I usually go out of my way to try to be empathic about people, but, um, the fact that this may embarrass the person who wrote it doesn’t exactly move my “I give a shit” meter. Assuming it’s as related, including the allegations that this was not an isolated incident but a pattern of this sort of thing, I find it kind of hard to see whoever this dude is in any sympathetic light.
I’ve found that generally “not being a total piece of shit” does a great job of sparing me embarrassment, personally.
If he did it multiple times then yes, that’s pathological manipulation and actually kinda scary.
If it’s just the once, it isn’t OK to pursue someone once they say no, that’s harassment, and particularly if you work with them-- but man, still. It’s such a pathetic letter.
Didn’t one of the tweets above say that they knew he had done it to other women too?
It wasn’t specifically pointing to crazy-ass letters like this but yes, someone else said they avoided him because he hit on them after being told no.
Yeah, I went back to the twitter thread and:
Given that this is not a court of law (let’s not open that discussion again), that’s enough for me to call it
Shittalking women who won’t date you is pretty standard sexual harassement. The letter is a new level of creep if he did that multiple times.
I can imagine Riot isn’t thrilled to have their name come up again.
Even propositioning employees who are junior to you is problematic. If muddies the waters around promotions, raises, performance evaluations, job assignments, teams, etc. It’s precisely why the military prohibits fraternization. It might not be illegal, or even a problem, but it certainly has huge potential to be a problem. Most companies won’t permit it. At my work, we had a married couple working in the same department, Super nice folks, all above board, nothing shady going on, but the husband was the wife’s direct supervisor and the company made her quit. (Well, told them one or the other had to quit or transfer.)
It can lead to problems. IMO it should definitely be prohibited for direct reports.
I disagree. Given the previous “standard sexual harassment”, the letter is an escalation, which is a common pattern of this kind of abuse: see what you can get away with and slowly escalate. IMHO he’s clearly at “a new level of creep” already.
And, to be perfectly clear, shittalking women who won’t date you in the workplace where you and the women work should instantly land you out on the street on your ass in any barely reasonable workplace. (At the very least, it opens them up to litigation.)
I’ve never seen anything like that letter. Perhaps it’s common and just doesn’t get released. It’s a pretty huge escalation, and an incredibly stupid move making a permanent record of his misconduct.
I have. In middle school. Once the freshman year of high school.
From an adult, who has a managerial position over you, is shit talking you and has done this more than once … I agree that points to some level of deeply creepy. My self-preservation GTFO NOW would kick in fast there.
Yeah, that letter isn’t just harassment, it’s go-get-a-restraining-order level scary. If she showed that to Blizzard HR and they didn’t fire the guy, that’s really really bad.
One big thing to keep in mind in regard to the State of CA lawsuit against Activision is that the lawsuit is at a corporate level, not an individual one. There is a difference between assessing the individual culpability of various people versus the overall corporate liability of Activision in terms of treatment of women, in particular the concept of “hostile work environment” and whether women had equal opportunities for payment, advancement, hiring, and so on.
So let’s say you had a bunch of individual behavior that was not individually bad enough for a direct claim of personal harassment. If there was enough of that in a work context and Activision was aware of it (or should have been aware of it) then that can still be a problem for Activision.
It seems to me the State of CA has a pretty strong case, on a corporate level, against Activision and Activision needs to come up with a plan to remediate this / compensate the victims. I don’t think the specific details of individual conduct is all that big a deal; it’s the overall package that matters in my view.
Damn! I’ve run fucking oil rig crews that while not particularly educated, not particularly civil, and not particularly cultured would still blush and be offended at this level of workplace bullshit. It boggles my mind and I haven’t even dug into it more than just reading this thread.
What a plot twist on the premise of this thread. At the time of the merger/acquisition/whatever, who thought it would be Blizzard that would turn out to be the rotten apple in the Activision barrel.
I mean, I doubt Blizzard is the sole bad actor at Activision and I’ve seen enough to feel like it’s industry-wide, but still. Not where I was expecting things to go.
Well they sure don’t have the high ground.