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    Default Harassment, Retaliation, False Complaint

    My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: Wisconsin

    Hi. First of all I wanted to say that, even though this forum appears to be very well organized, I hope this thread has been posted in the correct section. It covers many different bases, so I hope I'm able to get the advice I need about the multiple-faceted situation without duplicating this in another section.

    "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." - Confucius

    Here is a little background on the situation. This whole situation started a little over a year ago. My store had acquired a new GM, and she was an attractive, driven woman who had many things that I look for in a significant other. Long story short, we became very attracted to each other, but the situation was, well, frustrating, to say the least. Due to the fact that others inexorably picked up on the attraction, and that we are both attractive individuals, jealousy ensued, and since our company has policies against any contact outside of the workplace by coworkers of different positional levels(specifically known as fraternization), and I knew that at the first knowledge of a rendezvouz for us, I would be reported and then transferred to another store, so things never really got off the ground. We were always on the wrong page, having to be careful because we knew the consequences of discovery. Basically, a series of advancements/rejections transpired, and, like typical young women, she resorted to some of the normal tactics of the situation. I can perceive that, even though she is very egotistical, her self esteem isn't exactly high, so shortly after rejections, she would either have an outburst of displacement, or, in one case, she told another worker and I that she "had sex with (a VP of the franchise)" as if she felt maybe I didn't think she was desirable enough, and needed reassurance that she was worthy. I see this with women that have low self esteem problems quite frequently after rejection of implied consent, advances, etc. Well, after not too long, she was promoted to run a larger store on the other side of town(this store has had five GMs in less than two years; needless to say management here is on a revolving door). On the last day of us working together, emotions really flared. We were both extremely dissatisfied about the fact that our intense attraction never really resulted in anything but tension and letdowns. When my shift was over, I said I was going home, without really any ancillary goodbye to her. This resulted in her asking what was with my attitude(my succinct and reticent ways would apparently prove problematic later on), and I responded by saying something along the lines of I feel like I had just wasted the strongest raw emotion on somebody who apparently has more important things. She immediately went to the back and wept, and that was the last I saw of her for quite a while. I know it was kind of an assholish thing to say, but unfortunately she did some things to really make me lose trust in her, although it doesn't take too much since I've been told by a psychologist do not trust women due to my neglected and abused childhood.

    Peripheral events happening during this time: There would come to be a shift supervisor who, by all defining criteria and symptoms of the DSM-IV, was a complete sociopath. He even had the juvenile detention record among other things almost universal to this sickness. After a while, we came to butt heads, because he has the strong disposition that any middle class and up student(he even used the word "prep" several times to describe people like me) is incompetent, lucky(he proclaimed that he grew up poor white trash) among other things. Well, he decided it was a good idea to engage into mind games with me, upon discovering that he couldn't manipulate me like he could with so many other subordinates. Well, after some time, I couldn't take the abuse anymore. He lied to my supervisor, intentionally contorted things I said I would/wouldn't do to use them against me when he supposedly misinterpreted things, among other things when I adamantly stood my ground. Nothing really happened, however eventually he would lie to a coworker of mine with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and he actually came within an inch of starting a fight between the two of us, feeding him lies such as I "was stealing hours from him(which was NOT the case at all; I had been working the same days and shifts for over a year; he had been laid off his other job and was looking for more hours here)," I was "mocking his service in the Gulf War and didn't respect him as a soldier(I have several family members who served in WWII, the Panama conflict and Gulf war, including an aunt who is retired from the Army National Guard)" etc. This resulted in the writing and submission of a four page complaint about not only the threat that occurred that night, but basically a delineation of all of the debauchery of this devious scumbag from the prior several months. One of the related things to the current situation is, I had went to the two GMs during this time several times about him(including the young woman) and they both completely neglected to do anything about him, but obviously they would now, that I had submitted the complaint that went all the way up to HR. He would eventually be discharged after the investigation, but at the same time, the current GM would try pernicious tactics to try and psychologically make me quit, including telling applicants that they were "looking to hire a new closing driver(I was right next to him when he said this, and I was also the main closing worker, five nights a week)" and supposedly mistaking things I've said for "you're looking for a new job?" or "I thought you said you had a job interview?" among others. This would continue, and after this GM had his first employee review, he completely lied on my review, judging me as "needs improvement" in many categories, when I was basically the best and hardest working employee(with statistics hung on the bulletin board in the office to prove that the NI rating of my production was a pure farce of epic proportions). I sat down with him and asked why this was, and he refused to look me in the eye, and couldn't come up with a single good reason for it. Obviously, I had perceived that someone above me, or multiple superiors, had become insecure after that complaint was filed. I had come to find out that the company policy is to get rid of those in the bottom 20% of the team(by way of discharge; the company doesn't fire anybody, instead they simply take you off the schedule and then force you to sign a resignation form) so I conclude that this was another weak attempt to scare me into quitting, since they know that I know they cannot fire me. If my review was that bad, I would surely believe I am going to be canned soon, right? Unfortunately this GM, along with the young woman previously in charge, was implicated in my complaint when I explained why I stated all these things in the complaint; I had told these GMs about the harassment and other things the antisocial supervisor was putting me through, and they always came up with absolute cop-outs because I'm sure they are too egotistical to step on the guy's feet, so they swept these things under the rug...until it came back to bite them in the ass. I had stated that I lost complete trust in them because of it, but didn't really state anything other than that about them.

