usefully advisory. (Or, that's how it felt to me reading the thread.)
I don't know if I've got any useful advice, but I'll mull it over.
I think I was useful and not harsh, up until the zipper remark.
When the useful advice is boils down to "don't do much but wait," I give useful advice.
Actually, people generally weren't that harsh -- political football was, a bit, and it colored the rest of the thread for me. There was some useful advice.
110: It has been really useful as an unintentional object lesson in how these complaints are generally quashed and minimised. It must be your fault! You must have misread the situation! You're being naive! Maybe you're a little unstable? You don't sound very bright. Or trustworthy. I don't believe what you're saying is true.
Agree that Moby was helpful, as was ydnew, and that is more or less what I am planning to do. Thanks.
Speaking of political leaders and sexual harassment, is George H. W. Bush senile now or what?
I think ydnew's advice about having a non-threatening meeting with your informant is good, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's ineffective because she isn't, I'm not sure how to put this, authorized to act as an agent for the women who have been harassed. A conversation at a party (where I figure you'd both had a few drinks) sounds to as us it wasn't any kind of a plan, she slipped and told you things she had been told in confidence with the understanding that she wouldn't pass it on to senior people, and she may feel as though the women who told her would be angry with her if they found out she'd passed it on.
You've got some formal role relating to reports of discrimination. Does it make any sense to circulate some kind of memo saying that in light of the recent prominence of this kind of thing in the news, your organization reiterates that it does not tolerate harassment and that it commits to protecting complainants from retaliation, and imploring anyone who has been harassed to come forward because the organization is powerless to act against harassment it hasn't been informed of?
That is, I'm not sure if I was clear, I wouldn't count on her as a conduit of reassurance back to the harassed women, because my guess is that she's uncomfortable telling them she told you anything.
117 is good, but I'm assuming that there are many back channels of communication working here (since this sounds like multiple victims and multiple perpetrators that she has been told about), and talking to the one who spoke to Ramsay is the best way to get at those back channels. Especially if he can promise confidentiality. And I think the hinted IDs are trying to get him to keep his eyes open, not slightly tipsy near-betrayal of confidence.
I also want to put in a good word for pf, since Ramsay's original description read a little like a classical "Tell me who and I'll break his face" response that a lot of women get. I think that framing is useful to hear for self-evaluation purposes since none of us can say how it was in the moment. With considering but not worth taking personally if it wasn't the case.
Yeah, I'm sure pf meant well, and checking how Ramsey came across is a reasonable thing for him to do. Still, something about it put my back all the way up, and it wasn't even aimed in my direction; unless Ramsey is a very calm person by nature, I wouldn't be surprised if he lost the useful part of the comment due to irritation with how it was phrased. (Which is wrong! Someone tells you something useful, you should listen even if they seem hostile about it! But it is a human mistake to make.)
More direct thoughts for Ramsey, and these are kicking ideas around, not anything I'm committed to as a good idea. Anyone with experience should push back.
Just as a baseline, I'd want any communications with anyone about this to point out that under federal law (I'm assuming this is an American situation? If not, disregard this bit unless you can work out something corresponding that applies) retailiation for a complaint of discrimination is an independent offense even if the complaint is found to be baseless or unfounded. If you complain about discrimination or harassment, and your employer decides you're making it all up, and they retaliate against you for the complaint, they've violated Title VII even if a court agrees that the underlying harassment/discrimination never happened. I don't think people really get how strong these protections are. And by people, I mean employers -- that is, I think complainants, even if they know the law, reasonably worry that their employers will break it and retaliate against them. To the extent that you can actively communicate to everyone concerned that your organization genuinely knows and accepts that it is legally obliged to prevent retaliation for any claim of harassment, even an unfounded one, that might help loosen things up some.
I'm assuming, because of the pseud, this isn't an American case.
Next, we've all been focusing on the victims, as if there's nothing at all you can do without someone who's willing to come forward with details. It seems possible to me that there's stuff you can do going up and sideways at this point, that might both maybe put the kibosh on some future harassment, and might grease the skids if facts about it come out.
