Speaker 1: From executive search to talent strategy, leadership development, rewards and
Speaker 1: succession planning. Corn Fairy can help you realize the full
Speaker 1: potential of your people so you can take your business
Speaker 1: where it wants to go up. Learn more at corn
Speaker 1: Ferry dot com slash up. The President elect of the
Speaker 1: United States, Donald Trump has been accused of sexual harassment
Speaker 1: by multiple women, and he also used language in his
Speaker 1: campaign that would be considered sexual harassment in the workplace.
Speaker 1: Given that Donald Trump is now the example of leadership
Speaker 1: in our country, it got us thinking about the state
Speaker 1: of sexual harassment in the workplace. This is game plan.
Speaker 1: I'm Rebecca Greenfield, a reporter for Bloomberg, where I cover
Speaker 1: the workplace, and I'm Sam Grobard. I am a writer
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg business Week magazine. So sexual harassment is not
Speaker 1: just a campaign issue, not just political, and it's definitely
Speaker 1: not just unique to Donald Jump. It's certainly not. And
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting about a lot of the things
Speaker 1: we were hearing about Trump was how blatant it was,
Speaker 1: how sort of it seemed over the top. And I
Speaker 1: remember feeling like I couldn't believe that this sort of
Speaker 1: behavior was still happening in two thousand six. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: felt that way too, and feel that way about sexual
Speaker 1: harassment in the workplace where it's not I don't expect
Speaker 1: to work in a workplace where that is appropriate at all.
Speaker 1: I don't even really think that that's possible now, you know.
Speaker 1: I watched Madman, and I think that is a time
Speaker 1: long gone and I will never, like Joan, have to
Speaker 1: sleep with somebody to get the client. And yet we
Speaker 1: hear stories out of Fox News and other places where
Speaker 1: this kind of behavior seems to be happening well up
Speaker 1: until very recently up and maybe it's still happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is still happening. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: a lesson with Fox News was that we didn't hear
Speaker 1: a lot of the stories. The thing about Trump's rise
Speaker 1: to the White House combined with his what would appear
Speaker 1: to be documented history of sexual harassment, it ties the
Speaker 1: two together, and it makes it basically acceptable. It certainly
Speaker 1: does not make it disqualifying. It basically says you can
Speaker 1: do these things, you can act this way to these people,
Speaker 1: and you can achieve the highest office in the land.
Speaker 1: I mean, you couldn't really have a more stark cause
Speaker 1: and outcome, really yeah, and I think that was something
Speaker 1: that I read over by Susan Antila at the Street,
Speaker 1: which is a website that covers finance. She talked to
Speaker 1: an employment lawyer who said that we model our behaviors
Speaker 1: after leaders we see. So even if you're not like
Speaker 1: specifically thinking like, oh, Donald Trump president, if I want
Speaker 1: to become president, I should call women certain things, but
Speaker 1: you unconsciously just it becomes appropriate. Yeah. Those two again,
Speaker 1: those two things sort of become decoupled and it does
Speaker 1: not seem to be an impediment. Here's a very public
Speaker 1: example of it not serving as an impediment. Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: got on the Supreme Court. Donald Trump got into the
Speaker 1: White House. I'll be politically egalitarian. Bill Clinton got into
Speaker 1: the White House. You know, you can do this, and
Speaker 1: it's okay. It was okay in it's okay in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen. But it's still to me as somebody who
Speaker 1: works feels like things have changed. I want to feel
Speaker 1: like things have changed, right, And I think that they
Speaker 1: have right. But I guess that really depends on where
Speaker 1: you work. Yes, and also what you consider harassment. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is black and white, but I think to the
Speaker 1: people being harassed and the harassers That can be really confusing, right,
Speaker 1: And this, to me, I feel is one of the
Speaker 1: bigger problems, is that I never have to think about
Speaker 1: sexual harassment as far as being done to me. But
Speaker 1: I would presume Becca that you do think about it,
Speaker 1: and the fact that you do think about it means
Speaker 1: that's part of your brain that should probably be spent
Speaker 1: on other things. There's just like the tyranny of having
Speaker 1: to think about it at all. Yeah. I can think
Speaker 1: of two things. One is sometime second guessing and thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: was that sexual harassment to that person harassed me? I
Speaker 1: overblowing it, which usually means you're not, but that feels horrible.
