Looking at His “Package”

For a department such as ours that is made up of supposedly boring people in a supposedly boring profession, I must say that it is extremely rare that we have a dull moment.  This little story is one example why.

A male junior staffer, I’m going to call him Daniel, walked into my office one morning last week to express a certain “concern” he was having with one of the female senior staffers in our department.  For the sake of our story, I will call this female senior staffer Kate.

But first, let me give you some background information on both individuals.  Both are relatively new to the department.  Daniel joined us in October of last year while Kate joined us in January of this year.   Both are very intelligent, driven and hardworking individuals.  Kate hails from Georgia in the southern part of the United States while Daniel was born and raised in New York.  Kate is about 29 years old while Daniel is slightly younger at 24.  Kate stands about 5′8″ while Daniel is about 5′9″.

Anyway, Daniel walked into my my office to complain that Kate has been making him feel “quite uncomfortable”.   He had worked under her (no pun intended) on a couple of projects in the last three months.  In our group, a project, from start to finish, has  an average life cycle of four weeks and thus, Daniel had worked under Kate’s lead for about eight weeks in the past few months.

He complained to me by citing a few examples as to why he’s uncomfortable with her.  In his examples, he mentioned that:

1. Kate often looks at his “package” (the crotch area of his pants) whenever she talks to him;
2. While leaning over his shoulder one time to view what was on his computer monitor, she had placed her hand on top of his and proceeded to move the computer mouse in order to move the cursor to a  particular part of the screen;
3. She supposedly caresses his shoulders every once in a while while chatting with him; and that
4. He had caught her listening in to his phone calls with his girlfriend.  He found out about this because after he was done talking to his girlfriend over the phone, Kate came over and asked questions that were very specific to what Daniel had just discussed with his girlfriend.

He told me that he finds it hard to respect her as a Team Leader because of her actions.  I asked him then if he had let her known that her actions bother him.  He told me he hasn’t.

I tried to play the devil’s advocate by attempting to point out to Daniel that it could be possible that she didn’t intend any malice in any of her actions; that maybe, that’s just the way she is.  Plus, as mentioned earlier, Kate came from a different region of the United States.  As with every other country in the world, people that come from different regions have their own ways and sensitivities.  That could be true in this case.  Thus, I’m wondering if maybe, just maybe, that Daniel could be misinterpreting her actions.

Daniel was intent on bringing this matter up with our company’s Ethics Officer.  But I advised him that I think it would be fair for everyone concerned if he sit back for now and see if the same problem with Kate shows up again.  If it does, I advised him to immediately let her know, as a warning, that what she’s doing is bothering him or making him uncomfortable.  If that doesn’t stop her, then he has all the right in the world to report the matter directly to our Ethics Officer.  Daniel agreed and that’s where we are right now with this situation.

It wouldn’t be fair to Kate if I allowed Daniel to immediately report this matter to the Ethics Officer.  Kate deserves a chance to deny or dispute an allegation before it gets raised to a higher authority.  Holding off on reporting this matter is the prudent thing to do given the current circumstances.  None of the other guys in our department who have dealt with Kate have reported being on the receiving end of any unprofessional acts or unwelcome advances from her.  Thus, Daniel’s source(s) of discomfort with Kate could be a matter of perception or that he may be more overly sensitive to what she does as compared to the others.  Thus, as far as I’m concerned, Kate, is to be considered innocent for now.