Readers have been divided over whether a recent advice seeker should tell the wife of a co-worker that her husband was cheating on her at work. Some readers strongly felt the letter writer should stay out of it. Others, many of whom had been in the wife’s position, felt just as strongly that the letter writer should clue her in, even though they barely know each other.
But one phrase kept coming up in the discussion: “hostile work environment,” which the reader worried about being accused of creating. On the other side, some commenters argued it was the reader who was being subjected to a “hostile work environment” after stumbling upon the affair partners in a supply closet.
According to employment law experts I consulted, however, “hostile work environment” has a specific legal meaning that doesn’t seem to apply in either case. While the couple’s behavior was inappropriate for the workplace, “there’s a difference between unprofessional action … and unlawful action,” said Amy Epstein Gluck, chair of the Employment, Labor and Benefits department at Pierson Ferdinand.
To qualify as a hostile work environment, the behavior has to be “severe or pervasive” enough to interfere with an affected employee’s ability to perform their job - and it has to be both subjectively (in the witness’s eyes) and objectively (to a reasonable person) hostile or offensive, Epstein Gluck explained.
Even though it might not meet the legal criteria for a hostile work environment, however, the sordid secrets of the supply closet may still be something the employer would want to know about, according to employment attorney Jack Tuckner of Tuckner, Sipser, Weinstock & Sipser.
“Presumably, the company wouldn’t condone the closeted consorting in any event, as it could … lead to sexual harassment or retaliation claims should the canoodling couple’s relationship go south, as these affairs often do,” wrote Tuckner via LinkedIn.
So that leaves the reader in the same situation as before: Bearing an unpleasant secret and torn about whether, how and to whom they should say something, with only their conscience as a guide.
To complicate things more: Even when a situation seems to meet the standards of a hostile work environment - severe or pervasive harassment - reporting it doesn’t guarantee clarity, as another reader reported.
“I stuck my neck out for a young single woman who was being harassed by my co-worker, an older married man,” said the reader, who asked to remain anonymous. “I regret it.”
At the time, the reader, married and in her late 30s, shared a workspace at a large corporation with a female intern. An older, married male co-worker “was smarmy with the intern when no one else but me was around. Making personal comments, touching her shoulder or arm,” the reader said in an email.
Although the intern didn’t directly rebuff him, she was clearly uncomfortable. “The intern told me in confidence how she dreaded coming into the office. She would practically beg me not to leave her alone with him,” the reader said. So the reader, also uncomfortable with what she was observing, offered to talk to management and human resources. The intern “seemed relieved that I was willing to intervene on her behalf,” she said.
HR interviewed all three workers for several months, after which the senior employee took early retirement. The intern also left soon after. “She never met my eyes nor spoke with me again,” said the reader, who found her work environment had changed for the worse because “word had gotten out.”
She, too, ended up leaving the department and now wonders whether the situation “could have been handled more informally,” she wrote. “Once management was involved, there was no going back.” If the intern had directly told her male colleague his attentions were unwelcome, “I think he would have slunk off,” the reader said.
The reader even questions her own motives: “I spoke up because of situations I’ve been in, in the past … and wishing I had done something different than just ignore it or laugh it off,” she wrote. “I didn’t consider the repercussions to others; to my working relationships, to the guy’s wife, to the intern’s ability to keep her summer job.”
Reader, for what it’s worth, I say you’re being way too hard on yourself.
First, you don’t know if the guy would have quietly slunk off if the intern had spoken up. He might have lashed out or sabotaged her in ways that would be hard to prove. That’s why harassment victims find it hard to speak up in the first place, and why they often end up second-guessing themselves.
Second, you aren’t to blame for the intern’s regret or embarrassment, how HR handled it, or even the wife’s feelings. Your former colleague is. He clearly knew his behavior was not okay, because he knew enough to hide it from almost everyone. Why were you the exception? Maybe he assumed you would lend propriety without intervening, a complicit chaperone in his game of gentleman caller and ingenue.
Third, your motives are fine. You put the intern’s needs first by hearing her concerns and asking what she needed from you. But even if you hadn’t, you still would have had the right to go to HR on your own behalf.
“It’s not just direct targets who can experience a hostile work environment - witnesses to harassment or inappropriate behavior can be affected too,” and they are legally protected from retaliation for reporting concerns in good faith, Tuckner confirmed.
I’m sorry the repercussions bounced back on you and the intern. I can’t say whether what you did was the One Right Thing - but it was a good thing. And that’s as close as most of us can hope to get.