Sexual Harassment In Rest Essay Research Paper

Sexual Harassment In Rest. Essay, Research Paper

Sexual Harassment in the Restaurant

Sexual harassment is any unwanted action or language of a sexual nature. .Sexual harassment is usually defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, when submission to or rejection of such conduct is used as a basis for employment decisions affecting an individual, or where such conduct has the purpose or effect of interfering unreasonably with the individual’s work performance, or creates an offensive, hostile or intimidating working environment” (Civil Rights Act of 1964), (Palmer, 1997). Most organizations have made it clear that this type of behavior will not be tolerated. However, Because of the differences in the hospitality service versus other industries, what may be normal behavior among the restaurant employees may very well be sexual harassment.

When you listen to the employees of any restaurant, you will hear some of sexual behavior, joking and horseplay at work. While most of this behavior is normal social interaction in a service industry, but in an office setting, these kinds of behavior is known as sexual harassment.

The restaurant industry is especially susceptible to incidents of sexual harassing behavior due to certain social characteristics. The most restaurants want to wait staff to have outgoing personalities. Wait staff who have a friendly and outgoing personality usually sell more to the customer which produces higher profits for the restaurant as well as larger tips for the wait staff. Today, people do not just go to restaurants to eat, but they go to be entertained. Due to the high number of people restaurant employees are in contact with on a daily basis whether it be customers or employees, those who have outgoing or friendly personalities are likely to be more social. Other social characteristics include the high degree of social contact in the workplace, the unusual hours of work, including long, irregular hours involving evenings and holidays and the involvement with a number of different people in the course of delivering the service. For these reasons, restaurants create a very informal environment, which will create more sexual misconduct behavior.

Two General Categories of Sexual Harassment

As Defined by the EEOC in 1980, there are two different categories of sexual

harassment.

1. Quid pro quo occurs when a supervisor or manager conditions an employment benefit or continuing employment on the employee s acquiescence in the form of sexual behavior.

2. Hostile environment. No employment benefits need be lost or gained, and this type of harassment may be engaged in not only by management, but also by co-workers or persons who are not even employed by the employer. An hostile environment occurs where sexual jokes, suggestive remarks, cartoons, physical interference with movement such as blocking or following, and sexual comments create an offensive working environment. In determining when conduct is unwelcome, it important to determine is whether the victim indicated by his/her conduct that the sexual advance or conduct were unwelcome, not whether any participation was voluntary. The victim s conduct may be totally passive, such as not laughing at sexual jokes. The conduct will be evaluated from the objective viewpoint of a reasonable person facing the same conditions. The victim s perspective will be used, not community standards or stereotypes of acceptable behavior. “A hostile environment exists wherever employees are exposed to persistent and unwelcome lewd remarks, sexual taunting, talking in seductive tones, quarries about one’s personal life, suggestive sounds, obscene gestures, pinching, touching and references to anatomy and physical appearance by anyone entrusted with control of company policy if the acts were performed in the execution of a corporate function”. (Sherry 1995).

Employer liability

An employer is strictly liable for the sexual harassing conduct of managers and supervisors in both the quid pro quo and hostile environment s situation. .The theory of the employer s liability is respondent superior, that is, the employer is liable for the wrongful acts of an employee (supervisor) done in furtherance of the employee s job responsibilities (granting job benefits or detriments). x(textbook)

The assumption is made that if the manager/supervisor did it, then the manager/supervisor knew about it, and therefore the company knew about it. The employer is liable for harassment of an employee by a co-worker and possibly even of non-employees, if the employer knew, or should have known, of such conduct and failed to take immediate and appropriate action. Sexual harassment also may occur where employment benefits are granted because of one employee submission to a supervisor request for sexual favors, but where other employees equally or better qualified to receive the benefits are denied them. If the employer did not know of the conduct, the EEHC will consider that the employer had notice unless the employer can establish that it took reasonable steps to prevent the harassment from occurring. Such reasonable steps may include having a sexual harassment policy in place, as well as providing sexual harassment training to supervisors and managers.

Sexual harassment does no