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One Woman's Story of Sexual Harassment at Work
Compiled by the DiversityInc staff
October 08, 2007
In the early '90s, I worked in the finance and accounting department at [a company] in Chicago, Ill. I was constantly harassed on a daily basis by the management in the department. The accounting manager made a point to ask me every Friday to go have a drink with him. He was married with two kids. When I refused every time, he would tell me that I better learn how things worked around here.
There are two incidents that I want to share. The first one was a time when the controller, the staff accountant, and the accounting manager were all standing in the doorway of their offices talking. All three of these white men's offices faced me. The accounting manager asked the staff accountant how was it that he lived with his girlfriend and hadn't gotten her pregnant. He replied, "Well, when I stick my d**k in her and f**k her really good ... when I start to c*m, I pull my d**k out and c*m all over her face." All three burst out laughing as if that was the funniest joke in the world. They looked over at me and I kept right on working as if I hadn't heard a word.
The second incident happened one night when I was working late. The accounting manager and the staff accountant were also still at work. As I sat at my desk working, the other two were in the accounting manager's office talking. All of the sudden, the door opened and the accounting manager came and sat at the desk next to me and straddled the chair. He began to rock back and forth, moaning and groaning. The next thing I knew, he grunted loudly. While all this was happening, I just stared at my computer screen. After a while, he stood up. I looked at him sideways and he looked me in my face and told me, "I miss my wife." He went back into his office and closed the door where you could hear the two of them laughing loudly.
I went to human resources where I was told by the woman who was the director that because I was new (I had been there less than a year), I wasn't used to a corporation such as this one and that I was just nervous about working here. I should try to go with the flow. The reputation of these men was so bad that I was asked on a daily basis by other women who worked at this company but in other departments how I could stand it. They harassed other women, but when I tried to get them together so we could file a formal complaint with the EEOC, they refused because they were scared for their jobs and had families to support. I went to the EEOC by myself and filed a complaint and soon after was fired.
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