#69 “I feel if I report him, instead of being 'the Engineer who has been leading our most high profile account,' I will become 'the woman who was harassed’.”
“This happened when I was four years in my job. I led and delivered a 2 mil $ project. My manager at the time asked me to HH to celebrate. I didn’t take a close look at the invite, because I assumed he invited the whole team. But when I got to the restaurant, it was just me and him. I already felt a little uncomfortable because we are not friends, but didn’t want to leave and be rude. As we started talking, he started to make comments about how oysters(we were at an oyster restaurant) have certain sexual effects and there is another seafood called geoduck that looked like men’s reproductive organ(that’s not the word he used). I felt very uncomfortable with those comments but I wasn’t sure if I was being sensitive as English is not my first language. After the HH was over, I felt really awkward and called my good friend/coworker who is American. She told me it’s not normal at all and she was really angry at my manager. A couple days later one of our director reached out to me. (My good friend is close friend with our director for 10+ years so out of rage she told him what happened). Director told me our company absolutely doesn’t allow this kind of behavior to women and he will be completely on my side if I decide to come forward. It was a hard decision but I decided to not speak up. I am was on H1-B visa so even though I have one director’s support, I don’t know how other managers/HR are going to choose between my words and my manager’s( he has been with the company for 10 years and is THE rising star of the company). I simply can’t risk losing my job. And another thing is I have been working so hard to build my professional reputation and ‘reduce’ attention to my sexuality. I feel if I report him, instead of being ‘the Engineer who has been leading our most high profile account’, I will become ‘the woman who was harassed ‘. I told the director if this happens again, I will report him. Fortunately it didn’t happen again.”