Speaker 1: And then also I want to talk about one of
Speaker 1: my previous half big takes where I talked about how
Speaker 1: I didn't really like it when people complimented people on
Speaker 1: their looks at work. And I think that probably I
Speaker 1: know that comes from a place of me really wanting
Speaker 1: people to take me seriously outside of the way I look,
Speaker 1: because I even have to think about that as a woman.
Speaker 1: And just for listeners who are not familiar with that
Speaker 1: half bag take and that half big take, I I
Speaker 1: said that I thought that people shouldn't complement each other
Speaker 1: on their looks at work, and that includes clothing, hat
Speaker 1: and glasses, accessories, updates, um, just because I think it's
Speaker 1: better to not. I think it can make people uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: And when I said I think it can make people uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: I mean I've been made uncomfortable by that when men
Speaker 1: have done that to me. Do I think that they're
Speaker 1: evil sexual harass sers who need to be fired? No,
Speaker 1: I don't, but it definitely comes from the place of
Speaker 1: having to think about it and trying to shield myself
Speaker 1: from something. Again, that's just like another process that you
Speaker 1: have to be aware of that you know, guys don't
Speaker 1: and that's lucky of me. You know, there are women
Speaker 1: who are harassed at work, and to talk more about that,
Speaker 1: we have with us Claire Setteth, who is a reporter
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg Business Week who for the last few months
Speaker 1: has been talking to almost twenty women about the various
Speaker 1: ways they've been sexually harassed at work. Thanks for coming
Speaker 1: on and talking to us. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So you've talked over a dozen women who have been
Speaker 1: sexually harassed at work, Yes, I have, and their stories
Speaker 1: have ranged from mildly infuriating and frustrating to absolutely tragic
Speaker 1: where you don't think that this would still be happening.
Speaker 1: Do you want to give some examples of the tragic
Speaker 1: things that are still happening. Yeah, well, I think you know.
Speaker 1: When the Roger Ales news hit with Fox News, that
Speaker 1: was the very classic, um what legal experts called pro
Speaker 1: quo harassment, where a man in position of power tells
Speaker 1: his underlying sleep with me, or you lose your job,
Speaker 1: or you don't get your raise or whatever. That is
Speaker 1: sort of the classic standard harassment. Then there's also what
Speaker 1: is known as hostile work environment, which is where you're
Speaker 1: not requested to do sexual favors or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty much made clear to you that you
Speaker 1: are being objectified, or comments are being made about you,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're touched in a way that you don't
Speaker 1: want to be touched, and it just makes it very
Speaker 1: difficult for you to do your job with any sort
Speaker 1: of level of comfort. So both of those still exists.
Speaker 1: The quid pro quo stuff is sort of the mad
Speaker 1: Men era days that I didn't think until I started
Speaker 1: talking to women that it was still as commons as
Speaker 1: it is. But unfortunately Um, it is the case, especially
Speaker 1: in food service. I talked to someone who worked on
Speaker 1: a horse farm, and you know, it's sort of non
Speaker 1: traditional workplace environments are you don't necessarily have the company
Speaker 1: culture and the compliance training and the meetings about diversity
Speaker 1: and this sort of stuff. Um, where the sort of
Speaker 1: old school way of doing things still rains. Claire, you're
Speaker 1: just referring to somebody working on a horse farm. I
Speaker 1: was curious to know what kinds of companies do or
Speaker 1: did these women work for. They worked at everything from
Speaker 1: one woman worked at Google, down to the horse farm,
Speaker 1: to a coffee shop in California to oh gosh, um Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. She works with politicians and a sitting politician
Speaker 1: put his hands between her legs in a meeting. One
Speaker 1: woman worked at the u N and had the High
Speaker 1: Commissioner for Refugees who used to be the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: of the Netherlands acost her in a meeting. She actually sued,
Speaker 1: but her case was thrown out because if you work
Speaker 1: at the UN you have diplomatic community. Wow. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking maybe the quid pro quols stuff didn't
Speaker 1: happen in the office, that happened in these non traditional
Speaker 1: empire ments. But it sounds like, yeah, it really matter.
