#MeToo: Bossy Business

The Verbal: January 2021

“Your eyelashes are big today” quips the Leader to the newly appointed female junior analyst in his department.

Quite a jolt that wakes the twenty-odd people attending a team video call on a dreary Monday morning in January. This is the girl’s second week in the company, and the interest in her eyelashes from someone twice her age and her boss must come as a shock. Not to add she’s under probation that only he can sign-off.

She self-consciously comments “Thank you for noticing”, diffusing some of the tension the rest of us are feeling. But we are all left wondering how her eyelashes were even visible under thick-rimmed glasses she had on. Or why they’re being noticed and commented on at all.

This exchange is a topic of discussion since, and it is very clear that no one deems this to be an acceptable comment. As a senior woman in the broader team (but with no direct link to this girl), I am left with a highly uncomfortable feeling: should I do something here? She seems okay with it? Would I be making matters worse if I tried to find out how she felt about this, perhaps even causing an issue when none exists?

More hauntingly though, could I have prevented this had I reacted on previous occasions when I was at the receiving end of inappropriate comments from this man? The memory I had been trying to bury resurfaces.

The Written: October 2019, South America

I am on location at a customer site, reporting in after my workshop as it is a key account with a deal based on the outcome of my sessions. It’s a Friday evening, 7PM where I am at, 11PM in London.

I would normally report in via email or company messenger during work hours, but due to criticality of the situation and the late hour back home, I check in via WhatsApp text instead as I wait for my dinner at a local restaurant. The exchange is business like till he starts to moan about visiting the US team who he is out drinking with.

However, as my update is complete and I harbour no interest in encouraging his rants or a non-business exchange, I send a message logging off. Instead of receiving the expected sign-off from him, I receive this:

Need to sleep as right now fancy you massively.

For anyone unfamiliar with the British expression – “fancy you” means sexually attracted to you.

I drop my phone like a hot potato and stare at it. It feels like a perverse object and I obviously have no response to this, to him. I feel dirty and exposed, and my first thought is "Did I trigger this by using WhatsApp instead of email? I do not reply, what can I even say?". A few minutes later I get another text.

This is wrong but I have known you long enough.

Again, I am still shell-shocked and have no reply, I get a call from him which I ignore. I then force myself to reply fearing further calls, awkward texts and reprisal when I am back in London.

Yes, you should go to bed.

He tries to engage in more conversation after this, but my only reply is the barred-teeth-emoticon and luckily, he stops his improper texting.

This man, my boss, the head of our entire department, on the European Management Board, and 15 years my senior has always skated on the thresholds of propriety. He has not tried anything inappropriate with me since an incident four years ago where I made very clear I had no interest in him.

I can only speculate that whispers of my recent break-up (which I have kept very quiet, or so I thought) have reached him and he feels the opportunity is ripe.

I assume as a single, childless woman in her mid-30s, I must seem fair game; and perhaps there is a misconception that I will be desperate enough for a man, any man, to find his interest and provocative statement alluring.

The Physical: Incident of Summer 2014

Context: I’ve been at the company for six-months, and at this point, this man is my boss’s boss; so my day-to-day interaction with him is limited in as much as it can be in a small office.

We’re a London branch of a US headquartered company with no support functions in the UK i.e. there is no HR in the region.

We are at a team event and the night ends close to midnight, I am tipsy and wobbly on my feet, but sober enough to get the tube home (instead of a taxi which I would do if I were blinkered in the interest of safety).

I say goodbye and as I am donning my coat, he asks what tube station I am going to be walking to; he says he will come with me as it’s on his way home, and I think nothing of it.

I have no reason to be wary, however, that is about to change forever.

We leave the pub and are walking together, we enter Farringdon Station, touch in our Oyster cards, and are walking down to the platform when I totter and a fall looms due to the slippery floor and my heeled boots.

He grabs my arm to steady me, I graciously say thank you as I would have landed on my backside; and the next thing I know – he holds my hand!

I tell him I am stable and try to pull away, but he continues holding on stating my imbalance as a cause to keep me steady.

I am paralysed and unable to have my usual abrasive reaction in the face of unwanted physicality (I've kicked a few nards in my day) as I am very aware this of this man’s position in the company and unchecked control and power over our department.

We enter the tube, and he is still holding on; as I sit down, I manage to move my hand out of his, but he sits next to me and grabs it again.

