Question

Colleen worked as an assistant to Matt, the director of marketing, for seven months. During this period, Matt constantly referred to Colleen as "the office beauty," and he would loudly smack his lips whenever she came to work in a skirt. On one particular occasion, when Colleen reminded him to get his wife a Valentine's Day card, he responded that his wife lived in another city and that he was lonely. He also made an inappropriate sexual gesture. If Colleen files a complaint of sexual harassment due to a hostile work atmosphere, which one of the following standards is most likely to result in a finding of sexual harassment?
a. constructive discharge
b. The reasonable victim standard
c.Hostile work environment
d. None of the above

Answer 1

Answer:b. The reasonable victim standard

Explanation:

A reasonable person criteria is used to establish if the work environment is hostile. This is used to prevent those cases where people may make false claims about harassments act which most reasonable people will not categorize as harassments behaviour or act towards them.

So to discover if the act can actually be categorised as harassment the person who is accused of such an act would be assessed from an objective point of view. So if the act or behaviour in question can not be considered harassment by majority of reasonable people it can not then be considered as harassment.

Biting of lips when a woman is wearing a skirt may be a sign of some arousal of sexual nature and going further to state his loneliness would sounds like someone is inviting you over for such an activity so it is probably a cause for concern for any reasonable person.