Speaker 1: It really just depends. I mean, it depends on the
Speaker 1: people that you work with and how seriously your company
Speaker 1: takes it if and when something does happen. I talked
Speaker 1: to a lot of employment experts, both psychologists and legal experts,
Speaker 1: who said, you know, essentially this is a cultural problem.
Speaker 1: Women experience this in all facets of their life. And
Speaker 1: so if you're a company and you hire people of
Speaker 1: any sort of size, you know, a f you have
Speaker 1: five people, maybe you won't have this problem. But if
Speaker 1: you get a hundred people, all of the sort of
Speaker 1: ills of society eventually are going to come to you.
Speaker 1: So companies sort of have to act as if this
Speaker 1: is something that's out there, this does happen, what are
Speaker 1: we going to do about it when it does happen.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed in your conversations with these women and
Speaker 1: evolution of sexual harassment or is it in fact very
Speaker 1: much the same as it was you were referring to
Speaker 1: the Madmen era? Does it still take the same forms? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean essentially the same stuff that happened in mad
Speaker 1: Men is happening now. Um, it may be different levels.
Speaker 1: Maybe your industry, it's a bit different. UM, I think
Speaker 1: sort of in news media. The stuff that happened at
Speaker 1: Fox News is not common to other news media organizations.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that Fox News was just the
Speaker 1: only place that that happened at all. And so I
Speaker 1: talked with some people who work at the Equal Employment
Speaker 1: Opportunity Commissioned and they investigate all harassment complaints, and they
Speaker 1: said that while quid pro quo statistically isn't as common
Speaker 1: as it used to be, UM, they are still dealing
Speaker 1: with pretty much everything, and they they have been dealing
Speaker 1: with everything. And I talked to a woman who was
Speaker 1: harassed in the nineteen eighties. I talked to Anita Hill,
Speaker 1: who was harassed also in the nineteen eighties. We came
Speaker 1: forward in the nineties and I talked to women who
Speaker 1: are in their twenties who were just harassed a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and their stories are pretty much the same.
Speaker 1: The questions that they have are the same. The way
Speaker 1: that their employers dealt with it varied so drastically that
Speaker 1: it's not guaranteed that you're going to be at a
Speaker 1: place that takes this seriously. So I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: that we've made as many strides as we think that
Speaker 1: we have. I want to hear more about the employers.
Speaker 1: But before getting to that, it does seem that perception
Speaker 1: has changed, though, like you were saying, we think things
Speaker 1: have improved. I think that I work in a better
Speaker 1: workplace environment, not just here but anywhere. All work is
Speaker 1: better than Madman. I mean, is that perception completely wrong
Speaker 1: or has harassment changed its form changed a little bit? Well?
Speaker 1: So I also felt that way. I you know, I
Speaker 1: have been fortunate enough to not have been blatantly harassed
Speaker 1: at work. But I will say that when I started
Speaker 1: asking people about this, I got a flood of responses
Speaker 1: unlike anything that I have ever gotten for any other
Speaker 1: story that I've worked on, to the point where I
Speaker 1: had childhood friends, very close friends, tell me these stories.
Speaker 1: And not all of them are you know, my boss said,
Speaker 1: sleep with me or I'm going to fire you. A
Speaker 1: lot of them were things like one woman said, you know,
Speaker 1: when she worked at her I t help desk in college,
Speaker 1: so she's you know, early twenty is the actual like
Speaker 1: fully employed full time workers, there were older men. They
Speaker 1: would come and like snap her brawn and harass her
Speaker 1: a little bit. But it was kind of minor, but
Speaker 1: she complained about it, and they just said, you know what,
Speaker 1: do you want us to fire them? We're not going
Speaker 1: to fire them. So it's not quite necessarily, you know
Speaker 1: Joan on mad Men having to sleep with someone in
Speaker 1: order to get the promotion to become a partner. But
Speaker 1: it still happened, and that was only a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and to be clear, that's still illegal. Yes, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. Actually what they should have done is fired them, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that, but I do think there's
Speaker 1: this perception of if you're not going as far as
Speaker 1: the most horrible thing, then it's okay. It's right legally.
