Discussion on:

What is your best excuse for skipping work?

That was great! I needed some humor today. Thanks!

to clean the guns today.

to sharpen the knives today.

to not go where I could get matches.

today I must worship Anubis.

Speaking as a female, I wouldn't flame you! She is basically harrassing you. If a man did what she's doing to a female co-worker, all heck would break loose and the excrement would hit the oscillating device. The only suggestion that I have is that you gently tell her that you are very happily married and while you are flattered by her attention, she should focus elsewhere. Then, I would explain, privately, to my manager that she seems to be fixated on you, and that you will not go to her house to fix anything. Back it up with the photos, flirting, etc... so that if your boss insists, you have grounds to refuse. Good luck.

Tel her the trooth, then use the a-dish-un-nal time on ur hands too take sum more Inglish clasez so yuz can lern good grammEr an how two spellz....

You could always take your wife with you when you
go to her house to fix her access point. I
explain to my wife that I don't trust the woman
that I am going to go fix her access point and my
wife travels with me and keeps me company in the
house also. That way, I spend some "working time"
with my wife and she learns a little more about
computering when she goes with me.

Actually, company policy (I seem to be stuck on policy today) should be designed to protect employees from this sort of situation. Policy should say that two people have to go on any in home visits. Even if there is no policy, I would simply tell my boss that it puts me in a bad situation to be alone with someone at their house. I would say the same thing even if it was woman who had expressed no interest in me at all.

good god people - are you crazy? The woman wants some help with her access point. Only in IT would that be interpreted as "hey I want you to come shag me". Sheesh.

And if it does mean that - what the HELL would you take your wife with you for? Unless she's into it too. LOL

I mean really.

My wife is a nurse. Just cos she may see some dude naked during the day doesnt mean I want to hang around her to keep an eye on her.

Either you can trust yourself not to boff the woman, or you can't. If you feel the need to take the wife, then obviously you don't feel you can be trusted. And your wife will pick up on that. Sure as eggs!

I suspect that your wife's employer has very strong policies protecting her. There is a difference between a clinic environment (or business) and a home environment.

By the way, I would not take my wife and my concern is less about temptation for me than it is about false accusation. However, I would rather avoid the temptation as well.

A friend, who was a visiting nurse, had very firm protocols she had to follow with every home visit. They involved a cellphone clock in and clock out and detailed log of activity while in the home. This protected her and her clients.

I keep forgetting the majority of you are in the land of litigation lunacy where virtually nobody can be relied upon to not launch some whacko lawsuit against you for any daft old reason. The term "cellphone" is a giveaway.

Just checked with her - there's nothing even remotely like that required. Guess people are simply trusted to act as responsible adults. Which is how it should be. And which is how I would expect people to behave in regards to sick leave.

I think that most of the women on here would understand that you called in to protect your marriage from you having a lapse of judgement, perhaps even applaud it.

Now, I've never gone and said anything like I was in a car accident, to get out of work. But, I have pretended I knew people well enough to attend their funeral to get a day off of work, or to get out of class early. The trick to it is you actually have to show up to the funeral (provided it's in town) so that in case your employer knew the person as well.. you don't get caught in a lie.

I confess I have never called in sick so as not to go to work. But being the (ex) workaholic I was, I frequently came up with excuses to be at work for unfinished business. For example, to finish setting up those VLANs and router that I wanted running on Monday. I'd tell my wife on Saturday that I'd be going for groceries, go finish up my networking stuff, and get the groceries on the way back. But that was then... I got my priorities straight, now!

I think redheads have nice work enviroments too...I would break it just to fix it

Maybe she isn't interested in you, but she thinks you are the best in your department and wants to use her body to get you to do things for her because she knows you will do them right. I've seen it at my workplace and I'd be suprised if this wasnt what is going down with you. I'm sure she sees your wedding band.

let me tell you, it's easier to just be a bitch

That he is the only one in the office receiving her "attentions"? See my other post for more thoughts...

her attentions ONLY include asking him with some help at home on her work-at-home setup, asking the man to do his damned job & being nice to him

last i checked, that's NOT sexual harassment

As I stated previously, that isn't his job. That is boardering on a personal favor. He is well within his rights to say "I'm swamped, can Joe do it instead?". Again, are her attentions focused SOLELY on him? Why would she not allow anyone else to do it? That doesn't sound at all strange to you?