Like, first, you're pretty senior, but probably not in a position to fire the harassers (if and when they're identified) offhand. Who is there above you who is? (Oh, maybe not offhand, but you know what I mean. Who could protect them from consequences or not.) Do you trust that person? Could you have a meeting with them telling them what you told us -- that you got clear, detailed allegations that this sort of thing is going on, but without names enough to take action. You're not going to reveal the identity of your informant, but you thought it was important for the head honcho to know that something like this might be going to break. And maybe he knows something that would snap into focus on hearing the allegations? This conversation really needs to include emphasis on the complete illegality of retaliation even for unfounded complaints. Truth or falsity doesn't matter at all, you really can't retaliate for any complaints.
122: Yeah, plausibly. I'm hoping there's something parallel in whatever the applicable legal structure is.
Then, and I'm less sure this is a good idea -- it sounds as if you've got a fairly narrow pool of possible perpetrators. Less than a dozen? With the cooperation of the higher ups, is it possible to call a meeting, and talk to them about it?
The message I'm thinking you'd want to convey is along these lines: We've been informed that there is pervasive sexual harassment going on here and we are investigating it, although we aren't yet focused on a particular wrongdoer. A: If we find that any of you has been harassing anyone, we are not going to protect you. There will be consequences. B: Regardless of whether harassment is established, if we become aware that any of you is retaliating against anyone because you think they may have complained about you, there will be consequences to you for that retaliation. C: If you're looking back over your conduct with women in the office, and thinking that while you haven't done anything wrong, it's possible that oversensitive people have misinterpreted you and are complaining? Stop doing whatever it was that you're worrying about immediately.
Now, this would be an incredibly uncomfortable and unpleasant meeting, and I'd be willing to listen to someone who was telling me that it was a terrible idea. But dragging the issue out all the way into the open seems like it might be productive, in terms of letting people who know something but not enough to draw conclusions on their own to put the pieces together. And scaring the perpetrators might at least make them quit it going forward.
The contrast between 'the complaints about harassment system works well' and 'a whole lot of women are being harassed by a whole lot of men and don't want to come forward' is pretty striking.
Two obvious possibilities are that the women don't think the system works well because (a) it's utterly ineffective in getting the conduct to stop (I mean, look what sort of conduct is flourishing in the culture there) or (b) the results have been invisible, because management, while making good decisions about harassers, doesn't make known the bases of re-assignments/terminations.
I think there's also a possibility where women being harassed think it's a perfectly obvious open secret -- complaining would be pointless because everyone knows already and no action is being taken. It sounds as if this is a mistaken belief, but I can imagine situations where people would be convinced of it.
It sounds as if this is a mistaken belief
Ok, obviously "everyone" doesn't already know, since Ramsey didn't. But depending on who the perps are, the assumption that the people who actually run things know and are doing nothing may well be completely justified.
My default presumption here is that the women being harassed probably have a better grip on risks/rewards than Ramsey does. They'll certainly have spent a lot more time thinking about it, they know who the perps are and how they're viewed in the company, know whether they think Ramsey actually has the juice to get something meaningful done.
Jumping in to say I won't have a chance to throw a post up until late afternoon.
My default presumption here is that the women being harassed probably have a better grip on risks/rewards than Ramsey does.
I wouldn't presume this terribly strongly. That is, they may reasonably feel unsafe complaining because they don't have reason to believe the relevant senior people are going to react appropriately, but that's different from having knowledge that the relevant senior people are going to act badly. And it's very easy to assume that if you know about something, everyone does, even when that's not true.
Ramsey's in a much safer position to feel out and possibly influence the decision makers than someone who has themselves been harassed.
This whole thread is a good illustration of why, even though HR as a profession seems to attract the world's mist annoying people, it is actually a skill and a necessity. Ramsay's job should be simply to report to HR and let them investigate or handle, not to navigate some sexual harrassment investigation/moral dilemna involving people he manages himself. If there's not a functional HR department then there are basically no good options, just less bad ones.
Thanks LB and CC.
CC: "The contrast between 'the complaints about harassment system works well' and 'a whole lot of women are being harassed by a whole lot of men and don't want to come forward' is pretty striking."
