Harassed at Work

I just came from our annual anti-harassment training. This is always a humorous occasion for me. It's humorous not because the topic isn't serious, but because no one has effectively come up with a way to instruct 100+ people in an hour how not to harass people. This year the company ditched the speaker (who basically stands up front, reads Power Point slides, and answers embarrassing questions from the audience). Unfortunately, they did not ditch the cheesy After-School Special-type videos.

We were greeted by one of the HR women (no men in the HR department, I'm sure no stereotyping was involved though) welcoming us to "Harassment Training." Unfortunately she misspoke or that would have made the session much more interesting. On to the videos.

First up was the awesomely titled "Ouch! That Stereotype Hurts!" (With Vignettes!) It featured a bunch of actors/waiters (yes I'm stereotyping actors, but they're not my coworkers. Hopefully this is allowed for the sake of comedy.) commenting on why harassment hurts. (I think I learned this when I kindergarten, but apparently others are slow learners.) The main host finally gave us a 6 or 7 step process to use when faced with harassment. I won't bore you with the entire process (largely because I have forgotten most of them already), but one of them was "Ask a question." This could be done, the host pointed out, by asking "What do you mean?" when someone makes an inappropriate comment. This was proceeded by five random people looking at the camera and saying "What do you mean?" for those of us who are really, really slow. Another suggestion, as foreshadowed by the video's title, was to just say "Ouch!" If someone makes a comment stereotyping someone and we don't feel like asking questions or delving into the issue, we can just say "Ouch!" And if you thought this was immediately proceeded by over half a dozen people looking at the camera and saying "Ouch!" than you've caught the gist of this video.

The second video wasn't nearly as interesting. Titled "Harassment is..." it was basically a host talking with short vignettes shown in between. No 6 step program here. The one standout vignette was an American lady making fun of a Indian woman because the Indian didn't speak English. The American lady then said in a Real World confessional-style interview (in black and white, no less!) that "Those people can't even speak English good." Finally my coworkers were allowed to laugh. Apparently stereotyping Americans is still OK. Thank goodness!

Back to work. I'll try not to harass people.