Thoughts please

Gettingtherequickly

Hi

While this is not strictly employment related, it is work related.

I work for a small, but very busy & successful company and the owner is actively involved in all of the jobs we undertake and consequently builds a good relationship with our clients. One of our clients is passing on some his workload to other staff, again we have always had a good relationship with those, so things should, in theory, be at the status quo. They were, until our client employed a new staff member.

Now, my boss is not so daft as to think that everyone gets on with him, believe me, he is a nightmare to work for, but I tell him that regularly, however, we have a good working relationship, I know how to deal with him and accept that he has a stressful role and is always acting in the clients best interest. By his own admission, he has not been the best person in the past, but is happily married, and although he has a wandering eye, that is all it does.

As I said, our client employed a new staff member last year and while he admits there was some flirting, he never hid the fact from her that was all it was. My goodness, nothing worse than a woman scorned, if she feels that he has not responded to an email quickly enough, a sarcastic one is sent. This has been going on for some time and despite his insistence that all emails from her are via her work email address, she sends torrents of abuse, late at night (probably having had a few lemonades). Her personal email has been blocked, but they come into the junk email box which needs to be checked just in case.

It came to a head the other day and having received yet another abusive email, (I have seen it and believe me, if I had been sent it, I would be hard pushed to decide whether to take it to the police or give a swift smack in the mouth), he wrote and said that if she sent any further emails like that, he would tell our client that he would not deal with her in future. This could cause us to lose the client, this is not something we would like but it needs to be addressed. If our guys are working at that site, they feel uncomfortable as they feel as if she dresses inappropriately for her age and that she is continually looking at them to see if they are “admiring” her.

As I said, it is not employment related, but is work related, so I am interested in hearing your views on how to go forward, and apologies for being longwinded.

Missme

My thoughts are:

• mind your own business
• your boss 'broke it' so let him fix it and if that means losing a client, that's his problem
• maybe the woman has a case for claiming sexual harassment against your boss. And do you really know how far his 'flirting' has gone?
• the woman, as an adult, may wear what she likes as long as her boss isn't complaining. What exactly is this ageist-sounding dressing "inappropriately for her age"? Are her toenails bursting through her babygro?
• your male colleagues should be provided with a section of garden fence on which to lean whilst they chat poop

ETA - why would your boss not report her if the emails are as bad as described? No one should get away with doing that but if there's more to the story than he's telling...

cavework

Quote
One of our clients is passing on some his workload to other staff,

If your boss indeed has a good relationship with the client then I suggest he has a quiet word with the main man/woman and forwards these emails.
Obviously this will only work if there is nothing for your boss to worry about re his relationship with this 'new staff member'