Again, it is harrassment when the person feels the attention is annoying, embarrassing, or in any other way inappropriate. If a male from your office insisted on startling you by poking you from behind (in a completely platonic way!) would you not consider this harrassment? How about if it was female from your office? It makes no difference.

I never used the term SEXUAL harrassment. However, I *DID* say it was harrassment none-the-less, and that the level of personal space varies from person to person.

And my thoughts still stand. He should tell her to please stop. And she should respect that. Anything less would be grounds to talk to HR and have some rules set up.

You said (paraphrasing) "what if she isn't making sexual advances?". Maybe not, but what if she is? Neither you, nor I have the right to make the assumption. And honestly, it is probably better dropped than as a heated debate over a topic where there are unknown facts.

One thing is a constant though. One person may think it quite alright to pat a smaller person on the head. For some people, they find it offensive, not "cute". So who is in the wrong here? The smaller person for finding it annoying? Or the taller person for doing it against their wishes?

However, you cannot hold the taller person (or in this case, the woman) as being completely at fault if the smaller person (the poster) does not bring it to her attention that he finds it annoying.

This isn't black and white, no matter how much either side of this thread would like it to be. Maybe she is married. Maybe she's not. Do you know for sure?

...

Before you go and beat people willy-nilly with your feminist placard.

He said that he was the only one receiving this kind of attention. Tell me, when you have your mind set to something do you stop until you get it? Maybe it?s not entirely his fault.

But if you were interested in reason instead of putting people down you might have listened to tearsong.

And finally if someone brings in a piece of personal equipment for me to fix I make sure they know it?s a favor and not part of my job. If they want me to go to there house I a) reserve the right to say no b) charge them for it (although it would be less because they are my workmates).

Quiet often a workmate will get half a days work for a single carton of beer (I understand that you yanks prefer to call it a case of beer).

since I encounter situations of these their kind
of encounter I would sugest to always remember these are the most excelent example of IT management in Visual Basic C+++ Positive language!

I know of a company which allows for "Duvet" days when an employee can call in and have the day off without having to justify why.

Whilst this may sound like a great idea, it also means that they have a very hard work ethic and this offsets the duvet days.

I have no idea of how this is implemented or what the consequences are but it just sounds a lot better that the usual excuses that most people make.

You just can't see your a$$ going into work today.

Dawg

Why would we IT geeky women want to flame a married man who didn't want to fix the access points of a hot redhead? If anything, it'd be the immoral MALE geeks that would ask you WTF?! I'm a happily married geeky chickie myself and I'm not about to go to some GUY'S home and fix his access points without a chaperone.

As for my best excuse for skipping work... mostly I don't. I'm almost always out because one of the kids is sick or I'm taking vacation time. About as exciting as it gets around here is that I've been known to take an afternoon off to hang out with my hubby, all by ourselves.

I know that you might think it sounds crazy but you should report this to HR because she is actually sexually harassing you -- at the very least, creating a hostile work environment. Anything like this that makes you uncomfortable should be dealt with. Please note that I would not confront her directly because she might just turn the tables on you and say it was you making the advances towards her.
JMHO...probably came to mind from 5 years supporting an HR Call Center -- they made all of us take the same training as the management in the company I worked for.
Good luck!

If a male co-worker in my office treated me as you have claimed you were treated to the point that I felt I needed to call in sick, I would condsider it harassment. I have gone to my bosses' and many of my male co-workers house since joining my company specifically to work on their wireless network which allows them to work from home when needed and I always insist that their wives or another female (yes, I am) be present.

but you're an idiot to assume

what is she doing? has she asked you out & you've said no?

has she said anything lewd to you???

NO - the ONLY thing she has done is to F#$@ing ask you to DO YOUR F@$%ing job!

get the F@#$ over yourself - i bet it hasn't even occured to her that you think she's hitting on you

"She then asked me to come to her house and look at her wireless setup. I told her that I do not do home repairs, she then convenced my boss that she works from home sometimes and needed her access point checked out. And I was the only one she wanted to do that."

Actually, that doesn't seem to be in his job specs. Also, if he was that uncomfortable with the prospect, there appears (from the above statement) to be others that can do the job just as well.

If the poster were female and the aggressor male, would the response be the same? That they should "get over themselves"?

