By Rachel Pomerance
The subject of a recent interview told me to call him if I felt like hooking up later. ⨠â¨But he was a 90-year-old Texan, with a smirk of mischief, a hankering for a drink and a thrill at the ridiculousness of his transgression. Was I threatened or insulted? Of course not. I shot him a smile and thought, God bless Texas. My mother’s family hails from rural Georgia, and I know a thing or two about the latitude that Southern charm can buy you.⨠â¨But I’m probably not the best judge of what’s “work appropriate.”⨠â¨I recently applied for a part-time job at a major newspaper, and when the supervisor listed the litany of tests that would be part of my four-hour interview, I quipped, “Wow, when’s the body-cavity exam?”⨠â¨Was it risky and inappropriate? Yup. But we both had a good laugh, and whether the joke hurt or helped me, I did indeed land the job.
That’s the thing about personal boundaries.
Our lives tick to our own idiosyncratic beats – with no two human beings sharing the same sense of humor or individual space. Many times we don’t even know what our boundaries are until we’re faced with a unique situation and we have to define them – quickly. When those boundaries inevitably clash, life serves up either comedy or tragedy, depending on our ways of coping.
One thing’s for sure: The collisions appear to be happening more frequently. A recent survey by Novations Group, a Boston-based consulting firm, found that 38 percent of female employees heard sexually inappropriate comments at work in 2007, up from 22 percent the previous year. The good news? You get to decide when a comment or behavior is appropriate or not – and how to respond when it isn’t.
“Own your boundary and share it,” says Helene Lollis, president of Pathbuilders, a firm that develops professional women leaders. “The most important thing for us is to keep our cool and remain poised and recognize the fact that careers can be defined by how we handle different situations.” She advises an instant gut-check to determine whether “someone says something that’s so egregious that you know you’ve got to confront it in the moment.”
That said, there are countless potential scenarios out there, and whether they warrant a witty rejoinder or tête-à-tête or a paper trail straight to HR is squarely up to you.
The law does provide some clarity in the most extreme cases, defining sexual harassment as unwelcome behavior of a sexual nature that’s a “condition of employment,” says Linda Gordon Howard, author of The Sexual Harassment Handbook (Career Press, 2007) and a New York–based attorney. Then things get murkier. Harassment also covers an offensive, hostile or intimidating work environment that’s determined by the “experience of the person who is the target of the behavior.” “That confuses people,” Howard says.
Of course it does. While I found Tex harmless, his joke might not have gone over so well with, say, Gloria Steinem. So in those gray areas, when a comment falls somewhere between harmless and harassment in your own mind, what’s the right way to proceed? Not even the HR experts can agree.
“Take the high road,” Lollis says. “You never win by getting on the same level, because if it’s where they go naturally, they’re probably better at it.”
Howard, on the other hand, thinks a humorous response can be OK in some situations. “If it’s funny for you, then make a joke and move on,” she says, though she cautions that trading barbs can create a “competition on who can kill whom.” And a woman’s sexual joke can engender a male response “that goes way over the line,” she adds.
Gail Evans, a former CNN executive who now consults on workplace issues (and contributes to PINK), cautions against the instant response, where “you may end up doing something that’s not what you really wanted, where nobody wins.” But Sabrina Braham, an executive coach from Santa Rosa, Calif., likens boundary-busting men to school bullies who “mess with people who don’t deal with it right away.”
And so we come full circle, back to the blurry, individual nature of boundaries. There are no magic formulas, given the endless range of circumstances and personalities. So your best response, the experts concede, will come from a place of awareness and empowerment that draws on your instincts and savvy. Consider the following five true stories and the related but imaginary scenarios that follow each. If it were you, how would you define your own boundaries, and defend them? (Remember, there is no right or wrong answer – except in your own mind, according to your own comfort level.) Your decisions may help you respond in real-life situations when the time comes.
P.S.: It will.
When Patricia Mathews, then 34, was just starting out in human resources, her supervisor at a Buffalo, N.Y.– based corporation used to stare at her chest during private conversations. “One day I bent my head down to his eye level and asked him to please make eye contact when we talked – that it would enhance our communications if we could meet eye-to-eye,” she says. In retrospect, Mathews, now 62 and an independent consultant with the Society for Human Resources Management in St. Louis, thinks her former boss may have been avoiding eye contact out of shyness. While he avoided her chest from then on, he tended to direct his gaze to his side.
You’re at lunch with a new client, a man 10 years your senior who trains his eyes on your silk blouse as he discusses a business proposal. Would you?
• Excuse yourself and return with a borrowed jacket.
• Ask him to look you in the eyes so you can continue with your discussion.
• Say nothing, but later inform his boss of the inappropriate behavior.
• Look at your own chest and say, “Well, girls, you gonna answer? He’s talking to you!”
Shira Dicker, 47, a media relations consultant in Manhattan, met a client in his boyhood home to comb through some archives that he stored there. To her surprise, he started cracking “stupid, immature, double-entendre comments,” she says. When they passed his old bedroom, he said, “If only I could show you what I would do in that bedroom when I was a young stud.” Fed up, Dicker locked eyes and said, “Will you, please? Can you please show me?” “He was so freaked out,” she says. “His mouth dropped open, and he never spoke like that again. I thought, ‘Score!'”