    Current situation: During the current corporate downsizing of the company, instead of replacing one of the GMs in the district who quit, the VP whom the young woman entered into lecherous acts with became the District Manager, while the District Manager took over the store that she was promoted to a year ago, and during a massive game of musical chairs with GMs throughout the district, she came back to run my store. Initially, she had a disingenous sense of being glad to see me when she first came back. Even though my strong feelings for her have attenuated by now, with about a full year in between being with her, I still have some residual, vacillating feelings for her, which is normal. I have been applying the avoidance defense mechanism, and have stayed somewhat distant from her socially. We have coexisted perfectly fine, with me being indifferent to her "hey, look what I rearranged/fixed when I was bored the other day" small talk, but without really being insolent. I was trying to convey that I simply wanted to coexist peacefully, and that being friends may be dangerous and produce adverse and unwanted escalation. And then last Friday, what I had anticipated happening for a long time, finally happened. The new DM came to our store(the previous VP) and she had her nose up his rear end the whole shift. I knew something was going to happen, and I was right. Towards the end of my shift, he said it was time for him to leave. I was less than two feet away putting an order into a console computer. She responded by saying "nice, looks like it's time for me to take a ride with you; I have to go to the bank to make a deposit." She would return to the store forty-five minutes later(it takes five, maybe ten minutes to get to this bank) and as soon as she got back, she shot me an evil smile. Thanks to the fact that I had observed this treacherous, malicious and vindictive act from back in my HS days, which was when I had also learned that anticipation was the best form of self defense for me, this had a minimal effect on me, certainly profoundly less than she had wanted. Then, on Saturday(the Saturday after that day), when she was not scheduled to work, she came in to frivolously put something into the computer. She saw me, and came up to me and started a conversation, with a lower than normal, disingenuous tone of voice. She had asked if I had a problem with her, because I had been having "communication problems" with her the last few days. I simply told her that I had no such issues, and that I wanted to know specifically what she meant. I had bluntly told her that I come to work to do my job proficiently, and that if egos get hurt because I don't kiss anybodies ass, that it wasn't my problem. I stated that I don't recall seeing sycophantic in the employee policy book as a part of the description of my job, and that I have never had a real problem with communication with any team member at any point in my tenure, which is basically true. She prevaricated from my question for her to list specific events/examples of this, and simply didn't answer. I then told her that I'm simply a very introverted person(which nobody that has ever known me will deny) and that I try to take as little interest as possible in the unnecessary conversation that takes place in the work environment, and that it had been fine since day one, and saw no reason why there would be a problem now. That was as much as I remember, as there was nothing else important in the short conversation. We worked together all night Sunday, and there wasn't so much as a discrepancy in our communication or attidutes. Then last night, towards the end of the shift, she called the store from home. I answered, in the same exact way I have since the beginning of my employment(saying "thank you for calling(this specific store), how may I help you?") but sometimes I don't say "my name is____" and I didn't this time. Then, after about five seconds of silence, I repeated my greeting again, and she eventually asked if it was me, and I said yes. She then accused me of being "rude" and said that I need to follow the phone script exactly. I simply said I will make sure to include my name in the greeting from now on, and that I really didn't see how anything about my tone of voice, or greeting, was "rude" and that I wanted to know exactly what was rude about it. Once again she prevaricated from this question, because, well, there is absolutely nothing she can truthfully say to defend her false accusation, and instead she asked to talk to the supervisor on duty, and began ragging about this "incident." I honestly paid no attention to it. I figured, she is just a simple minded egomaniac who thinks she has the upper hand over me, and is trying to get me back for hurting her feelings in the prior situation(I love how, despite making it perfectly clear that I was heart broken, she typically has to have the last shot anyway). Tonight at work, the supervisor who was working last night told me that she was going to write me up, stating "____ communication"(I think it was something along the lines of a lapse in communication) and we both laughed at the stupidity and sheer frivolity of this, because he was with me that night and heard me answer the phone. He is transferring out near the college he is transferring to, so he doesn't have to deal with any of her BS as of this Saturday, his last day at the store. If he can attest to my tone of voice not being rude at all(I have a couple customers who have told my supervisor that they loved my amiable help over the phone, and zero customer complaints about me during my tenure) as a witness, can I file a harassment complaint with HR? Obviously the last thing I'm going to do is go to Mr. I can't get laid other than using subordinates in a lascivious quid pro quo fashion with a complaint, unless I can legitimately say something along the lines of "harassing managers who engage in sexual acts with upper management and then think they can get away with anything they please" and not only get away with it, but actually have it to my advantage. I'm pretty sure this is foolish, but what do I know, I'm not an attorney, evident by the fact that I'm here asking for advice haha.

