I find myself on the end of disrespectful comments from coworkers and superiors, but I have this mentality that “oh I’m not gonna be a rat, I’ll just roll with it.” Do other men also feel this way?
The comments I receive always come as joking jabs, so I feel like I should just roll with it as like a “mens culture” thing, but I also feel disrespected. Like I know those comments wouldn’t be levied at other coworkers besides myself. How would other men of Reddit honestly handle this?
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Depends on the company culture.
I work for a company that claims to care deeply about employees’ concerns and be ethical about HR complaints. My one single experience with trying to bring concerns to management and HR was futile. I’ll be leaving as soon as I get a job lined up elsewhere.
If you think you could find another job relatively easily, I’d speak up about feeling disrespected, since no company should be tolerating that. If you really need the job and can’t find something else right now, it might be best to put up with it for now.
Send it right back at them. Men seldom mean the things they say to each other, they’re just trying to make the day go by. Study up on some good comebacks and let it roll.
It helps to be self-deprecating as well. If you take everything too seriously you’ll never make friends. Also, keep in mind that men who have worked together for awhile will talk about the new guy and see what he’s made of. Laugh at their jokes, play along, and soon enough you’ll be welcomed into the group.
HRs first move is likely to go to your manager. Rather than starting with HR, I’d go to your manager first if you can’t address it head-on with coworkers.
So, 1) address it directly. “C’mon guys, don’t be disrespectful.”
2) Talk to manager
3) Talk to HR.
If the comments are coming from up the chain, you likely need to talk to HR to resolve it.
I’d start by looking up the terms of Hostile Work Environment online. If you see that the situation meets the criterion of a HWE, document it on an employer system (e.g. send an email to yourself, it can’t just be a document on shared drive somewhere). Every time it happens, write it down. Write down the full history, dates, who said what, your comments, how you felt, etc.
When you talk to HR, you MUST use the term Hostile Work Environment. Follow up your conversation with HR by summarizing what was said, and put Hostile Work Environment in the summary notes. That will spur them into action.
Remember: HR is not your friend. They are not your advocate. They are there to protect the company’s interests (e.g. not get sued), up to and including fucking you over. By protecting yourself first through documentation, you have the best likelihood for a positive outcome.
At my company, all complaints and issues are taken seriously and any grievances raised MUST be investigated as a matter of policy.
It’s bullying and whilst I’ve only worked in HR for 5 or so years I’ve never worked with a HR advisor that’s dismissive of any bullying of any level.
In my experience, the worst thing you can do is leave it alone as it almost always gets worse and we start to see issues on the complainants side. For example they get so demotivated, demoralised, mental health takes a plunge and all that impacts their performance of their role.
They disengage from work and that’s when THEY begin to be seen as a problem employee by the manager. The bully in the meantime is performing fine and as the manager doesn’t know because no complaints have been made they’re powerless to act.
I’ve seen good people sabotage their own success because they tried to ‘just roll with it’ or ignore it – if they do nothing then worst case scenario you’ve learnt you work for a shit company and should look elsewhere!
ETA – sorry I’m a woman, but I’ve helped many men (and many women) get action taken on this kind of problem!
Tbh I didn’t even know we HAD an HR department until I asked my boss who I should talk to about an issue with payroll
You gonna hate this answer but the best thing you can do is to just ignore it until you find better job opportunities. That’s what I did for my previous job. The manager wasn’t nice and often had a temper issue and make comments as a joke but you kinda feel insulted by it and I just ignored it and kept a positive mindset and kept applying for more job opportunities and just a few months later got an amazing job with insanely better job environment.
1) agree with the suggestion you deal directly with them first rather than go to manager or HR.
2) agree with going up chain of command (per company handbook/policy whatever) if #1 not successful
3) once you do decide to go to HR, remember one thing before you say a word…the HR department exists to protect THE COMPANY, not you. proceed accordingly.
There’s nothing wrong with talking to them if you have issues like that. If you don’t think the comments arent that bad then maybe try talking to them man to man first and let them know how you feel, but if it persists then go to HR and squash it instead of letting resentment build up. Bad enough we have to be at work with these people all fuckin day, no one needs extra aggravation on top of that
HR is there to protect the business, not you.
