A reader writes:
A guy I work with accused me of being inappropriate with him. I was horrified I gave him the wrong impression and wished to be swallowed into another dimension. As a woman in tech, I’ve had coworkers develop a crush on me multiple times, and it’s always so painful and awkward. I’d never want to make anyone else feel that way. When the mortification wore off (and after I spent hours panic rereading all of our messages)… I think it’s a him problem?
Backstory: I have been working with Guy for a few months on a project. We’re not from the same division, live on opposite sides of the country, and will probably never meet in person. We’ve never worked together before. Our collaboration amounts to about five hours a week working one-on-one, plus a few larger group calls. My group has a cameras-on policy and his doesn’t, so he’s seen me a few times but I’ve never seen him. When we are working one-on-one together, we communicate via messaging. There’s a fair bit of “waiting for the code to compile” so the messaging sometimes veers into neutral small talk. With Guy, it’s been a very typical amount of small talk.
The most inappropriate thing I can find in any of our messages is from last week. He asked about where I grew up, and I joked about how it’s very backwoods compared to where he lives. I said it’s kind of methy and brought up a recent podcast that was released about my hometown, featuring kids who got high on paint thinner before breaking into a trailer. I’m cringing that I brought up drugs and true crime podcasts at work (especially now that HR might need to read my messages) but there’s no universe where it was flirting. After my methville disclosure, he asked what town I live in now. I didn’t reply for an hour (I got called into a meeting), and he followed up with “don’t be shy” which I just ignored, and then I asked work questions a few hours later. (See: fairly practiced at ignoring sort-of-weird comments from usually-well-meaning, socially awkward guys.)
It’s also laughably impossible that I’d develop a crush on Guy. In addition to the impractical logistics and the being happily married part, I have spent years crafting the work persona of a somewhat-unapproachable yet non-bitchy sexless blob.
Fast forward to today. I asked Guy to reach out when he got online, he didn’t. Then he blew off a scheduled team meeting. Then he flatly declined a meeting request I sent about an urgent issue, with no explanation. Then my boss texted Guy about the emergency, and Guy reached out to my coworker about it instead of me. I messaged him, “Hey, are we in a fight I didn’t know about? You can’t ghost me now, I need your help!” accompanied by a crying and a laughing emoji. After a few hours, he replied, “I wasn’t ignoring you. I think the way we’ve been communicating has become unprofessional and too relaxed and I just want to get back to more of a formal relationship. I’m married and I don’t want to hurt my wife.” (Obviously now I deeply regret the ghosting comment, it’s honestly the most flirtatious thing I ever said to him and I was just trying to soften the tone of the “where the heck are you” message I wanted to send.)
I don’t really know what to do now. I have no idea how to be less relaxed and more professional, other than flat-out refusing to make any small talk with him. I’d rather sniff paint thinner than have to explain to my boss why my coworker thinks I’m sexually harassing him. The team finally did get on a call about the emergency, and of course Guy and I joined before anyone else. We sat there in absolute silence without so much as a hello for five eternal minutes.
Making matters even worse … I’m the reason a different man got fired last week. I’d struggled with this (notoriously awful) coworker condescending to me for months, and I complained way-more-than-usual-for-me to my boss, and eventually asked him to sit in on our meetings. During the first ‘mediated’ meeting, the coworker was outlandishly disrespectful to me, I told him he was being inappropriate, he yelled “Jesus Christ,” I yelled back “Don’t act like I’m overreacting, I’m reacting the right amount to months of disrespect,” and it continued to escalate for another minute until boss said the meeting was over. Boss fired the coworker a few days later and gave me the obligatory lecture about remaining professional at work. I had never raised my voice at work before that day.
I’ve only had this boss for a few months and I’m terrified he’s going to decide that I have a problem working with men. He handled the problem coworker as well as I could have hoped, but I’m also aware he witnessed me exhibiting my own set of bad behavior on that day. And with this issue coming so soon after … it looks like a pattern exists that I swear has never been a pattern before.
I’m not sure Guy really did accuse you of being inappropriate with him!
I mean, maybe that was his subtext, but he didn’t actually say you’ve been flirting and he’s uncomfortable with it. He said the two of you have developed a relaxed manner with each other and he’s decided that might hurt his wife so he’s pulling back. (All the way to not speaking, apparently. Guy’s definition of “professional” is weird, and there’s a clue there.)
There are a bunch of things that could explain this that don’t mean you did anything to give him the wrong impression:
- Guy was turning your work friendship into something more in his head, then noticed you ignored his social overture (his question about what town you lived in, then his “don’t be shy” follow-up) and that you reverted to work questions after that, and so he is wildly overreacting to thinking that you have set a boundary. He may feel embarrassed that he misread the level of banter between you and so he’s now is overcorrecting in this very clumsy and ridiculous way.
- Guy’s marriage is in trouble for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and you are a convenient scapegoat — to his wife, or in his own mind, or who knows.
- Guy has been inappropriate with other women, his wife is aware or he’s worried she’s about to become aware, and so as a result he’s being weird with all his female colleagues. (And in this scenario, I wouldn’t be surprised if, to Guy, women either are potential objects of interest or they are frozen out, nothing in between.) Maybe he’s told his wife he’ll set different boundaries with women at work. Maybe he wants to be able to say he has. Who knows.
None of these are about you “flirting” with Guy. They are probably not even about Guy thinking you were flirting with him. They are about Guy being unable to manage his own feelings — and work relationships — like a grown-up.
Your comment about your hometown wasn’t wildly inappropriate, not anywhere near it. “You can’t ghost me now, I need your help” wasn’t either, and it really wasn’t flirtatious. You were acting like a normal human with warm, friendly relationships with the coworkers you talk with frequently. Guy was doing … whatever this is.
Don’t let Guy make you view your actions through his weird, distorted lens. You are a normal human with normal human interactions. Sadly, Guy appears to struggle with interactions with colleagues.
It’s a good idea to respond to his message with, “I’m happy to keep our communication more formal and focused on work going forward. I appreciate you letting me know.” And then be scrupulously professional — not because you’ve been unprofessional, which you haven’t been, but because if he’s going to keep avoiding you on work stuff, pretty quickly you’re going to have to escalate that to your boss and showing clear professional dealings with him will help.
But I don’t think you need to worry that your boss is going to decide you have a problem working with men. Sure, it sounds like you could have handled the man who got fired in a more composed way … but it also sounds like your boss witnessed exactly what was pushing you to the brink (which is why your colleague got fired and you didn’t). This Guy situation isn’t anything like that. You interacted with him in an utterly mundane manner, and it’s right there in writing for anyone who wants to look.
If you work in a sexist field with a lot of men who have problems working with women, statistically speaking you’re going to encounter more than one of them. That doesn’t make you the problem just because you’re the common denominator. It means you’re existing in an environment where the same sort of bias has an ongoing presence.
The post did my coworker accuse me of flirting with him? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
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