Then, out of the blue (or really should I have seen it coming?), he says

Can I kiss you?

I freeze. A hundred responses run through my brain, and I grasp at the least vitriolic and most cowardly:

I have a boyfriend and you’re married.

I’ve been inching towards sobriety since he grabbed my hand, but this sentence has me sitting ramrod and I am totally alert. I keep staring at the tube map in front of me; gloriously happy and grateful that his stop is next one.

He says, "So what? That doesn’t matter to me". And I respond, unequivocally – "It matters a great deal to me" and extricate my hand from his, finally succeeding in doing so.

The tube stops, he stands, and he leaves.

I am left wondering “what just happened” and in a state of absolute shock. To top it off, I face the music from my boyfriend when I get home for putting myself in a position where I could have been compromised. Oh the irony – walking to the same station as a man means you’re asking for it! Apparently, yes, it does!

It’s Friday the next day, and I am obviously dreading making my way into the office and seeing him, the feeling of discomfort is giving me stomach cramps, but I steel up and go in.

Luckily, he is locked himself away in a meeting room, so I don’t have to engage with him as I enter. Later on in the day, he messages me on the company communicator:

God, I was so drunk last night, I remember nothing.

I take that as a sign that he wants to pretend the incident did not happen; and I gladly take this out and say something innocuous in return.

Should I have done more? What could I have even done?

I am lulled back into reality, back into 2019 South America when the waiter asks if I want a second drink, I gladly accept and vow to do something this time when I get back to London.

Post-mortem with a lawyer: November 2019, London

The conversation with my lawyer friend is unexpected to say the least. I explain the entire situation to her and send her screenshots of the text messages from the fateful night. There is light at the end of the tunnel as there is expected to be a HR presence in the London office from January 2020. Her response is on the other hand is surprising, candid and a harsh truth to face.

The thing is, you know you’re pretty outgoing and make a lot of silly jokes that are a political minefield, although never sexually charged.

You’ve been drinking with this man before, and what guarantee can you have that he can’t whip up a tale that insinuates you were interested in him?

Frankly, his arrogance in this new awareness mode of the world post #metoo is shocking, but clearly, he is comfortable in the knowledge that even a written statement such as that won’t hamper his position in the company.

Unfortunately, it is just a text and these things are very much “he said, she said” unless there is unwanted physical contact and witnesses to evidence so.

You can of course pursue it, but there is no guarantee of outcome and you may well continue to need to work under him; your only out being a new job.

I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but I knew I could not battle with him on the basis of this text, and the incident from 5 years ago bore no witnesses and frankly, was too far out in the past.

He had, and till date has a lot of power in the company, with friends in all the right place, and being a part of the management board makes him fairly invincible.

I decided to do the only thing I could do, search for another job and I was very close to moving to another role within the company, out of his purview, when COVID hit and my plans were thwarted by his blanket refusal to let me apply for the role. (We need explicit management consent to officially apply for roles within the company).

Present day

So, what’s next when it comes to the eye-lashed girl? I have no context of that statement he made; maybe, that is the sort of things they discuss on their weekly catch-ups as she reports into him.

Needleless to say, she has been taking more care to dress up since, but who would not if they thought they were being scrutinised in such detail by members of their team, much less their boss!

Having discussed with the other women in the team, we’ve concluded that perhaps they do have this sort of odd equation. However, no one else is aware of “may I kiss you incident”.

That is what has me most concerned, and what sits so heavy on my conscience.

What if I say nothing and he is physically inappropriate with her post lock-down when we can go out.

What if she has a soft spot for him, and is blasé about his marital status, and would indeed be flattered by his attentions? She is all of 23 and perhaps enamoured with her new boss who notices minor details about her?

Who knows, but it makes me highly nervous to know what I do of his true nature, and in a conundrum if I need to say something to someone!

I wonder how many women have battled with the same question; their conscience pulling them one way, and their practical reticence another.

The one thing that this does highlight is that to be wildly inappropriate, a sentence on a call, or via text or in person has the same power.

I can’t help but re-think all of the above from the perspective of an arrogant man who believes he is god’s gift to women. He would only believe we were craving for this sort of attention, and his interest in us would be welcome, nay, something we relished.

To feel pulverised and dirty, words matter as much as touch. We are entering into a new world where virtual interactions are becoming the norm.

As we go about our business, let us be warned: feelings are not physical, so what triggers them does not have to be either.