koolway wrote: ↑18 Feb 2024, 22:53
Is it really that hard to imagine what may have happened?
An ex had a similar “colleagues”… she received mail/texts/messenger/whatsapp/linkedin/… related to work which she responded, then switched to casual conversation over time…and sometimes he slowly drifted to “btw your skirt *chef kiss*… wonder what I could find underneath”.. leave it on read… that would drive him nuts so he insisted more and more…
Then few days later after silence, work related texts with urgency to which she felt obliged to respond… sometimes nothing going further but occasionally, it drifted again. It took her few iterations over several months to have the courage to go to hr…
It’s not that hard to imagine such a dynamic and for the one who receives it, it’s more complicated in the beginning to assess “is it innuendo?”… until it’s too late and it’s not hidden anymore…
Sorry to state the obvious, but it unfortunately happens quite a lot in the workplace…
Not saying that’s what happened here, but for the cases I directly witnessed, it’s always the same scheme:
There’s always 2-3 guys in a big company who you always see having lun ch with the new joiner “pretty girl”. Even though they have no project in common and never worked together (and probably never will).
But funny enough, when it’s a boy their “mentor” personality is not that applicable…. Those ones are easy to identify, ignore and raise concerns…
But when it’s your boss, it’s hard to put a hard stop when you notice it switching from “nice guy” to “a bit creepy”.
So yeah there can be months of exchange between two persons, you can feel obligated to respond *some* texts even after you knew it was going sidetrack… doesn’t mean you were a willing participant in all this…