That had not escaped me. The point is that I think the complaints system in general is working well because I've seen it working for complaints against other sorts of bad behaviour like bullying and racial discrimination. Some were well-founded and the perpetrator got punished, in one case someone very senior, and some weren't and nothing happened, but they all got taken seriously and (as far as I can tell) investigated honestly and without retaliation against the complainant. So I am starting from an presumption that the system is not completely broken.
LB: "Who is there above you who is? (Oh, maybe not offhand, but you know what I mean. Who could protect them from consequences or not.) Do you trust that person? Could you have a meeting with them telling them what you told us -- that you got clear, detailed allegations that this sort of thing is going on, but without names enough to take action."
These assumptions are accurate; yes there is someone, yes, I trust them, yes I could have that meeting but the first thing they'll ask for is names and details, and indeed people to make statements about it...
LB: "there's also a possibility where women being harassed think it's a perfectly obvious open secret -- complaining would be pointless because everyone knows already and no action is being taken"
This is kind of the impression I got from her. She seemed slightly surprised that I was being so slow on the uptake and not immediately responding to her hints with "Oh, of course, A.B., yes, I knew about that." But I didn't. This is partly why I was responding fairly vigorously; I wanted to make it clear that this was not an open secret as far as I was concerned, that it was news to me, and it was something that I was taking seriously because I was unhappy about it and wanted it to stop.
132: HR folks are like lawyers. They are advocates for management. If your management is fucked up, there's an awfully good chance HR will be too.
Fox News has a highly professional HR department. Do you think any HR specialists got reprimanded there?
I got advice, separately, from an HR person and a lawyer recently. Both advised me of what the law requires, and both had guidance for me about how a decent person behaves responsibly.
But the job of HR is to defend the company, and the advice was geared toward that goal. If I ignore the advice and the best way to protect the company is to see to it that I suffer no consequences, HR will see to it.
136.3: I think the means the lawyer fucked up.
yes I could have that meeting but the first thing they'll ask for is names and details, and indeed people to make statements about it...
Yeah, this is putting you on the spot, because you don't have that -- the point of the meeting would be to put the senior person on notice that there are people claiming there's an issue, and you're trying to figure out how to pin it down, but you don't yet know any specific names. I would protect your informant's identity because if she wouldn't talk to you on being asked, I think she'd consider it punitive to be pressured by someone senior to you, and you don't want to create a disincentive to come forward at all.
I'm actually curious from anyone with more experience than I have: how loony was my 125? It felt very "Obviously this isn't going to happen" as I was writing it, but I do think that a public statement to a small group of people which probably includes the bad actor or actors that the conduct is being investigated and that the organization disapproves and will take action to punish wrongdoers and protect targets as soon as there's enough information could be productive. "If the shoe fits" worry; if it doesn't, you're fine, we're not talking about you.
Do you want somebody with less experience than you to tell you how loony it was?
It seemed more than a bit loony to me.
Sure, I'm with you. But what specifically is going to go wrong as a result? Just generally that everyone is going to be really upset, or anything more focused?
I think that any harasser will just have more time to think of ways to threaten or persuade witnesses into not cooperating.
It's not like if somebody stole a computer and you can say "We know one of you did it, but put in back by Friday and we won't be able to figure out who."
I think something like 125 is fine, but it's a terrible idea if the meeting is called by/led by a middle manager such as I am presuming Ramsay is (because both the enforcement powers of the middle manager are dubious, and the actual authority to do anything about it is unclear, and because there are all sorts of tricky potential employment law minefields to navigate). For a meeting like that, you want a lawyer leading it, or maybe the head of HR, ideally with a boss-of-bosses type person present in the room.
Basically, if the company is set up to do something like that, the company can avoid harassment problems. If it's not, it can't. Maybe it can be forced to do so, but the only means for a middle manager to force the Company do so is to make credible complaints that go to the top. It's not try to manage the situation on the fly from a role as as a non-lawyer, non-HR-professional middle manager. These are hard areas that need real professionals to handle. That's my take, anyway.
If it's a small company, too small for an HR department, then you need a meeting called by the actual boss after consulting with a real employment lawyer.
I think the Harvey Weinstein thing is evidence that something like the view dismissed in 127 is often quite reasonable. We observe people being swiftly punished after things "go public," not because the situation was unstable and ready to change as soon as someone was brave enough to speak up, but because until the power structure was looking for a pretext to knife the perpetrator, it colluded quite effectively to suppress attempts to "go public" about him.
