My HR tale: I was working as a traveling OR nurse at a hospital and there was a old doctor who was very flirtatious and wouldn’t leave me alone. Staff would jokingly Call me his girlfriend which was super embarrassing. He would even come into other cases I was working to talk. He sent a text message asking me if my marriage was ok because he saw me walking home from work in the rain and that’s when I (quietly) went to my charge nurse and asked to please no longer be in his room. He was nearing retirement and I didn’t want to rock the boat, just didn’t want to be around him and thought distance would help. The charge nurse complied and things were starting to get better but then that charge had to leave for several weeks for a family emergency and another nurse was placed in the role. One day she asked me if I wouldn’t mind going to do a case with the doctor and I pleaded with her to please not make me go in there but she claimed she had no other option so I went in. That case was ok, at the end he came up and “bear hugged” me from behind, gross but whatever.

Well, a day later I told a coworker “they actually made me work with Dr W yesterday” and she said “I know! We all gathered around the desk (to watch on the camera in the OR) waiting for him to molest you” and I said “really? Well he did come up and hug me” and she said they were all laughing about it. I took that information and angrily typed up a more formal request to not be in that room again and cc’d my recruiter as well as the offending charge. In that letter I explained that maybe she didn’t realize how serious it had become but that the doc had followed me home on two occasions now and had been texting inappropriately, that again I wasn’t trying to inflame the situation but wanted it to go away and to please stop putting me in there.

Well, that charge escalated to HR the letter and I was called into their office. Instead of agreeing to just pull me from those cases they told me that I was likely instigating the problem and that “everyone knows Dr W likes pretty girls” and that instead of pulling me they would send me to a different city to work. I told them I would transfer to a different OR in the same building but they refused saying that they had a need at another hospital and it was that or they would cancel my contract. They then did an embarrassing “investigation” where they asked my coworkers questions about how I dressed for work, my makeup, my demeanor and work ethic etc. Thankfully during this my coworkers told them I was great and also what a perv the doc was and HR relented and transferred me to the other department but I still think about it all the time and how terribly i was treated for being a victim. I was t trying to gain anything from the situation and instead tried being as professional as I could but instead they flipped the script and tried to make me out to be some harlot looking to find drama when it couldn’t have been further from the facts.