Workplace sexual harassment occurs in a variety of different scenarios. Sometimes, a supervisor tries to use their workplace authority for nefarious purposes. Other times, a group of coworkers may create a hostile work environment for one employee because of their sex.
Occasionally, customers or clients can make work miserable by harassing a particular employee. Customer sexual harassment can affect a worker’s mental health and also their income. Organizations generally have an obligation to protect employees from harassment even if it comes from members of the public rather than their coworkers.
What types of behavior on the part of customers or clients might constitute sexual harassment?
Inappropriate flirting and comments
Some people truly think they can say whatever they want to employees in the service sector. Salespeople, bartenders and other customer service professionals are at particularly high risk of this form of misconduct. Particularly when customers or clients repeatedly patronize a business, they may engage in increasingly aggressive unwanted flirting. They may make distasteful comments to employees. Employees should not have to endure unwanted flirting and uncomfortable, distasteful statements to do their jobs.
Unwanted touching
Sometimes, customer or client sexual harassment crosses the line from verbal abuse into outright sexual abuse. A patron at a bar might touch a server in a provocative or sexual manner. A business representative negotiating a sales contract might corner the salesperson in an unoccupied office and grope them. Unwanted physical contact and assault can cause significant emotional and psychological harm to the targeted worker.
Attempts at quid pro quo harassment
Quid pro quo harassment often involves a supervisor or business owner threatening someone’s career or offering job rewards for sexual favors. However, customers or clients can potentially engage in a form of quid pro quo harassment as well. For example, a patron at a bar or restaurant might threaten to withhold a gratuity from a server who vocalizes their discomfort with flirting or unwanted touching. Salespeople may face similar misconduct.
As difficult as it can be to speak up, it is usually necessary for workers experiencing customer or client sexual harassment to discuss the matter with a supervisor. Businesses do have an obligation to protect workers from customer harassment just as they would from coworker abuse. Documenting the misconduct that occurs and attempts to address it with management can help employees prove that companies have not acted to protect them as necessary.
Fighting workplace sexual harassment sometimes requires litigation when businesses would rather coddle customers or close a sale than do right by their employees. Workers who document the abuse they experience and speak up are in the best position possible to demand justice and a safe work environment.