Harrassment from Co-Workers

Woodrat54 · May 2003

I am going through a divorce. I am having rumors spread throughout work of affairs, etc. (which are not true). I recently received a news article in the mail of infidelity, blaming the other party, etc.

This letter was sent to my home address, with a return address of the company I work for. I showed it to our HR person, and he said this was harrassment. Only problem is that I cannot say for sure who is behind all of this. I have an idea, but can't prove it.

Do I have any recourse?

2406663 · May 2003

My first thought is that the HR representative needs to address the situation and take it more seriously. How did another employee have access to your address? If this is only info. that is available to Management/HR staff,
then perhaps HR could issue a memo reminding employees of the co. policy on harassment/hostile environment and handle it that way in addition to more training.

As far as recourse - I'm assuming you are referring to the co. legal liability -
this certainly is a form of harassment. However, If the co. is doing all that they can do (investigating, memos, re-training)if they don't know who is
generating the mailings - how can they discipline???

Sounds like you shouldn't let anyone in on any of personal info.

Rockie · May 2003

Several ways you can approach this:

You can ignore it and the gossipers can go on to someone else

If your company is small, this can be brought up in a group setting that someone is sending harassing mail to an employee's home address and if it is found who is doing this, they will be terminated immediately. I would also reiterate that an employee's personal business is their personal business and should not be a topic of conversation in the workplace.

Send a company-wide email out to the same effect as above.

You can threaten to get a DNA sample from all employees and match it to the saliva sample on the envelope. (Just joking, but it does sound like a nice threat guaranteed to scare the pants off the offender!)

Seriously, this is always a nasty problem where you have people that delight in taking pleasure from the misfortunes of others.

Rockie · May 2003

OOPS - One other thing I forgot. You can always state that if you receive anything else of this nature through the US Mail, that you will turn it over to the PostMaster General for investigation.

Harrassment from Co-Workers

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