#13 “I deeply regret taking such a soft stance against this kind of ‘office humour’.”

“Working for a small startup company, I -- a software developer with no training in human resources -- constantly found myself having to adopt the role of the office ‘HR’ person. The office was overwhelmingly male and white. The problem of casual sexism and racism is endemic and the tech industry is no exception. At one hackathon, while most of us were in the office late one night and on a video call to someone working remotely, one of the women at the company took time to present her work of the evening. During this, a male coworker (who no longer works at the company) decided to make lewd sexual gestures behind her, as a joke to the remote coworker on the video call. She was unaware of this, but only when I sent an email raising this complaint and threatening to quit did I receive any acknowledgement that the act was unprofessional and crude, along with an apology. While acting as the ‘HR’ person of the office, I had to consistently tell people off for making offensive jokes. Out of fear of being labelled a buzzkill, I adopted a persona that made this scolding seem less serious than it was. I deeply regret taking such a soft stance against this kind of ‘office humour’.”