You’re preparing to give a presentation to a board for a critical grant. When the chairman walks in a few minutes late, he publicly apologizes that his dental appointment ran long. Then he turns to you and whispers, “Not exactly what I’d call oral pleasure, if you know what I mean.” Would you…?
• Respond with sarcasm and ask, “No, what do you mean?”
• Laugh and say, “Oh, I know exactly what you mean.”
• Ignore it and thumb through your materials, thinking that if you don’t dignify it, it’s like it never happened.
• Notify the most senior female board member of the remark after the meeting, and explain your concern about working with the chairman.
About eight months after Mindy Binderman, a lobbyist, gave birth to her third child, she was chatting with colleagues inside the Maryland capitol when a pro-life legislator approached. “You all know Mindy. She’s a breeder,” he said. Binderman, who was 38 at the time, knew it was a friendly jab, but she felt humiliated and “laughed nervously,” she says, wishing she could fire off “a snappy retort – especially since this guy has five kids!” But politics were on her side. A pro-choice male senator overheard the remark and quipped, “At least all her kids were her choice.”
You’re exchanging business cards with two men at a high-powered networking meeting when a colleague named Phil breaks in by slipping his arm around yours, announcing, “Wow. Did you lose weight, or does that suit just show off your rockin’ bod?” Would you…?
• Giggle uncomfortably and remove his arm from your body.
• Flash a smile and say, “Looks like charm school worked wonders for you, Phil!”
• Say nothing at the time, but pull him aside minutes later and say, “If you talk to me like that again, you’ll wish you’d never laid eyes on my ‘rockin’ bod.'”
• Tell him afterward that he’ll be hearing from HR.
The nature of interior design puts professionals in the intimate quarters of a client’s home. And sometimes that’s just how the client wants it. When Maureen Footer of Connecticut took an assignment at a man’s Madison Avenue duplex, she asked about his lifestyle and design expectations; he offered her champagne. She veered the conversation away from his personal questions and back to business, following up with a design proposal –that he never pursued. “I find when people ask for meetings at 8 o’clock at night, or they offer to send their car, I’m immediately wondering if we both have the same intentions,” she says.
It’s another late night at campaign headquarters. As you leave the central office for the reception area, which houses the day’s stash of pizza, the married candidate approaches you and unmistakably looks you over. “One of these days,” he says, “I’d like to take you out for a real dinner to reward you for all your hard work.” Would you …?
• Smile and say, “Thank you, but I like my working relationships to remain at the office.”
• Ignore the encounter. “Excuse me. I need to get back to work.”
• Scold him between the lines. “I’d like that too. Should we ask your wife along?”
• Leak his behavior to the press and the opposition, then resign.
What is it about Halloween that brings out the raunch factor? Three years ago, administrative office workers for a Salt Lake City public school district were encouraged to dress up for the occasion, says Nyleta Singleton, an employee at the time. So a 58-year-old male co-worker came to work as a sumo wrestler, donning an inflatable suit replete with chest hair and nipples. When a female colleague in her early 30s ribbed him about the outfit – “Nice areolas!” –she didn’t anticipate his response: “Yours too.” “Her jaw hit the ground, and she turned beet red,” Singleton says. “We all were bent over with fits of laughter at his audacity.”
What would you do?
You’ve had a few drinks at the summer office party and are feeling bolder than usual. It seems like everyone is. When a client joins you and your friends at the bar, you tell him he looks great in that shade of green. He replies, “I bet you’d look great in flesh tone.” Would you…?
• Keep it clean: “You must’ve misunderstood. I was just admiring your outfit.” Then walk away.
• Act disgusted: “Keep dreaming, jackass.”
• Play dumb: “I adore neutrals!”
• Get tough — “That was way out of line, Carl” —and then see your boss the next day about transferring the account to someone else.
1. Would I want the encounter to be the subject of a column in my organization’s newsletter, mentioned on my company’s intranet or reported on the evening news?
2. Is there equal power between me and the person I’m interacting with?
3. Would I behave the same way if the person I’m in a relationship with were standing next to me?
4. Would I want someone else to act this way toward a person that I’m in a relationship with?
5. Is there equal initiation and participation between me and the person I’m interacting with? â¨
1. Talk to the harasser directly and tell him or her that you find the behavior offensive. Describe how the harassment negatively affects your work. Or say things like: ⨔Stop it.”⨠“Knock it off.”⨠“No, I don’t want to go out with you. Please don’t ask me again.”⨠“I’d like your feedback on the quality of my work. I don’t appreciate your comments on how I look.”⨔Please call me by my name. I don’t like to be referred to as ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie.'”
2. Do something nonverbal like putting your hands up to keep someone from coming closer, or taking someone else’s hands off your waist, your shoulder, your arm. Or simply turn away or walk away.
3. If necessary, put your objections to the harassment in writing and send a copy to the harasser, keeping one in your file. If the behavior continues, bring it to the attention of your manager and/or HR department.
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