Rejecting his advances was fine. What disturbed me is that given different circumstances she would have dated him without second thoughts and suddenly "harassment" becomes a healthy relationship. It means that similar actions would end up in different outcomes. Then where is the line between the harassment and non-harassment?
khazhoux|8 years ago
> ... Ajit had grown increasingly hostile toward me, excluding me from information and meetings
> Back at Kleiner, I continued to have a huge problem with Ajit. Not only was he blocking my work, he had been promoted to a position of even greater responsibility and was giving me negative reviews. I started to lodge formal complaints about him. In response, the firm suggested I transfer to the China office.
> But when I told fellow junior partner... she grew uncharacteristically quiet. Then she said something I never expected: She had been harassed by Ajit, too. He’d asked her out for drinks to talk shop, and in the course of the evening he started touching her with his leg under the table.
> Later that night he came to her room in his bathrobe, asking to be let in. She eventually had to push him out the door.
Powerofmene|8 years ago
Clearly the conversation on the airplane, private jet or not, was inappropriate.
To your other point, If she would have dated him under different circumstances, if those different circumstances had existed then his request for her company at dinner (aka a date) would most likely not have been unwelcome or unwanted. Most mature women will not cry harassment if asked to dinner and they turn the individual down and the individual accepts said rejection without further pursuit or retaliation for the rejection. Again, I said most, not all or none, but most. This is the reason that many companies have no workplace relationship rules.
Personally speaking, I do not care how handsome you are, if you show up at my hotel room door in a bathrobe without me having invited you (and even if I had what makes you think you were invited for sex so why are you in your bathrobe?) and you work in a position that can exercise power over my employment, you are not exercising good judgment at all. Why would you not think that your actions might be unwelcome or unwanted?