Lining

Supremely annoyingly, it has happened again.

I haven't discussed the incident at work here on this blog, but it was sufficiently inappropriate that I went on record with it at the time with two separate coworkers.  The particular offender in that case received a wall of ice from me, high enough and for long enough, that he hasn't proffered further *inappropriate* conduct - BUT his presence is near enough to me, and constant enough, that I enjoy a modicum of discomfort and irritation pretty much every day.  Because this is not my home, and because no further issues have arisen - nor has there been escalation - I suffer this, because this is a place I am paid to do a job, and that is the matter I prefer to focus on.  If not joyously gratifying, the lack of any more event has at least been satisfactory.

Yesterday, I was hit on while trying to go to the bathroom.  My response to this was to be elaborately awkward and discouraging - while LEANING on the door and all but "dancing" to get away - and still it went on.

The brand of man who pushes and pushes, asking "can't we talk" and "I just want to be friends" in the face of a stark and utter absence of even a scintilla of rapport (never mind interest):  definitely and unquestionably not the man for me.

Better still - it's not even the original creep.  So now I have two of these people, in a place I spend so much of my time, men from whom I have no escape but the blank ice of (one side of) my personality, to be unfortunately *aware* of all the time.

"I have to say something" this one said to me.  To which, if I'd had any d*mned sense, I would have said right then:  "No.  Really, you do not."  And "are you married" was his opener.  Which - good lord.  Even my very first words to the guy - "No, but there is a specific person I am not married to" - were to no avail with this one.



The thing is, one hit might have gotten a miss, in this situation.  Except then the guy showed up later in the day.  With "I didn't see you again" - to which I said simply, "Nope."  He lurked at me while I was making coffee, and I could not have been less open to his presence, but he kept standing there.  When he said he wanted to be friends, I finally actually looked him in the face and said, "I think that what you want I am not prepared to accomodate" - and even this didn't cause him to evaporate instantaneously.  When he tried the I just want to talk/I just want to be friends gambit YET again, I finally simply said, pointblank:  "You are making me uncomfortable."

Even that didn't result in his absence, because first there had to be all sorts of slow-talk apologies from this overly soft-spoken dullard.  But finally, he did eventually go.



At this point, I mull what if anything to say to my boss, who's in the office this week.  I don't want to create a formal HR process (I don't even know this guy's name), but I do probably need to be on record, now that the population of unwanted attention-payers is doubled (and I'm not even counting the silent stare-er I see around the buillding).

It's a frustrating thing, and I am angry that I have to Deal With all this now, some way or another.  This is not what I'm paid for, and it's an infraction against my right to simply work in peace.

I just want to do my job.

Which isn't actually Human Resources mediation.



Blah.