Wow! What a business she made of the whole affair, I thought. I was told by the HR lady to take the literature home, take time reading it and bring it back to her after digesting the material to sign it in her presence. Coming from Pakistan where such issues are given short shrift by the bosses, I was surprised and impressed by how seriously hiring employers take sexual harassment. When I began work at a hotel in the US, the HR manager there gave me an in-depth briefing about sexual harassment by male office workers. Never mind if either or both of the parties involved happen to have spouses. They take it for granted that the woman at the receiving end is flattered (mind you some of us are) and encourage an office romance to blossom. Almost, always, inevitably, most try to hit on a female given the slightest opportunity. The degree of lechery that the Pakistani male is known for is legendary. Male workers, especially the dirty-old, fat and ugly kind, with wives and big brood at home, consider eying, ogling, touching, commenting and making unwanted advances on their female workers a normal daily routine, like having lunch or drinking tea! It`s simply unacceptable for big Pakistani corporations to sweep incidents of sexual harassment under the rug. Unbelievable, but true! Young Mrs X has no one to turn to for help. “They pass sexual remarks and innuendos whenever I`m in their earshot.” And when she complains, her bosses punish her by transferring her to some other office until she relents and begs to be brought back to her original office. “My male colleagues don`t even leave me alone - a wife and mother,” says Mrs X, who covers her body in a long coat, her head in hijab and half her face in a niqab. But do we ever get to hear about such cases? Never in Pakistan, a country that came first in porn hits on Google some years back. It`s for this reason that sexual harassment is alive and kicking in our male-dominated work places. This story has lessons that men will never care to follow. Sure enough! The fellow was told to collect his wares and get lost. Maybe our scourge had finally got the sack. Reading his face, we could tell something dreadful had happened to him. It gave the gals a lift seeing him fall so badly from grace. When he returned to his seat, he was like a deflated gasbag. You should have seen the swaggerer stand before the big boss and stutter out an explanation. The flirt was told to appear before the big boss and explain his conduct unbecoming. What made news in our office that day was that the big boss was raving mad as soon as he heard what had happened. I don`t remember whether she first served her boss and his female guest or marched straight to the big boss to complain. She was good at her work, was savvy, sweet and very attractive. It so happened that the secretary was everybody`s favourite. The other female staffers, yours truly included, had in the past servile-like served the boss and his guests tea or coffee when told to. This shocked the secretary who had never been ordered to serve her boss`s visitors before. Shouting out his secretary`s name, the boss told her to get cracking and serve them coffee. He wanted his staffers to see him in his glory `chatting up a pretty dame` - that`s how he would describe his encounters with the opposite sex to us. The bully, that`s the boss, gloated like an MCP (male chauvinist pig). Pakistan is a microcosm and almost everyone knows `Who is who.` Right? Well, let`s move on to the climax of my tale. No names please, but if you must second-guess, you`re most welcome. She was pretty, smart and very intelligent. He was entertaining one of his special female guests, a recently returned American university under-grad holding an editor`s position in one of Karachi`s eveningers. Until one day, the flirt flipped and fell flat on his face. So we suffered his sexual advances in silence if we wanted to hold on to our jobs. But this manager was a powerful guy who brought good business for his bosses which meant he was unmovable. And they could do nothing except curse him during their lunch break when all the gals would gang up and devise ways of getting back at him. He openly flirted with all his female underlings. Well, I had a boss way back in the early 80s who liked greeting us with the words `Hello, Gorgeous!` We hated the man. Ask the runner-up, Miss Alaska, Sarah Palin.Įver since she won the beauty contest way back in 1984, she`s had men telling her how gorgeous she is. She wrote these lines ages ago about the crowds going gaga over the beauty queens she accompanied. Ms Ross was the travelling companion for many Miss Americas. they think that Miss America belongs to them! That they can touch her and give her a kiss on the cheek-or even on the lips! - Ellis Ross
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