Quote:
Originally Posted by pappydaddy
I have been in various Supervisor roles in jobs over the years and I feel you did the right thing. Perhaps there may have been an opportunity to approach this person one on one first to address the behavior, perhaps not. The reason I mention this at all is NOT to condone what the offender did or said, it is only to give a person a chance to fix the problem first on his own.
I have seen many situations in which someone did not even realize they were being offensive but thought they were being funny or clever. I have also seen people lose jobs or be permanently labelled in a negative light because of what was said or done. Sometimes I think these situations could have been avoided had someone approached that person instead of going straight to the top with the issue at hand.
If someone in authority at a workplace is told face to face "I am offended by what you said" or "I feel like you are creating a hostile work environment because of what you did", and chooses to continue the same pattern of behavior, then by all means they deserve to be fired or worse.
I may get skewered for saying all of this but I still feel it's the right way to handle this type of situation.
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I won't skewer you for your response. Both you and FallDuskTrain gave me great advice; calm down before you take action; wait and see if the behavior is repeated; then approach the person to tell them how their behavior affected me. And since I'm 46, in hindsight two days after the situation, I probably should have done that before going straight to the top. So, that is something I could work on -- reacting too quickly to a situation -- clearly I need to refresh my CBT skills of how my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors influence each other, and my DBT skills of social and emotional aspects of my personality.
If there's a silver lining to this situation, it's shown me that despite being 46, I still need to work on managing my thoughts, feelings and behaviors before reacting too quickly (i.e. over-react). And, I can see how over-reacting can create more work for me in social situations (in hindsight) and work situations. How to handle stressful situations in life definitely requires a lot of mindfulness.
So, I can appreciate both of your points of view, of how I missed some steps of how to report this store manager by not giving him a chance to correct his behavior first, by approaching him to tell him that his lewd sense of humor has created an emotionally hostile workplace for me and to tell the young assistant manager how her acceptance of her supervisor's behavior (laughing off his lewdness) supports and condones it, and sends a message (whether its true or not for her personally) that this kind of behavior from a store manager is ok, and that as hourly employees we should just accept it.
So, I really appreciate the feedback from you and FallDusTrain about taking more time in how to deal with stressful life situations like these, before I react.