Speaker 1: There are a number of different ways that this goes,
Speaker 1: but essentially, if it is someone in a position of power,
Speaker 1: your superior, your manager or whatever, and they harass you,
Speaker 1: that is pretty much just legally, that's cut and dry.
Speaker 1: If it's coworker and coworker. It ranges whether or not
Speaker 1: you had complained about it, if you had made your
Speaker 1: boss or HR manager as someone aware of it, and
Speaker 1: it depends on exactly what it was. You know, if
Speaker 1: it's one comment here, courts don't consider that hostile. Um.
Speaker 1: It has to be pervasive, So it has to be
Speaker 1: regularly for a while. Um, there isn't a time limit
Speaker 1: on what is a while, but it has to be,
Speaker 1: you know, not just like, Oh, I heard this off
Speaker 1: color remark and I don't like it, which I think
Speaker 1: is is good because otherwise we hear a lot of
Speaker 1: off color things and all sorts of capacities, and that
Speaker 1: could get pretty dangerous. Becca, you refer to this earlier,
Speaker 1: but I'll ask it now if you could tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about how some of these employers did
Speaker 1: respond to the complaints, to the actions, and what were
Speaker 1: some good examples, what were some really lousy examples. I
Speaker 1: think one of the better examples was a woman who's
Speaker 1: an animator at a major Hollywood studio and she had
Speaker 1: been repeatedly asked out on dates to the point where
Speaker 1: when she would say no, he would still say, not
Speaker 1: just let's go for coffee, but let's go on a
Speaker 1: hot air balloon ride, and let's have a candle at dinner.
Speaker 1: And he tricked her once into going out to dinner
Speaker 1: with him, and he said it was going to be
Speaker 1: a big group of people, and then she showed up
Speaker 1: at the restaurant it was just him, he sent her
Speaker 1: flowers and went on and on and on. So she
Speaker 1: told her manager and she herself at the time wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what she should be doing. She wasn't sure if
Speaker 1: that was allowed or not allowed, or if she was.
Speaker 1: She was like, am I blowing this out of proportion?
Speaker 1: I don't know? And he said absolutely not. Um, he
Speaker 1: should not be doing this sort of stuff if you
Speaker 1: have expressed no interest. And so they talked to him
Speaker 1: and then it completely stopped. But he's still at that
Speaker 1: company and she doesn't necessarily work with him every day,
Speaker 1: but she does sometimes here and there and just mostly,
Speaker 1: you know, deals with it. Yeah. I think part of
Speaker 1: the problem is some people will hear that story and say,
Speaker 1: is that harassment? I don't know? And yeah, it's comforting
Speaker 1: to hear a company say yes, right, you should not
Speaker 1: have to experience that at work, right, And they talked
Speaker 1: to him and he stopped it. And if he hadn't
Speaker 1: had stopped it, maybe they would talk to him again,
Speaker 1: or they would take some sort of formal level of
Speaker 1: punishment that they didn't have to step in and do.
