Six (6) male employees were subjected to repeated sexual harassment. The suit with the EEOC alleges The Cheesecake Factory knew about and tolerated repeated sexual assaults against the employees by a group of male kitchen staffers. According to the EEOC, the evidence showed the alleged abusers directly touched victims’ genitals, made sexually charged remarks and forced victims into repeated episodes of simulated rape."
Ok, six guys were sexually harassed and they really couldn't handle it themselves. What is up with that ????
Leaving THAT alone.....
*** DISCLAIMER**** I know, I don't know all of the facts surrounding the case and I am just responding to a potentially one sided news report from Reuters....
BUT if it was reported to the kitchen manager and/or the general manager and they did nothing about it shame on them. We have to believe HR did it's job to ensure and protect the organization from the risk associated however, the operations managers failed to heed or actively chose to ignore the warnings of HR.
Why did it happen? What could have been the reason the management at that restaurant didn't think that type of behavior was inappropriate let alone unprofessional?
We as HR professionals want to "have the seat at the table" and spend time attempting to prove to the world that we "deserve" that seat. Just think, in this case, if management would have listened to HR, the company would not have had to cough up 345K to settle this case out of court money on the bottom line... an expense which didn't need to happen.
This is not only an issue of risk avoidance but just think about the employee morale at that location if not the entire chain. I can just hear it around the water cooler (a.k.a the Cheesecake Factory bar) "did you hear about the 'bagging' going on in the kitchen? Did the managers do anything about it? Nope, they didn't, I even heard they were involved." It reminds me of the somewhat obscure movie with Ryan Reynolds titled "Waiting" where the kitchen staff were always trying to get other male employees to look at their manhood through various means.
It continues to amaze me that HR has to 'sell' the idea that professional behavior make good business sense in 2009, but apparently we have more work to do if this kind of behavior is ignored by operations managers.
Do you think the Cheesecake will taste as sweet at the Chandler, AZ location as other locations?
For what it's worth.....Politically Incorrect.
No comments:
Post a Comment