It's worth trying to distinguish that sort of thing from the cases where women mistakenly think something is an open secret generally when it's only an open secret among women. I've been involved in communities where the latter occurred for a while, it definitely happens.
It shouldn't be terribly hard for people in the know to tell the difference, though, once they consider both hypotheses.
If somebody in the U.K. was harassing another employee with naked pictures, you need a bare-ister.
But what specifically is going to go wrong as a result?
Putting on my "what could go wrong" hat: It seems almost guaranteed that everybody at the meeting will feel cranky, accused, and defensive (no matter how much you try to avoid that). So the question is whether it will result in behavior changes which will be worth the irritation.
The behavior changes that you would be looking for are either (1) getting harassers to stop harassing behavior or (2) encouraging people to be more responsive if they catch wind of that behavior. In the first category it seems like an improvement would be short lived, if there wasn't punishment forthcoming. After a couple weeks the harassers will feel like they're clear. As for the second category, I think it will feel more like a stick than a carrot and that people will feel like following up on rumors will just lead to more situations that make everybody cranky but don't resolve anything.
I could it see the cost-benefit being worth it if you're convinced that there is current harassment going on right now, and that punishing it is too difficult but getting it to stop might be possible. But otherwise, it's hard to see a win.
Two possible failure modes for 125 are (a) everyone assumes management is lying, or (b) management actually is lying and if Ramsay tries to use the system as intended for this Ramsay will end up frozen out. Ramsay probably has a bunch of information we don't about whether (b) is true. (a) seems not worse than the status quo.
I've seen situations analagous* to the one you describe in 125 a couple of times -- where wrongdoing was suspected but they didn't want to bring down the hammer on the suspect for lack of proof or other considerations.
The key is that the meeting has to be conducted by a disinterested third party. As Halford points out, this is what HR is for. Absent an HR department, I think it would be really unwise to try to conduct this kind of meeting, but I would never say it was "loony" because I'm a very diplomatic person.
The two times I saw this up close, I am skeptical that it was useful. In one case -- where I was one of the suspects, as it happens -- everybody understood that the situation had been fucked up and we had agreed to fix it. No HR intervention was necessary -- but I think HR wanted to be convinced that the problem really had been solved.
In the other case, the suspect (who was guilty as hell) hilariously misinterpreted the nature of the meeting and was fired not too long afterward.
In neither case did HR really admit straight-up what they were doing, and a need for ambiguity created an opportunity for people to deflect responsibility.
*It's possible that my use of my own experience here violates the analagous ban.
ideally with a boss-of-bosses type person present in the room.
Don't forget the consigliere.
I think Robert Duvall is still alive.
146-47 seem completely right to me -- I wouldn't suggest that Ramsey try to call a meeting like that on his own authority (or, maybe I did suggest that earlier? But if I did I was misspeaking). It'd need to be backed by a credible commitment from authority that action would be taken, so yeah, HR, if HR is a thing, or a really high level boss figure.
Wouldn't it be better to call a meeting with those most likely to know of or be sexually harassed and let them know if ways to report things?
That too. But if there's going to be an unhappy, uncomfortable atmosphere as a result of this, I want it to include the wrongdoers. Sexual harassment isn't a problem that's all about the targets, it's about the people who are actually harassing, and solving it should focus on them.
If there are people who do sort of 'know' about the behavior, in the way that people knew Weinstein was an asshole but weren't actually all aware that he was literally assaulting women, bringing it up openly in a way that makes it clear the organization disapproves might make those people speak up without putting all the onus on the women who've been targeted.
I was just thinking that you wouldn't want to look like you were offering the targets a warning without also talking to people who might have something to report.
153 before reading the pwnage of 146.
Anyway, I guess my question is how does calling in all the potential targets make it clear the organization disapproves to people who weren't in the room?
Or even people who were in the room given that nobody is experiencing any consequences?
Oh, put out an appeal for reports from anyone who has something to complain about as well.
But mostly I was thinking of trying to break solidarity between the guilty and the innocent among the senior people -- to the extent that one VP (or whatever) knows that another is a groper, you want to communicate to the bystander that the organization doesn't condone the groping, and he's out of step with norms if he's going along with it.
