4 easy rules will avoid 98% of sexual harassment accusations

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I have a male friend who once got accused of touching a work colleague's knee when they were in his car - he must have accidentally brushed her knee as no way is he the type to do something like that but she was the exact type to think all men were after her and likely to try it on!

This seems like a catch-22 though. I've been given advice from NT friends stating that if I don't make some attempt to show interest (i.e. flirting, compliments, light touching), I'll be sure to get cast off into the "friend zone". I guess the best suggestion would be to simply back off if it doesn't go well, and try to keep things as subtle as possible. But of course, we as aspies tend to struggle with subtletly and don't always get hints...

I got a great rule for all of you to avoid any harassment charges:

Have a smile on your face and make an attempt to make eye contact to say hello to them... If they are not smiling or they aren't paying attention to you, walk past them and simply leave them alone. Problem solved.

Several of you basically accused Fnord of lying when you didn't know anything about the situation. I don't think that's fair.

I don't really have any experience with this at all. I've done stupid things like telling a girl that I thought she was hot (she told me in private that I wasn't allowed to say that, but treated me normally afterwards), but no harassment lawsuits or anything like that. I wonder why that is.

I guess no one young really talks like this anymore but I used to work in this cafe as a waitress and we had a 'regular' who would always refer to us (the staff, all female) as love and darling. It was just his manner of speaking like some older middle-aged men (and even women) do (and he was married as well so I knew it was mostly harmless) but being my early 20's obnoxious self it bothered me and so one day after he called me love I swung around and said to him 'you know some women would consider that sexual harrassment'. I can't remember what he said but he was quite offended. I probably shouldn't have said that since he was a customer and all but anyway. If you happen to use those terms as part of your regular speech, I'd say don't do that!

Last year I think something happened to me that could be constituted sexual harassment: I hadn't long started at my new job and I was painfully shy/anxious and really quiet. Well there was this guy in my team that sat 2 bays across from me that started this kind of 'game' where everytime he walked past my desk (which was often since my desk was on the way to most things) he'd say ''hi periphery''. Not really knowing how to handle it I just started saying "Hi Jim'' back everytime he walked past. And the other girls that sat near me used to laugh at how silly it was since we were greeting each other up to 20 times a day. Anyhow he'd also tease me about being ''too quiet'' by saying things like ''stop typing so loud'' and stuff like that. All this wasn't the issue really. One day he walks past my desk and says his usual ''hi periphery'' but after I said hi back he goes ''you were great last night'' and I was just sooo dead embarrassed I could have died. I'm sure he saw me turn bright red and not being the type to be able to think quickly on my feet I couldn't come up with a quick witted response to defuse the situation which made it worse. Anyway I could have reported him because it really was an inappropriate thing to say but at the end of the day I know that he was mostly harmless about it and there wasn't any maliciousness there it was just inappropriate so I let it drop. I think he knew he'd reached the line because he never said anything like that again luckily.

That's all. Sometimes I do feel bad for guys having to worry about so much being misconstrued, although I do think if you have strong values and are a true moral person for the most part you'll be ok. Just treat females like you'd treat other men, or your mum or sister, and you'll be ok.

It is a shame there are some women out there willing to exploit situations just so they can get the better of them though. Not saying that's all sexual harassment claims, or even the majority but I do think that there are a minority of people that are more in it for personal gain than anything else and unfortunately everyone has to hope that they don't ever come across those people (including women because they're just as likely to do something wrong at work -even unintentionally-but then put the blame on *you* or *anyone else* to avoid taking it themselves. And yes, there's men that do that too. It sucks but then so do most people.

No he was married (although still younger than me) ...but we hadn't even had lunch together at work, let alone seeing each other outside of work!
He's just immature and a bit of an attention seeker as all.

He's a total bull then.