Speaker 1: So it really depends on exactly what is going on. Um,
Speaker 1: That's why I sort of liked her story so much
Speaker 1: is because in some ways it was benign and you
Speaker 1: could be confused. But also if you tell someone to
Speaker 1: stop bothering you and they still bother you, and she
Speaker 1: said he would email her all day long, every day
Speaker 1: and she just didn't feel very comfortable. You should also
Speaker 1: have someone at work be able to step in and say, actually,
Speaker 1: this isn't how you want to work, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't like to be at that company. Maybe she
Speaker 1: wouldn't be there if they hadn't done anything, certainly. I mean,
Speaker 1: if somebody tries to talk to you at a bar,
Speaker 1: you know, you can either tell them buzz off or
Speaker 1: leave yourself and then you're done, right, But in office
Speaker 1: is a place people are going to continue to show
Speaker 1: up in and work in, and you have you can't
Speaker 1: just not go yeah, well, and this was like her
Speaker 1: first big job at a major, major studio. And so
Speaker 1: this is a woman who'd her whole life wanting to
Speaker 1: be an animator, like, went to grad school, did all
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff, I think, gets there and then
Speaker 1: this happens, and what she's just going to quit? I mean,
Speaker 1: so I liked that that worked out. Well, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of some of the other stuff. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: what was an example of a company not handling it? Well,
Speaker 1: what does that look like for the woman? Well, the
Speaker 1: most tragic one was a young woman just out of
Speaker 1: law school. She got a job at a boutique litigation
Speaker 1: firm in Manhattan, and she went out to dinner with
Speaker 1: the partners and one of them made a comment that
Speaker 1: because he was paying for a dinner, she should give
Speaker 1: him a book job. She was a summer intern and
Speaker 1: felt kind of weird about it, but it was just
Speaker 1: the one comment, um, And so when the firm offered
Speaker 1: her a job, she accepted it. She didn't think she
Speaker 1: was going to be working directly with him, but surprised
Speaker 1: they reorganized she's going to be working directly with him.
Speaker 1: And so those types of comments became her daily life
Speaker 1: almost immediately, where she was told, you know, to dress
Speaker 1: sort of scantily for her hearing so that she could
Speaker 1: be eye candy for the judge. Her body was commented
Speaker 1: on all the time. He actually asked her to have
Speaker 1: sex with him and she said no. He told her
Speaker 1: at some point that he wasn't sure that he could
Speaker 1: recommend her for a bonus, and then they should Um,
Speaker 1: this was at their holiday party, that they should go
Speaker 1: back up to the office and talk about it. Um,
Speaker 1: they ended up having sex. It's sort of unclear to me,
Speaker 1: based on the lawsuit, how that completely played out. And
Speaker 1: so she only worked there for three months before it
Speaker 1: got that bad that quickly, and she went to work
Speaker 1: for two days afterwards, um, which sort of blitz my mind.
Speaker 1: And then she realized she couldn't do it anymore, and
Speaker 1: she quit. She went home to Nebraska and got a job,
Speaker 1: and as soon as she got a job, she sued
Speaker 1: and the lass firm uh counter suitor for fifteen million
Speaker 1: dollars alleging all these things. They eventually dropped the counter suit.
Speaker 1: She won a dty thousand dollars in her sexual harassment lawsuit, um,
Speaker 1: which is actually fairly low considering what had happened to her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hearing you tell the story, it was interesting to hear
Speaker 1: you say when he made that first remark that she
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of weird. I'm using air quotes
Speaker 1: because that's very weird. Weird. Yeah, like, yeah, that is
Speaker 1: not normal from someone you work with, especially to a
Speaker 1: summer intern. Yeah, you know, it's it's to anybody, right, Well,
Speaker 1: and you know it's it's it's been hard reporting this
Speaker 1: because I just want people to tell me what their
Speaker 1: experiences were and what their thought process was at the time.
Speaker 1: And oftentimes these women have now in hindsight than like
Speaker 1: what was I thinking? What was I doing? But she
Speaker 1: had never had a job before, she was coming from
Speaker 1: the South, had never lived in New York before, not
Speaker 1: that New Yorkers talked like that at all, but like
Speaker 1: everything is new to her, Like this is her first
Speaker 1: summer job, She's going to be a lawyer. This is
Speaker 1: just some afterwork dinner drink saying she's totally offended but
Speaker 1: doesn't really know what to do about it. All happens
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Speaker 1: dot com slash up. Well, I wanted to ask you,
Speaker 1: Claire because I know that. Um, in addition to your
Speaker 1: conversations with these women, you've also been working on some
Speaker 1: ancillary material, including studies and examinations as to why women
Speaker 1: don't speak up and and the psychology behind that, and
Speaker 1: some of the professional issues as well. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is I think a very benign and honest question that
Speaker 1: people have whenever someone comes forward, because when you if
Speaker 1: you think about the stories that you've heard in the news,
Speaker 1: it's always Let's take Anita Health, for example, came forward
Speaker 1: in the harassment that she was alleging happened in the eighties.
