IS THIS CONSIDERED SEXUAL HARRASSMENT

HENRY

IF A CASHIER FROM ANY GROCERY/SUPERMARKET IS SEXUALLY HARRASSED (VERBALLY) SUCH AS OBSCENE GESTURES OR VERBAL COMMENTS, BUT THIS HARRASSMENT IS COMING FROM THE STORES CUSTOMERS. IS THE GROCERY/SUPERMARKET LIABLE FOR PROTECTING IT'S EMPLOYEES FROM THIS TYPE OF SEXUAL HARRASSMENT? AND CAN THE EMPLOYEE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

Theresa Gegen TX

The grocery store may be liable for harrassment from customers. The grocery store would have to take remedial action after learning about the harrassment (for example, asking the customer to leave).

The grocery store would probably be held to a higher standard for harrassment from employees, but there are some cases where restaurents have been held liable for customer harrassment, when they learned about it and did not take action.

Good Luck!!

safety

I believe taking action is the key to this type of situation. While we are a manufacturing environment, a similar incident occurred in that a non-employee from a trucking firm made bodily contact with a female employee. We handled it in accordance with company policy and contacted the owner of the trucking firm to inform him of the incident and asked that he train his ee's on harassment, document the training and send us a copy of the documentation. We investigated the incident to the best of our ability and counseled our ee on our policy, thanked her for reporting it, told her of what we were requiring from the other company, and asked her if we needed to go any further. She has been very good about being involved in the process and our actions were met with a thank you from her. She has accepted an apology from the truck driver, we have taken steps to keep drivers out of reach of employees and have re-trained our staff on our harassment policies.

One other note, the supervisor on staff also did the right thing in this instance and this helped to make a bad, real-time situation better. Conduct training with all employees on harassment and have supervisors do the right thing every time, good luck.

pecohr

I would think it not inappropriate for an employee to tell the customer (in a calm and businesslike manner, I know that's hard to do) that their behaviour was unwelcome and that she expected it to stop. If the behavior continues then definitely get a manager involved to both protect and censor inappropriate customer.

Rockie

Yes, a company is liable for sexual harassment from customers, etc. Again, as someone stated, action is the key word here. We have had to actually "fire" patients from our practice for objectionable behavior towards employees.

If an employee brings forth a complaint concerning a patient, a vendor, etc., we immediately take action to investigate the same as we would anything other incident. In the case of a vendor, we actually call the company and ask that that particular person not be allowed to come back into our practice as there was a complaint against them.

Patients are investigated a little differently as there are sometimes medical reasons why patients act as they do, sometimes inappropriately. (Sometimes not!). At any rate, we certainly remove that particular employee from having to deal with that particular patient. If it occurs again, we terminate the patient. (Maybe that's a bad word to use in patient care!)

Cheryl S SPHR

Short answer -- yes, it could be.

Long answer -- I work in a bank and just did a round of training on sexual harassment awareness. The material I used clearly indicated that customers may be guilty of sexual harassment and that employees should report those incidents as they would on a coworker. As an employer, we have a legal responsibilitiy to provide a work environment free of harassment, regardless of the source. Handling customers can be touchy, but is necessary, even if it means terminating the relationship with the customer.

Tricky, but "do-able" -- good luck!

blw

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 04-24-03 AT 08:29AM (CST)[/font][p]But be carefule when "handling" the customer, or you could wind up with a sexual harassment charge from them. (Sorry, I couldn't resist!)

I have dealt with this issue several times in our after school care environment when parents have made inappropriate comments to staff. I have met with the parents and had the behavior not changed, we would have removed the child from the program. It is stated in our parent's handbook when they enroll a child.

Barbara

Don D

I was recently told by a labor law attorney that the rule of thumb as to who is responsible in these situations is: Who controls the environment where it occured. Multiple scenarios get confusing though. If my salesman gets harassed at a customer's facility, the facility management is responsible for correction, but my salesman must first let us know of the problem. Likewise, if my saleswoman harasses somebody at that customer's facility they are still responsible for correction and should tell me to fire her. Or, if a vendor comes in our place and harasses somebody, we have the obligation to deal with it by calling his employer and demanding action. And, if a member of the public, say an applicant, comes in here and harasses somebody, it's our obligation to take corrective action. We can't call his mother, but we can throw him off the property. I think the safest thing for the employer to do, no matter where it occurs, is to TAKE ACTION PROMPTLY. Am I halfway right with this logic Theresa? What if our employee harasses the applicant? Is that even sexual harassment?

System

I believe we are responsible to protect our employees and to prevent them from harrasing anybody while on the employer's property or doing employers business.
Agree with the above, do not avoid taking action.

Leslie

I had an applicant complain about two of my employees (ribald language), albeit anonymously. I addressed the issue with them. They very much recalled the incident and were terribly embarrassed - and wanted me to somehow track down the applicant so they could apologize.

We have customer challenges ALL the time. If we can track them down, they are barred for a month. They come back and do it again, they are barred forever. It’s tough to police, but our employees are pretty good watchdogs. Gets around the floor real quick - and then to Security - that hey, there’s that guy who messed with Mary. I thought he wasn’t supposed to be in here.

Then we have the problem of the ideal employee who becomes a downright obnoxious customer. The beat goes on....and Don’s right, it’s our responsibility to address every complaint.