Ha. I’d expect to get fired for it.
Let’s be 100% of clear on the purpose of HR.
HR does **NOT** exist to help employees.
No matter what your employee training states, remember, HR is **NOT** there to help you.
If you are being harassed, HR *might* help, if doing so is good for the company.
But if helping you does not serve the company’s interest, they will cut you loose.
don’t have HR at my work
Where I work absolutely not comfortable at all, the hr people tell the manager everything, most of what I need to talk to hr about is the things that are happening because of the manager, therefore I just keep being bullied, harassed and discriminated against while others that do the same things are ok.. makes for an uncomfortable work place at times for sure… # walking oneggshells
Its in a different city for my HR. So i rather send an email. But comfortable for sure.
Honestly don’t know who that would be at this point, been through acquisition, split and acquisition again in the last three years.
If I did have some issue I would go to my direct report anyway, I trust him implicitly. Fortunately that has never been necessary.
The less interaction I have with HR the better, that’s a universal truth no matter who I work for and where I work
It depends on tje company really. The place I work for had all these monitors all over that celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and shit like that. On mothers daynir was all happy happy happy shit. On Father’s day it was basically insulting men that don’t have access to their kids and men that don’t date single moms. It was really fucked up. Me and a few guys when to HR and the loop was changed in a few hours.
In general, I treat HR as what it is- the enemy.
“B-but they’re there to help yo-” No, they’re there to help the *company*, and they *will* play favorites, so if you’re getting fucked with but the jerkass is the owner’s friend’s nephew, you’re SOL, and if the reality is they just wanna get rid of you because they don’t want (x), they can and *will* manufacture some bullshit about “procedures not being followed” when in actuality they just don’t wanna work with a gay.
If I’m having a grievance with a colleague, I skip HR and go to the ombudsman. Ombudsfolk are supposed to be impartial.
HR is not. HR protects the interests of the organization and helps insulate them from potential litigation.
They’re not going to care what happens to you unless it gives you an avenue for a lawsuit…
I only go to HR for process stuff: When is my pay raise processed, how do we get this employees classification changed, position description updated, etc.
A good friend of mine was the HR director. One piece of advice he left me with early on was “HR doesn’t exist in a company to save the employees, it’s to keep the employers dirty laundry unseen.”
If the company is shit just leave. Telling HR does nothing unless it’s a criminal offense. Even then…
Very comfortable. I’ve made a couple thousand from previous jobs settling instead of going in front of a judge.
One job, the guys there just kept talking about their wild weekend adventures. Even the boss joined in. I live in a one party consent recording state, my terms of employment did not have a recording clause.
I recorded their conversations, I recorded me talking to my boss about it how it makes me feel uncomfortable. I was able to fund a free semester of college from that settlement.
It sounds like you aren’t in a unionized workplace. If you were, you could go to your union rep, which is so much better.
If you have to go to HR directly, frame it as asking for advice. Make it clear that your goal is to get the problem resolved and have peace in the workplace, not to have people get in trouble unnecessarily. Make it clear that you are a loyal employee and love working there generally. Even if you need HR to intervene directly at some point, try to maintain the attitude that you are looking for a pragmatic solution going forward, not for necessarily the hammer to come down.
But always remember that HR’s job is to protect the company, and in particular management. No matter what they say or how they act, that’s the side they’re on. HR will go so far as to fire you on a premise if that’s the easiest way to make the issue go away. They typically have training on how to make employees let their guard down. Be friendly if they are, but don’t ever actually let your guard down with HR. Consider communicating with them in writing, such as by email that you cc to your personal email address, as much as possible. Consider sending follow-up emails for all meetings and phone calls in order to document them. And be careful to CYA in all other things, too. *Never* sign anything you don’t fully understand; say you need more time to review it if needed.
Never worked for a company that had an HR rep I believed to be in my corner. If that were to change, I’d consider bringing problems to them.
Many HR reps are good at pretending to care, but that’s as far as it goes.
Why would I trust HR? They’re a source of a lot of the problems.
I love working at small companies without HR departments.
HR is there to protect the company from you
If that problem also helps the company, absolutely comfy with it. If not, then no not comfy and likely will not bring up.