I (25F) told my boss (50sF) about the other boss (40sM) texting me constantly and behaving inappropriately and it’s turned bad

I have been on vacation for two weeks and have to go back to work on Monday and I’m so worried I’m shaking as I write this. During my last week before the vacation I told my female boss (lets call her Anna) that the other boss (lets call him James) had been texting me constantly and did some things that made me uncomfortable and that has turned out to be a huge mistake.

For context I worked at a small company owned by Anna and James, with two female managers both in their 30s, one of which is my manager. No HR. I have been there for 2 years, the company has been running about 5 years. A couple of weeks ago James out the blue started texting me constantly. He is married with a newborn. James is a bit childish and often makes sexist comments in a jokey way, I can’t think of many examples but he joked about trading his wife in for a younger model in a team meeting once.

Nothing James said over text has been concretely a red flag, it’s more the frequency and the fact that I’d get another message as soon as I read the first one if I didn’t reply (I have read receipts on). There was one day where he had pastries in his office and kept bugging me to come to his office and have one with him but he only had two so told me to ‘keep it a secret’. He constantly texts me asking me to ‘deliver’ him a coffee to his office and afterwards replies with things like ‘nice to see you’ and ’I don’t get many visitors’. When I have the afternoon off he keeps texting me to ask what I’m doing and telling me to enjoy it. Again nothing inappropriate but I feel obliged to reply as he is my boss and have unfortunately not shut it down out of fear of upsetting him.

Then two days before my vacation, I was out visiting an empty premises and James text asking to meet me there, I said fine because I didn’t feel like I had much choice. He arrived and I let him in and he stood around making small talk and it felt awkward. Then he asked me to show him around. While we were walking around he said he hoped the weather would get hot again so I could start wearing summer dresses again. When I opened the door to a certain room that was stiff to open he started touching and running his hand down my upper arm commenting on how strong I must be.

The day after that happened Anna was having a catch up with us all individually and asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell her. I figured she had noticed what was going on and she is quite intimidating, makes you feel like she already knows, so I told her what had happened. Her reaction made it seem like there has been a problem with his behaviour before and I asked her if that was the case and she just winced and carried on asking me questions. At the end of our meeting Anna reiterated more than once that I must always tell her everything, not just about James but about any staff doing things they aren’t supposed to be doing and reassured me I must not feel like a snitch. Anna said she would speak to James diplomatically about not texting female staff. I didn’t ask Anna to do anything, I disclosed this just to make her aware.

Immediately after I left she had a meeting with the female manager who isn’t my manager, they were in there for about an hour. Then the female manager came to see me and said that Anna had told her about me and James. I asked her the same question ‘has this been an issue before’ and she pulled the same sort of face and said James used to do it to her but she was less tolerant than I have been.

Then I saw my own manager later that afternoon, Anna had also told her about James. My manager immediately asked if the other female manager knew what was going on which I find odd. She advised me to stop texting James.

On the Friday morning, my last day before vacation, I got pulled into a meeting with Anna and the manager (the one who told me this has happened before). The tone was much more HR like which is not like her, she has been my biggest supporter up until now and helped me through some personal stuff (leaving abusive relationship). Anna said she’d spoken to James and he said he was just being friendly and that he only turned up at the vacant lot because he was in the area (a lie). Anna then demanded to read our text conversation which I agreed to. She said nothing in there was inappropriate to her. She then said there is no recourse against James because he owns the company and that she didn’t want me to leave but that was the only option if I felt that uncomfortable. I said I did not want to leave and all I wanted was for James to stop texting me about anything unrelated to work and to not touch me or turn up where I’m working alone. Anna then said she cared a lot for the staff and worried about our welfare constantly but there’s only so much she can do and started crying. She gave me a bizarre ‘self care’ pep talk and told me to go away enjoy the vacation and work on my relationship with myself. Everybody was normal with me for the rest of the day including James who came up to speak to me (about work).

Over the last two weeks I have spoken to friends etc about this and they unanimously agree I have fucked up in a big way and should never have said anything to Anna. I am extremely worried that in my absence they will have decided I am causing problems and they might fire me. I am not in an at will state but still very worried. In hindsight I’m about 90% sure Anna believes me but as she co owns the company she is always going to have to side with James.

Any advice on how to fix this? I don’t really want to leave, as jobs in this field are hard to find around here.

TL;DR told one boss about another boss texting me constantly and behaving inappropriately, she doesn’t think he did anything wrong, worried

Submitted September 04, 2021 at 08:48AM by Famous_Assistant2723 https://ift.tt/3kTVQJv