Posted on May 2nd, 2019
Below is a full transcript of this video.
What’s going on fellow entrepreneurs? It’s John Fagerholm from Defend My Biz.
You know, I was watching a movie last night, and really, really great movie. It was called Waiting.
I don’t know if you guys have ever seen it. I think it might have been made in the late ’90s or early 2000s, but it got me thinking about some of the lawsuits.
So this movie is about a restaurant, and it’s sort of like a Friday’s or one of those types of restaurants. And, it was about the staff and how they interact with each other and all of the relationships they were having with each other.
And it got me thinking about all of the sexual harassment claims that come out of restaurants. And, almost, I would say more than 50% of the sexual harassment claims I defend are from restaurants.
And why is that? Right? So the movie kind of gave me some ideas.
So, you’ve got this intense environment where all of these young good looking people are working together and they spend at least eight hours a day together under a stressful situation if it’s a popular restaurant.
There’s probably a bar and then there’s drinking, and then they hang out afterward with each other. So they’re just bound to hook up with each other.
So that in itself is not a problem. The problem is that employers are responsible for the acts of their employees while the employee is on the clock, basically.
So, if you get a sexual harassment claim, you’re responsible for that. Now, if it’s a supervisor that’s accused of sexually harassing, that’s a strict liability claim against the employer.
So, a lot of risk there, and there really is no great way to prevent that in that sort of environment, to prevent sexual harassment in that sort of an environment.
All I can suggest really is that you discourage employees from dating.
You can’t stop them, how would you?
That you really train up your supervisors on making sure that they keep tabs on what people are doing, how they’re interacting with each other.
But other than that, I just don’t really see a way to prevent employees from interacting in that sort of environment, in a way that could potentially bring me sexual harassment claims.
All right guys. Until next time.
At least you know what to look out for. Bye-bye.
