For over a year, a vice president appeared to find it amusing to scare me at work and to touch the upper part of my back in a way that felt intrusive and deeply unsettling. He would sometimes sneak up on me while I was focused or on a call, apparently just to get a reaction. To him, it seemed entertaining. To me, it was extremely disruptive, stressful, and destructive.
This did not happen once. It happened repeatedly — at times once a day, and sometimes multiple times a day. I told him more than once not to touch me. I confronted him directly and asked him to stop multiple times. There were even moments when I was begging him to stop because I needed to focus on my work and could not function while constantly anticipating the next time he would try to scare or touch me.
What made it worse was that I shared this concern with others, and no one seemed to care. In some cases, if other people were in the room, they appeared to find it amusing. It was not amusing. It was not harmless. It created an environment where I felt unsafe, distracted, and worn down, to the point that I at times thought about walking out.
People considering HHI should understand that, in my experience, behavior that crossed clear personal and professional boundaries was tolerated rather than addressed. Employees should not have to defend their physical space, repeat requests not to be touched, or endure being treated like entertainment in order to keep doing their jobs.
