Stop Pissing Me Off What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazy by Lynne Eisaguirre Read Free Book Online Page B

objects, drawings or photos. Of course, ABC Company also prohibits any employee from making unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors when submission or rejection of such conduct is used as the basis for employment-related decisions.
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    03.   Your Workers’ Bill of Rights
    Statements that said employer prohibits harassment “in any form” have become quite common in most workplaces. These statements can provide you with powerful ammunition when you confront the person whose boorish behavior may be borderline harassment and/or when you need to talk to your manager or HR.
    If you’re still confused about what really crosses the line into legal or policy violations, check out the following list, provided by one of my clients: Examples of Legal or Policy Violations
    n Objectionable comments about a person’s age, race, skin color, national origin, ethnic background, religion, gender, marital status, disability or medical problem, or veteran status n Repeated and unwelcome requests for a date
    n Racial, sexual orientation, sexist, age-related, or sexual jokes or comments
    n Referring to a coworker in demeaning language (babe, girl/
    boy, broad, colored, cripple, grandpa, pops)
    n Following a person inside or outside of work
    n Making sexual gestures
    n Wearing or displaying the Confederate flag
    n Accessing or displaying sexual or racial pictures, cartoons, or Web sites
    n Unwelcoming touching of a person’s hair, clothing, or body
    n Unwelcome kissing, hugging, or patting
    n Wearing or displaying hate-related symbols ( e.g., a swastika) n Restraining or blocking the path of a person
    n Touching oneself in a way that is suggestive in view of a coworker
    n Spreading rumors about a coworker’s sex life, including affairs, marital status, or sexual orientation
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    n Repeatedly leering at a coworker
    n Making sexually suggestive facial expressions (winking, blowing kisses)
    n Treating someone differently after a legally protected medical or family leave n Neglecting to consider a woman with small children for a job that requires travel
    n Refusing to consider an older applicant because he or she is
    “over-qualified”
    NOTE: This list of examples does not include all potential legal or policy violations.
    There is always a question, of course, of whether your organization is willing to enforce the law and their policies. There is also the personal issue of whether you want to raise this with anyone for fear of formal or informal retaliation. We’ll deal more fully with those issues in Chapter 16.
    values violations
    In addition to formal policy statements, many organizations also have values statements. While these may seem as familiar and useless as wallpaper, you would be well advised to check them out, read them, and ponder whether any of the behavior you’re receiving at work seems to violate the organization’s stated values. These values may include things such as “people are our most important resource” and “we respect all our employees.”
    Although it’s easy to become cynical about whether the organization really stands behind and intends to enforce these messages, if you bring them up at the appropriate time (more
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    03.   Your Workers’ Bill of Rights
    about this in later chapters), such as when you’re talking to the person engaging in the problem behavior or your manager or HR, it can be an incredibly skillful move. What I’m suggesting here is something along the lines of “Ed Idiot is doing X. When I was thinking about X, I started wondering if X were consistent with our values as a company. In looking at our statement of values in our policy manual, I see that we say Y. It just doesn’t seem to me that Ed Idiot’s behavior is consistent with our company values. Could you please clarify for me what is acceptable under our values statements?”
    other workplace legal issues
    Other examples of clearly