Invasion of privacy is a very tricky thing. What could be perfectly reasonable to one person, is incredibly invasive to another. Regardless of what she thinks about her actions or not, she should be made aware that she is making the poster uncomfortable. And if she has any respect at all, the actions, whatever they may be, should stop.

1. "she then convinced my boss that she works from home"

sounds like she's technically challanged & has a valid claim - unless the boss is an absolute IDIOT, i doubt they'd authorize an at-home check unless it was warranted - at that point it IS part of zero's job

"others that can do the job just as well"

2. technically, maybe, but there are many times when many of us seek out a specific person because they are more technically competent


3. If the poster were female and the aggressor male, would the response be the same? That they should "get over themselves"?

yes, because she DID NOT DO ANYTHING WRONG - SEE ABOVE!!!

4. if we women reported every time a man made us feel uncomfortable without actually doing anything wrong, whole IT shops would be shut down

talk about a double standard - men don't get slaps for making women uncomfortable - only when they actually DO SOMETHING WRONG

> men don't get slaps for making women uncomfortable - only when they actually DO SOMETHING WRONG

On a technicality, that's incorrect. You have heard of (I'm assuming) battered womans' shelters... But how many times have you heard of a battered MENS' shelter? Do men never get beaten? Women never harm their husbends/boyfriends ever?

Trust me, it happens more often than you think. Where does THAT double standard favor? Are men who endure physical/mental abuse at the hands or mouth of a women less in need of help? Simply because they are men?

> "if we women reported every time a man made us feel uncomfortable without actually doing anything wrong, whole IT shops would be shut down"

If a women reports harrassment from a man, it gets dealt with. And generally, the man is at fault. Period. So when a man claims harrassment from a woman, people claim he is either "provoking it" or "imagining things". Sorry, but you cannot know which is true any more than anyone else on this thread can.

We were speaking of a hostile work environment that caused the poster to avoid work, not necessarily sexual harassment. Wow!

geez

yes, many many of these threads mention sexual harassment

btw, that IS a hostile environment

And the only person that the other person will use is my person, that looks bad for the team which has four females on it. She has never done her job from home until she desided to tell a persons boss about it. I checked and to do her job she would need Vpn access and a secure login which she still dose not have.
Are we a little mad at the male persons you work with or have worked with? Just wondering.
I am not that good looking or that much fun to be around unless you like a person who finds fun in fixing computers, robots or any thing electronic. I also go camping and fishing, but I enjoy my family more so I do not see why you are getting so out of joint?

sexual harassment w/o proof

to your

"Are we a little mad..."

uh, i don't know - i'm not, but perhaps mr royal person you are

"are we" - sheesh! - the way to phrase the question is "are you?" - presumably you know what you think, but maybe not

you checked - with whom? generally information about someone's vpn & secure login status is pretty private information - not just given out

so either you have a LOT of work priviledges (which would explain why she asked you in the first place) or you are full of shite!

now if you say you got the information from her ... why didn't you help her set that up? sounds like your BOSS has deemed that that IS part of YOUR JOB

accusing him of lieing "without proof"? Lol, that statement can go both ways. Until you know both people, honestly, I don't see how anyone can know who is in the wrong here.

Is he just over-sensitive (which is fine, but he needs to tell her what she is doing wrong), or is she "making passes"?

And either way, that's not even a main point. The point being, he feels threatened by her. Hell, see below on the illegality of annoying someone. Lol.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=8&threadID=187484&start=0

Without knowing and being around the person, how can you say who is and isn't harrassing? Perhaps your boss was looking at something else and you are paranoid that he was looking at your breasts?

I'm not saying he was or he wasn't. I wasn't there.

it's spelled l-y-i-n-g

i'm going on HIS statements, which are all we have

and, uh, i think when someone is 12 inches away from you it's pretty obvious where they're looking on your body

bottom line - independent workplace studies in the 90s & later have shown that men report about 95% of harassment, women about 45% - even with this women report 79% of harassment claims

another study - the haines ginsberg study out of haas - showed that 89% of claims by women show some substantiation of claims even if there is not enough evidence to prosecute

same study - only 53% of claims by men show some substantiation

the reality - women sexually harassing men

with that i'm signing off - you're thick-headed

Zlito came to us (his peers in his chosen field) to get help for a problem that is troubling him. Weather or not this is sexual harassment or not doesn?t matter, he views this as a problem. Judging by his posts he is being singled out. All you can seem to do is bash him for and for what.