Speaker 1: She had never said anything publicly at the time. It
Speaker 1: turned out that she had told her friends, which actually
Speaker 1: helped her story very much, but she didn't come forward. Then.
Speaker 1: Gretchen Carlson clearly had been experiencing this sort of stuff
Speaker 1: for a while. Megan Kelly has just come forward and
Speaker 1: said exactly what happened to her with Roger Ailes ten
Speaker 1: years ago. And so there is this natural reaction to like, well,
Speaker 1: why if this is so awful, didn't you do something
Speaker 1: about this? I would do something about this. I would definitely,
Speaker 1: I would quit. I would report this, I would you
Speaker 1: know whatever, And sometimes that's use to discredit people when
Speaker 1: they come forward, and sometimes it's just a really honest question.
Speaker 1: And so um I started talking to psychologists, and there's
Speaker 1: a very good study in two thousand one for these
Speaker 1: psychologists interviewed women about what they would do if they
Speaker 1: were sexually harassed in a job interview, and they said,
Speaker 1: I would get really mad, and I would refuse to
Speaker 1: answer the questions, and I wouldn't accept the job, and
Speaker 1: all the sort of stuff. And then they actually harassed
Speaker 1: them in uh joh interview situation. The psychologist didn't they
Speaker 1: hired someone to do it, but you know, he asked
Speaker 1: them questions like do you find yourself sexually desirable? Do
Speaker 1: you think it's important for women to wear bras to work?
Speaker 1: Which was a bizarre question, but that's the type of
Speaker 1: weird stuff people say, I guess, do you have a boyfriend?
Speaker 1: In what they thought were real job interviews, And every
Speaker 1: single woman answered the questions and sat through the entire
Speaker 1: job interview. And then later when they asked them about it,
Speaker 1: is said they weren't angry. What they felt instead was fear,
Speaker 1: so they just were trying to get out of the
Speaker 1: situation just sort of survive it, I suppose. So the
Speaker 1: theory behind why people might not report it is that
Speaker 1: they're just scared. Yeah, essentially, um, and it seems reasonable
Speaker 1: and also something we've been talking about before. You don't
Speaker 1: really know what to do, You don't know what counts
Speaker 1: it's harassment, you don't know what recourse you have. That
Speaker 1: all seems like reasonable reasons that people wouldn't come forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then you know, once you're out of the situation
Speaker 1: and the fear has sort of dissipated a little bit,
Speaker 1: then you sort of think it through and think sort
Speaker 1: of the woman who was asked out all the time,
Speaker 1: You know, am I making a big deal out of this?
Speaker 1: I don't even know? Or if it is your boss
Speaker 1: or something like that, what are the career ramifications of
Speaker 1: me trying to say anything? Well, do I work at
Speaker 1: a company that will take this seriously? Is this person
Speaker 1: in charge of the entire company or news organization or um.
Speaker 1: In the case of the horse farm, he his wife
Speaker 1: owned a horse farm. So and stuff like that. We've
Speaker 1: all sat through really terribly produced videos about how not
Speaker 1: to sexually harass people. That's something else that you looked
Speaker 1: at right, yeah, and doing this story. I the first
Speaker 1: thing that came to mind was the fact that I've
Speaker 1: sat through so many quote unquote compliance videos and I've
Speaker 1: never understood necessarily what their point is, because I figure,
Speaker 1: if you're someone who's inclined to do this sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: sitting through a slide show isn't going to change you,
Speaker 1: and I shouldn't do that anymore. I can't just grab
Speaker 1: people I work with. I had no idea, thanks slide show. Um.
Speaker 1: And then if you are not inclined to do it,
Speaker 1: you already sort of know that, and so what is
Speaker 1: this necessarily doing? Um. Some of it is very good.
