Miscellaneous

Woah, Lady: That's Not Sexism, That's Good Old Fashioned Corporate America

Last week, a judge threw out a sexual harassment suit a woman brought against her former company, a suit that alleged that making a female receptionist serve coffee to her male supervisors was, in and of itself, sexist.

Ummm. Really?

This is a tough call, actually. I can vaguely see her point -- that being asked by men to serve them coffee is demeaning. But then again, she's a receptionist, and male or female, that's what a lot of receptionist do -- they serve coffee. It's no more demeaning, I'd argue, than most of the other receptionist duties (believe you me; I've been a secretary at a law firm before, and every fucking second of it felt demeaning, and I never served coffee).

Anyway, aside from the claim that serving coffee was grounds of sexual harassment, there was another item in support of her case, which I find absolutely ludicrous:

After just a few weeks on the job, Klopfenstein claims that a male co-worker invited her to lunch in an e-mail that said "I feel bad you have been working here for a couple of weeks and we haven't gotten to know each other yet." In her deposition, Klopfenstein testified that she found the invitation "very offensive" because "there is no reason why a man and a woman should go out to lunch together without any other party around. To me that's a date."

Well, that's a fucked-up definition of a date, I'd say. It sounds like this woman was looking for reasons to claim sexual harassment, and this particular allegation was extremely weak. Besides, if her boss was trying to get in her pants, asking her to get coffee is no way to butter her up.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on June 23, 2008 (boomark / email).