Every year I worry about how I’m going to fill my annual list of worst employers. I’ve yet to be disappointed.
The EEOC recently filed suit against a Medford, Oregon, Chinese restaurant after its middle-aged night-shift manager repeatedly sexually harassed young female employees.
The allegations are horrific. The manager is accused of the following.
- Repeatedly making sexual comments, sexual innuendos, and remarks to female employees.
- Repeatedly touching female employees’ backs, shoulders, waist, hip/crotch area, buttocks, rubbing his body up against female employees’ bodies, and standing close behind female employees and staring at them.
- Repeatedly touching the breasts of female employees including putting his hand under a female employee’s shirt and bra.
- Pulling on the shirt and bra of a female employee to expose her nipple.
- Asking a 15-year-old female employee to send him naked photos of herself.
Yet, those allegations, as awful as they are, aren’t what earned this employer its nomination. It’s what happened after the victims complained that placed this employer on this year’s list.
Even after the manager … was arrested at work and booked for sexual abuse of the restaurant’s minor employee, he was permitted to return to work.… Despite repeated employee complaints and the manager’s guilty plea to misdemeanor harassment, the restaurant failed to stop his behavior or discharge him. Instead, New China fired one female employee soon after she reported his inappropriate conduct and another female employee felt she had no choice but to resign.
If you enable your 50-something manager to sexually harass your teenage workforce, even after employees complain and he’s arrested for and convicted of harassment, you might be the worst employer of 2020.
Previous nominees:
The 1st Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2020 Is … the Repeat, Repeat Offender
The 2nd nominee for Worst Employer of 2020 is … the Uncaring Chief
The 3rd nominee for the Worst Employer of 2020 is … the Arresting Retaliator