Speaker 1: It's educational in terms of you know what the actual
Speaker 1: policies are, how you can come forward if something happens
Speaker 1: to you, here's the hotline to call or whatever. But
Speaker 1: when I started talking to lawyers employment lawyers, they said
Speaker 1: again again, well, the point of these videos or training
Speaker 1: courses isn't necessarily to stop the harassment. It's too prove
Speaker 1: that they have told all of their employees what the
Speaker 1: law is. So it's more legal compliance risk management than
Speaker 1: it is actually like, hey, we're going to make sure
Speaker 1: that no one in our company grabs no one else
Speaker 1: in the company. And so if the company is taking
Speaker 1: this position where they are doing this to protect themselves.
Speaker 1: Now that we know this, that also makes it really
Speaker 1: hard to want to come forward, Like whose interests does
Speaker 1: the company have in mind? Yeah, well, and it depends
Speaker 1: on where you work, right, So if you work at
Speaker 1: a company that you know, the Hollywood Studio that it
Speaker 1: took the woman's complaints seriously, she trusted her manager to
Speaker 1: actually do something, and that didn't come from the compliance video.
Speaker 1: That came from the fact that she knew her manager,
Speaker 1: She knew the sort of atmosphere of where she worked,
Speaker 1: you know, what they valued, what they didn't, and she
Speaker 1: felt comfortable coming forward, whereas maybe if you had worked
Speaker 1: at you know, Fox News. It seems like there were
Speaker 1: a number of women who didn't come forward for a
Speaker 1: very long time because they didn't feel that their complaints
Speaker 1: would be taken seriously. You know, Fox has the same
Speaker 1: no tolerance policy for harassment, the same hotline to call.
Speaker 1: All that sort of stuff is in place, but you
Speaker 1: have to actually feel that that is going to happen
Speaker 1: if you come forward. Well, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on and talking to us. This was really interesting
Speaker 1: and at times sad, but I hope that we all
Speaker 1: learned something. So talking to Claire was depressing. Yes, sexual
Speaker 1: harassment still happened, happens in all types of jobs and
Speaker 1: in ways that are clearly appalling, and in many ways
Speaker 1: no different than what was happening ten thirty years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the only maybe one good difference is that now
Speaker 1: people are talking about it, which is what they're going
Speaker 1: to have to continue to do. Yes, we're all going
Speaker 1: to have to continue to do it. And now for
Speaker 1: some lighter fare, it's time for half big takes, happy
Speaker 1: fake takes. Sam, what is your not quite fully formed
Speaker 1: opinion this week? All right, So, when you're walking through
Speaker 1: like a crowd of people, or if you sort of
Speaker 1: come to a near collision with somebody, what do you say? Um,
Speaker 1: you might say excuse me, or you might say pardon me.
Speaker 1: I find those to be kind of passive aggressive. I
Speaker 1: never quite clear if you're saying that in an apologetic
Speaker 1: fashion or and more of a like excuse me, like
Speaker 1: you deserve the right of way. They are like you
Speaker 1: need to excuse me because you a command, excuse me,
Speaker 1: pardon me? Yea. So I really feel like all you
Speaker 1: can say is I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I was
Speaker 1: looking at my phone and not paying attention to the
Speaker 1: world around me. That's right. Yeah, Well, I thought i'd
Speaker 1: try to do a positive half big take this week.
Speaker 1: And my half fag take is that I hear a
Speaker 1: lot of complaining about like meaningless workplace chit chat, such
Speaker 1: as asking how your weekend was. And you know what,
Speaker 1: I try to make a point to ask people how
Speaker 1: their weekend was because I care. I don't like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I care means, but I enjoy that conversation.
Speaker 1: I think it's a nice way to talk to somebody.
Speaker 1: You can learn a little something about them. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: sit really close to each other here at Bloomberg, so
Speaker 1: you know, ask someone about not just how they're doing.
Speaker 1: And this has been half pig takes, halfa takes. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to game Plan. You can find me
Speaker 1: on two witter. I'm at rs Greenfield and I'm at
Speaker 1: Sam Grobart And if you like this show, you can
Speaker 1: head on over to iTunes and rate and review and subscribe.
Speaker 1: Game Plan is produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Henriksson.
Speaker 1: The head of Bloomberg Podcasts is Alec McCabe and we'll
Speaker 1: see you next week. I get the most from your
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