Life Tips Daily

Are you tired of unwanted advances from a coworker? If you are not ready to report a coworker to your office’s human resources department because you suspect he or she is harmless, try the following tips. It is important to try them in the order that they are written, and keep a record of the dates and times you try each step so that if you decide to take your grievance to the appropriate people, you have a logical collection of efforts recorded:

Hint less subtly
If you’ve noticed that all your hints that you are not interested in the conversation you’re currently engaged in go over your coworker’s head, it’s time to be more obvious in your hints. Tell the coworker that you have important work to do, every time he or she approaches you. After saying this, turn to your workstation and begin to work, even if all you are doing is writing “I cannot stand you” over and over again onto a blank screen. After receiving this sort of treatment several times a day for a week or so, your coworker should get the message.

It is important that you keep this treatment up consistently. If you give in and talk with your coworker every second or third time he or she approaches you, you will not be sending a strong message across at all.

Send a frank email
If you think your coworker is not a bad person, you may want to let him or her down firmly but not so aggressively. Send an email that explains how the attention paid to you makes you feel, why you feel it is inappropriate, and what sort of work relationship you would like to have with the person (if at all). Send it from your work email address and save a copy of this email and any replies you receive, just in case.

Tell them straight out
Confrontation is difficult but nothing beats hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth (so to speak). Even if all you do is read the contents of your previous email aloud, do it. Tell your coworker that you are disappointed that your email was not as well received as you wished, restate the reasons why the attention you are receiving is inappropriate or unwelcome by you and ask firmly that the behaviour stop.
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If you find that none of these previous tips work, wait for a couple of weeks. After this time, inform your coworker that you have not noticed a change in behaviour, and that you will be filing a complaint with human resources in one week’s time if nothing changes. And if nothing changes, do it. Most coworkers care enough about their job that they will take your “threat” seriously, at least as seriously as you take it. If you do need to approach your human resources department, you should have at your disposal a well documented summary of how things have progressed up to that point.

coworker, unwanted advances, harassment, workplace harassment