It seems to me (judging by your posts) that you would view zlito (and probably myself also) as misogynists. You are clearly a judgmental and opinionated person. But before you flame me I would say if you are going to judge your peers be prepared to be judged yourself.

So please give the poor guy the benefit of the doubt. I?m willing to bet that zlito wants to resolve this with a minimum of disruption (I.E. he doesn?t want to go through any official proceedings) that?s why he?s seeking help here. I can?t tell him what to do as I have never been in the same situation but your not being very constructive either.

I dont often have a chance to play hooky, If I take off It tripples my work load (work extra before to stay current (maybe a little ahead) and then play catch up with I get back. So I just dont do it much. However, there have been times I like to take the afternoon. When I want to do that I usually can make something work related. I need to go and talk to someone about this project to get some ideas, Or Im going to run by the stores and look at the equipment/priceing for a bit. Of course its a five minute visit and then Im free the rest of the day.
Also When I do skip the entire day (have to get car worked on or some other items taken care of that can only be done during a weekday, I never take the day before or after the weekend, holiday, or vacation. Everyone looks at those suspicious anyway.

I can't see going to work today.
Sometimes I just call in and take a mental health day.

I used to get a lot of those "go to the house requests, usually expected on my own time. I always declined, because I will not fix people's personal equipment, whether they "use it for work" or not unless they bring it into my office. That way, it becomes part of my official work and if (worst case) something goes horribly wrong, it is on my agency and not me personally to make it good.

It would have been so much easier to tell your boss that you don't want to open the company or yourself up for damages outside of the workplace and that you would prefer all work on personal PCs used for telecommuting be done on company property.

Three weeks is a lot of time to hide, but you *could* justify it by claiming mental stress. You could have taken a day or two to examine your choices, talk it over with the wife and maybe come up with a plan. Since you took all that time, I hope that you used it to look for another job because this might come back and bite you (someone from your office saw you driving the day after the alleged accident, no proof of any injuries that might have kept you home even with a wrecked car since you probably have two cars and so on...).

This is a great discussion, I'm dyin' out here ROFLMAO! The creative/survival instincts displayed here are amazing. I gotta admit, I obviously have no creative/survival instincts 'cuz I have never done any of this. Whether working Mainframes, Mini's, Novell or NT Networks the only "creative" call-in after working 30-50-70 hours straight has been "...excuse me but I won't be coming in today, tomorrow and probably the next day... no, if you think you need help, call your mother, I'm turning off my phones...so fire me...". In my experience, to butcher Jesse Ventura's line from Predator - "I ain't got time to be sick...but I may take time to catch up on some sleep".

you know, men @ work tend to jump to conclusions a hell of a lot more than women do

women TRULY get sexually harassed at work, take it in stride & only report it when it's a really big deal

men frequently IMAGINE interest from women at work

i'm not saying she wasn't interested in you - perhaps she is, but your vignette neither rings true nor proves that she is sexually harassing you

i think it's the (& i quote spelling mistake)

"vary nice blouses that would open too far"

that gives it away

get over yourself - she sounds beautiful, smart, justified in getting help with her at-home wireless hub

lose the braggadocio - do your f@#%ing job

If you feel harassed, and you are being asked to do things outside the scope of your job, talk to HR.

And you know, a mental health day here and there isn't going to kill anyone, but the OP stated three weeks. I wonder what his co-workers would think, knowing that they did extra work to cover. Does anyone think this was fair to them?

James

then 95% of the women in IT would file sexual harassment charges

she can't help the way he feels & she hasn't done ANYTHING wrong

zero, SUBSTANTIATE your stupid claim

on a side note, i worked an an office where someone wrote a lewd limerick in the back stairs - it had my name on it, a drawing of part of my anatomy & stated a desire to have sexual contact with me there

guess what? i couldn't do anything about it because (1) it was anonymous which meant that (2) the legal proof of originator was on me & (3) i am in CA where i could have been let go immediately so i could find no evidence

i've also had a boss who would BLATANTLY REPEATEDLY stare at my nipples, look me in the eye & do it again any time i had a meeting with him

i'll make a deal with you - if ms home access EVER does ANYTHING even REMOTELY so specific to you, then bitch away

until then - your claims are insubstantial - shut up & go wait in line for the women's restroom