sexually harrassed at work?

I was consulting to a company awhile back and the female manager I worked for during my third week with the company sent me an internal email. In it, she said that she needed a massage and hinted that only if she could find someone to do it. I replied telling her to look in the Yellow Pages under masseuses.

The following week, she came into my office wearing a short skirt. There was no chair for her to sit, so she sat down across from my desk on a two foot stack of computer papers. Her knees were above her hips as she sat with her legs spread apart. The surprise was she had nothing on under her skirt (ala Sharon Stone). I told her that she needed to stop what she was doing before another employee walked in and saw what she was doing. She responded; "You don't like what you see?"

I did everything to try and evade her sexual onslaught for the following six months until my consulting job to the company was over. I couldn't file a complaint with her management. They would have let me go immediately as I was a consultant and she was a "valued" employee. I was caught between a rock and a hard place with nothing I could do but dodge her.

There was a girl at work that used to actually grab my butt all the time. I put in several complaints and since she was the boss' best friend, nothing was done until the day I walked out.

Yeah. I've had a couple of instances where ladies have done stuff like grope me on the job. Consider it an unintentional side-effect of all these sexual harassment clauses companies put in their company statements nowadays- there's all sorts of stuff about what is considered harassment for women, but absolutely nothing as to what constitutes it for men. If I were to complain to a superior about harassment caused by a woman, I'd be laughed into humiliation, pure and simple.

So much for "equality at the workplace", huh?

It seems to be common at my job. Too bad it's a family owned business 'cause nothing much is done because everyone is buddy/buddy. Shame!

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Over 95% of the people I work with are men. Anyone who's made a comment or asks about me has been set straight by my long time coworkers. They would not put up with it and have always shown me a great deal of respect.

I have run into men who made it clear they were not happy taking orders from a woman at times, and though I earn their respect eventually, I may not know it for years...until I overhear them telling a new guy who feels the same way, that I know what I'm doing for the most part.

Obviously, some men would kill to be sexually harassed like you describe, because it can be like a fantasy.

But as you see, the REALITY of sexual harassment is far from sexy at all. I've experienced the gamut from clients saying inappropriate things to the bank president calling me in his office just to check me out and male coworkers trying to ptich items into my cleavage like it was a goal, (and no, it was not inapproprite cleavage).

And, of course, there's the crap about being called "honey", "sweetie", or "if you would, be a good girl and go makes copies, or get me the ________".