| >Asking someone on a date that isn't interested in you is harassment. Wow. No, it's not. Not for normal people, anyway. Normal person A: "Hey, what do you say you and I have dinner one of these nights." Normal person B: "Thanks, but no." [TOTALLY OPTIONAL: "I don't think my girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband/... would like that."/"I have a strict no-relationships-with-coworkers/vendors/customers/people-I-meet-in-the-gym/... policy."/"That's very kind of you but I'm afraid I'm not interested."/"Please don't ask again and we shall never speak of this."] Normal person A: "No problem! So, about that [situation-appropriate topic of discussion..]" A asked B on a date. B was not interested. No harassment was involved. To be very clear, the above dialogue could have gone (and unfortunately all too often does go) differently. Had A persisted after a clear refusal, that could very easily veer into the territory of harassment. Furthermore (and I know this will be more controversial), B could have messed the above dialogue up too, for example by failing to give a clear and unambiguous "no." Does this place a certain burden on B merely as a consequence of A's unrequited interest? Yes, but part of being an adult is being able to say "no" to reasonable requests from other adults. Strive be a normal person like A and B and it should be possible to ask someone on a date, or be asked on a date, regardless of context without fear or discomfiture. (Note: situations of extreme power imbalance, e.g. professor/student, boss/subordinate, need to be navigated with extreme care. Normal people refrain entirely, in such situations, from romantic overtures unless and until the mutual interest (it does happen sometimes) is blindingly obvious, and they then scrupulously avoid even the appearance of impropriety, e.g. by waiting until the end of the term, or transferring to a different department, or something.) >Calling someone a MILF is definitely harassment. I'm not going to argue there. It's extremely offensive, at the very least. Normal people don't address other normal people, with whom they don't have an intimate relationship, using sexual terms. For what it's worth, it sounds to me like the female employee in this case was a model Normal Person ("sure as friends in work context" is about as unambiguous as you can get!). If the sum total of the communication had been A: Could we hang out?
B: Sure, as friends in a work context
A: May I tell you a secret?
B: No, sorry. I would regard A as a Normal Person as well, and the dialogue as innocuous. But I'm assuming A was inappropriately persistent/insistent (not to mention the MILF part, which is inappropriate in itself) and the dialogue, no doubt, goes on from there. So, yes, fire his ass. |