My intuition aligns with 158, but when I've seen the pros handle it, it's been more like 159.1.
So when the boss and the rank-and-file were called into a room to discuss policies on abuse and harassment, the boss came out of the room believing that HR was there to address the abuse she had been receiving.
As I said above, she didn't work there too much longer.
nobody is experiencing any consequences
Nobody is experiencing any consequences immediately, because the organization doesn't have the necessary information yet. But the organization can state its intention to investigate and punish as appropriate after the results of the investigation. If that's stated credibly, it's something.
164: I'm also very smart, and have large hands.
166: Spell out what happened a little more explicitly? Who was committing the initial wrongdoing that led to the meetings, and then who got fired as a result? I'm confused as to whether the firing of the boss was (in your eyes) successful resolution of a problem or a terrible injustice.
nobody is experiencing any consequences
The women who are being harassed are experiencing consequences. The women who know about the harassment but aren't being harassed are experiencing consequences. The 'nobodies' who aren't experiencing consequences are (a) men who are doing this; (b) women who are outside the loop (people who may be the next victim!); and (c) men who aren't doing this.
Having a meeting at which the half dozen suspects would push the consequences onto an additional 6 people, of whom, a couple aren't harassing anyone? Which, yeah, sucks to be the four guys not doing anything. Sucks more to be the women who are harassed.
I'm thinking that 125 could only work if you had someone like Hercule Poirot or Columbo to run the meeting.
I have modeled my professional demeanor on Columbo for years. (This is true! I mean, I dress kind of like that spontaneously, but the vaguely clueless and repetitive questioning is really useful in a lot of contexts.)
Bestseller book pitch: An eccentric detective sleuths out which of 12 guests in a stately English country home committed sexual harassment.
170: I meant nobody is experiencing any consequences from the official actions of the organization. I don't think a meeting with no actual action items is a "consequence" for any of the harassers.
169: I had a famously horrible boss. She routinely demanded the impossible and was verbally abusive when she didn't get it. Employees took offense, and went over her head to complain -- or bitched extensively during their exit interviews.
Because she was the senior manager on site, the folks who ratted her out had to go to managers a couple of hundred miles away in order to complain.
Her boss made the trip to counsel her, with no beneficial result. They sent in HR, which did a little seminar for the staff on abusive treatment that was clearly aimed at her. She didn't understand. She wasn't good at understanding stuff.
I was more ignorant of the overall situation than she was. I didn't know why her boss had visited; didn't know that her boss directly threatened her job; didn't know that there had been a stream of employees complaining to the main office. Nobody sought my opinion, and I never volunteered it.
But I knew damn well what HR was doing, and I tried to explain it to her. She was offended, and went to some trouble to explain how I misunderstood the situation.
It is also true that she was also treated badly by her underlings. Some of them were shitty people who used her abusive behavior as an excuse for their own shittiness -- which in turn fed her sense of persecution and her willingness to be awful. It was a feedback loop.
Bestseller book pitch: Jake McMarshall, corporate sexual harassment investigator.
Bestseller book pitch: An eccentric detective sleuths out which of 12 guests in a stately English country home committed sexual harassment.
I think I can guess the twist.
176: I like this, but I think the investigator should be a woman, and it should be a Netflix or Amazon TV series. The role of the investigator will be played by LB or Carrie Preston.
180 is a joke? You think she looks like Renee Zellweger?
Anyway, the idea was for her to play the same character as she played in The Good Wife, . But that's just if LB isn't interested in a change of careers.
Standpipe says I should mention there is an actress named Kelly Preston.
And that my pop culture references stop before the start of the new millennium.
183: Ok, that makes a little more sense.
184: The Good Wife was the last TV series that I watched.
178: The inside my head joke about that is that I've never seen an Amazon or Netflix TV series.
Anyway, the idea was for her to play the same character as she played in The Good Wife, .
Elsbeth Tascioni.
I miss that show. (Haven't tried to watch the spin-off show since the idea of paying for a specifically-CBS streaming service annoys me.)
