Offering Copious BJ’s at Work — Part 1

It’s not a joke, it’s one of the first problems I had to deal with as a manager. I was working as a manager in an administrative portion of a major university. I worked with a mixed group of classified employees and student staff. Since there were shifts between students and things always came up, we had a way of students requesting for people to take their shifts. We basically had them send out a request to the listserv to be distributed to all staff regarding when their shift was available and whatever reasons they were looking to get it filled. One day as I was about to leave at 5:30, I get an e-mail that says:

To: listserv
From: “Matt”
Subject: Shift available

Thursday 3/31
5:00pm – 9:00pm
Building C

Reason: I have a big lab I have to do. Copious BJ’s to the person who takes this shift.

I froze. I re-read. I froze again. I heard footsteps coming towards my office. A quicker pace than usual. In walks my boss, Director of the department. He says the four words I didn’t want to hear at 5:30: “Take care of it.” Guh. I call Matt and tell him to come to the office right now. I call my IT guy to have him come in. In between that time, I get e-mails from three people on my staff that can’t believe the e-mail. One of them is going to file a complaint with the Human Rights Department. The IT guy comes in first so I have him sit with me to fire Matt.

Whenever Matt comes in, he is completely unapologetic. Whenever I tell him he is going to get fired, he gets defiant and starts asking me to cite what policies he has broken. I told him we work for a university that has a zero tolerance policy on sexually harassing words. This isn’t one of those things I could overlook, it is something that we had to take care of right now.

After he leaves, I tell the IT guy to take care of his e-mail access. He says he will do it. He doesn’t. And guess what happens? To be continued…

Tagged as: copious bj's, Legal, sexual harassment