    How can I deal with this treachery? If I find out this weekend that I have been written up for this farce, is it wise to go straight to HR about this? I mean, I do have a complaint made in the last year, that implicates that she is a negligent and dishonest manager, so if she does have the ulterior motive of forcing me out(which anybody short of a complete dolt can see), can a retaliation complaint be filed? I would really, really like to solve this in a diplomatic matter, due to the fact that I like this job, but obviously it looks like I will have to play a little hardball, due to the esoteric things in motion(namely her vengeful spirit that I saw coming upon becoming privy to her return to the store). In fact I have compiled some interesting facts from a little research I did online tonight. Can I state that I have been diagnosed with ADHD and despression, with any positive impact(in fact I am currently beginning a personal research project to try to find the answer to what I have been observing for a while now, which is that the perpetually rising rate of ADD/ADHD diagnoses and the correlation of depression and ADHD overdiagnosis of gifted children by ignorant and undertaught psychiatrists, among other things, is due to a scam by the medicinal companies) as far as my introverted and succinct personality is concerned? I have taken a Jungian personality test, and can produce proof that I am a very introverted person by the results of it, and also produce many citations that: gifted individuals tend to be introverted(twice as likely as individuals with normal intelligent), strongly independent, have a proclivity to difficulty communicating with those with intelligence at least two standard deviations below said person, and normally busy pondering/entertaining thoughts which results in being "absent minded" along with a Stanford Binet IQ test stating that I fall into the highly gifted category. Should I put together a dissertation of these characteristics of mine, along with the false nature of her concerns/problems with me, which resulted in the farce of a write up? It will paint an incontrovertible picture that I am simply a quiet worker that keeps to himself, and that I simply am not obstreperous.

    I realize that this post is pretty much a novel, and is extremely long winded. Once I sit down to put these kinds of thoughts into words, I can easily go at it all night long. If you would like specific, important examples, about any problem of this situation, just let me know, and I will gladly pull the facts out of this never ending story haha. I would simply like to know exactly how to handle this write up situation, and possible retaliation. Thank you for reading, if you made it this far

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Posts
    20

    Default Re: Harassment, Retaliation, False Complaint

    Without all the fluff what were you/are you going to be written up for? And why do you think it is retaliation?


    Also, I am in the retail business and we do have a standard greeting that our associates follow "Thank you for calling _____ my name is _______ how may I help you".

  3. #3

    Default Re: Harassment, Retaliation, False Complaint

    I can't remember exactly what, but it was ____ communication. And it might just be retaliation because I included said manager in a complaint by saying that her negligence, arrogance and dishonesty is the reason why things got so out of hand with the sociopathic supervisor? If I was a corrupt piece of trash, I would probably be pretty insecure about an employee like me. I mean I'm more intelligent than them, an idealist, and have enough backbone to stand up to their garbage. There's a reason there are books out there entitled You Could Be Fired For Reading This. This is the same woman who said I'm "her best worker" and during her earlier tenure, gave me a fantastic review that, thanks to a bored and inquisitive supervisor, I would come to find out would qualify me for the largest raise of that period. And now, despite evidence that my production/work ethic has not changed one bit, she's all of the sudden trying to pull this? Like I said, due to the esoteric situation, I pretty much anticipated this knowing she was coming back.

    What about explicitly admitting to having sex with a vice president? I'm not sure if he is married or not, but is that anything noteworthy, or one of those "unfair, but not illegal" things? I'm 99.9999999% sure that constitutes fraternization :P

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