I have a boss in my place of work who feels the need to weave in a joke about my lack of relationships as well as any sort of sex life and jokes about me being a single man constantly, especially when we have banter with other members of staff. For the first couple of times, he did them, I was ok with it and I like to think I have relatively decent skin for the most part, but over time, he kept on doing them repeatedly. The punchline is always the same in that I should find a date or I’m secretly on a date with someone. For example, I found out that I was working hours earlier on a shift the day after despite already making plans to do other things, but then he joked “Oh wow he’s finally on his first date at 12:25 and he has to be at work at half 12 lol” which doesn’t seem too bad but there are other jokes he makes that are more questionable. For example, one female staff member had gone through a breakup and my boss felt the need to joke about me finally having the opportunity to be in her pants or something like that. The more he does it the more I’m tempted to tell him to just fuck off and be done with it but I don’t want to risk throwing a job away just for some jokes, especially considering I have a mortgage to pay and I don’t know if he has any innocent intentions or is he trying to tell me something with doing them so often. What do you think I should do? I’m I overthinking and should take it on the chin or is there something else I’m missing?
3 comments
Start saying I’d tell you more about my love life but your wife would be very upset with me or some variation of this each time.
He’s a sex pest. He’s being awful to you, but it sounds like what he’s saying to your female coworkers is in sexual harassment territory. Guys like this are often good at passing off their behavior as “just a joke” & retaliating against people who call them out.
Do you have an HR? And are you on friendly terms with any of those female coworkers? If you report him as a group, you may be more likely to be taken seriously.
This is sexual harassment. Hopefully you work for a company with hr department so you can report this