I was mulling over the 'holding a meeting that probably includes the wrongdoer is ineffective because it doesn't impose consequences' thing, and I think it's wrong. First, obviously, the alternative isn't imposing consequences now, because the wrongdoers haven't been identified yet. So, there's no sense in ranking possible actions as being less useful than punishing the wrongdoers, the possible actions are limited to those that can be taken in Ramsey's organizations current state of knowledge.
Second: it is possible that I don't understand the state of mind of serial sexual harassers. But the impression I have is that they believe they're operating with impunity -- not that they're committing wrongful acts in total secrecy, because their targets know who they are, but that anyone in a position to take action either approves of or at least condones that sort of abuse. If they didn't think they had impunity, they'd act differently. And of course their targets often agree with them, which is why it's hard to get people to complain on the record.
It's hard to disrupt that presumption of impunity when you're not yet in a position to impose consequences. But being willing to stage a disruptive and unpleasant event with the intent of informing harassers that they will be punished when they're identified seems like the most effective practical signal I can think of, under the organization's current state of knowledge, that harassers aren't condoned.
187.2: I was working from the same assumption, but figured that harassers would take the fact that whoever is complaining about harassment wouldn't mention any names as confirmation of their impunity. Also, I think the meeting might be seen as bluffing on the part of management.
187.3: But they already know they could be punished if they were identified. What they didn't know before such a meeting is that even with senior management asking questions, they wouldn't be identified.
Anyway, I'm thinking of the Weinstein case. He had tons of near-misses in terms of avoiding punishment only through lots of lawyers, money, and threats. The earlier incidents don't seem to have signaled anything but that there's no reason he can't continue to harass (and assault) because he was able to avoid punishment the last X times. The case seems to reinforce the idea that you either kill the king on your first move with or do nothing but give the king a shot to kill you.
Of course, my thinking would apply best only to those at the very top. Those one or two levels down might be more likely to incorporate the meeting as new information to use to adjust their Bayesian priors.
Yeah. If it gets interpreted as a bluff -- either that the management doesn't mean the threats of punishment or that the management has no hope of identifying the wrongdoers -- then it's ineffective. I think people are pretty good at identifying bluffs, though -- I would bet that if it genuinely isn't one, but a real statement by people with power to take action that they intend to take action and are trying to get the information necessary to make that happen, it will be correctly perceived as such.
187 et seq: I think you're coming close to the conventional HR wisdom on this sort of thing, and I have a lot of respect for conventional HR folks. There are things that need to be done even if they aren't likely to "work."
(I called the treatment of my old abusive boss ineffective, but in fact, in the end she got fired, and that happened after they did everything possible to keep from firing her. I would have liked for the process to have fixed her thinking, but that's really too much to ask. She did tell me that she was never going to try to manage people again, and has stuck to that. So I guess in one sense it really did work.)
I can imagine the scenario that Moby proposes -- where such a meeting would be treated by the perps as bureaucratic noise and a bluff. But the one really egregious circumstance I'm personally familiar with is like the one Ramsay's employee described in 89: Where all the women know it, but where the women feel (correctly, in my experience*) that the only mechanism for dealing with it is through informal gossip.
Saying stuff out loud is really important in that scenario, but of course, the rank-and-file aren't empowered to do that, and the bosses need to be very careful about it. (Hence the utility of HR.) But the act of publicly acknowledging an issue like this is an important step in dealing with it.
*My personal experience was, perhaps, inappropriately reflected in my tone in this thread. In 89, Ramsay asks "What was going on?" and in 91 "in that case, why bring it up at all?" My response was based on my belief that Ramsay's employee was telling a perfectly ordinary, obvious story, and that she framed it the way she did for perfectly ordinary, obvious reasons. But I see that for others, her behavior potentially contains nuances and subtleties that I am perhaps insensitive to.
I bow to none in my capacity to reinvent the wheel.
(And thanks for not being pissy about my having called you overly harsh. I mean, I think you're dead right about the reasons being ordinary and obvious, but I also think that they're ordinary, obvious reasons that Ramsey was excusable in having trouble seeing, and could maybe have been told more gently. Assuming he genuinely means well and thinks the rest of upper management does as well, an answer that comes down to "She doesn't trust you as far as she could throw you, and why should she?" is the kind of thing that's more easily understood if delivered diplomatically.)