"Take it with a grain of salt."

That was the advice I was given by my manager when I complained about harassment in my workplace. Take it with a grain of salt. But let me start at the beginning. 

I managed a small shopping centre and office tower back in the '90s, and when I opened a confidential letter sent to me by the National Retail Manager of one of the big corporate real estate agencies, a lingerie catalogue fell out with lots of post-it notes. Apparently, during their last sales meeting, the boys had tagged all of the pages with models that looked like me. They thought I should take it as a compliment. After all, who doesn't want to look like a lingerie model - right? 

The centre was in receivership and after an alcohol-fuelled lunch with the Executive Leadership Team at the neighbouring hotel (which was part of the same complex) the 'big boss' put a call into my EA to ask me to meet them in the restaurant. When I arrived I was berated for having a relatively modest outfit on. That is, no cleavage and a skirt to the knees. They made me feel so uncomfortable I never wore that outfit again. 

At another event a few months later, the same 'big boss' (let's call him BB) said to me "Leanne, I have booked the penthouse for tonight, the spa is hot and the champagne cold - what do you think?" Umm...that would be a "no".

Eventually, he respected my stance and we actually became friends and I was never harassed by him again. But there was worse to come, once the business was sold. 

I had dual reporting lines, to Lingerie Man (LM) and the owners, and that's where the problem escalated. My Regional Manager (RM) took to driving past the centre on his way home, knowing that most nights I would be there working on my own.

One particular night at about 8 pm, he sat opposite me and said, "You look tired", and I replied, "Yep, I am, but I have also got a really bad headache," at which he jumped up and said "You probably need a massage," and proceeded to start rubbing my shoulders. 

He put his hand inside my jacket to undo the internal button and started to take my jacket off. Thankfully my husband rang at just that moment. I pushed my chair back (almost knocking RM over) answered the phone and used the opportunity to escape home. The next day he called and suggested that now I owed him a massage and he would be coming in to collect one night very soon. 

From that time onward, I had one of my tenants checking on me every 30 minutes after about 6 pm to make sure I was OK. I made it clear that this wasn't going to happen and all of a sudden my calls went unanswered and work requests ignored. After a time I called him into my office to talk about our communication breakdown, and when I asked how we could move forward, he told me that I "still owed him a massage". 

I called LM at the head office and made a complaint, and was told to "take it with a grain of salt", so I called RM's boss at the owner's company and was told, "I am not surprised, he has form". Wait. What?!

Yep, he had been fired from one of the big four banks for the same behaviour. But that didn't help me. He eventually sent me a letter detailing all of the things I needed to improve if I wanted to keep my job. Yep, a warning letter, the first step in the process to fire me. Not one single thing in that letter was accurate. And I completely lost it. 

I have always prided myself on doing my very best, and the suggestion that I was under-performing, when I clearly was not, incensed me. I called all of the senior stakeholders into a meeting and quit. But it still wasn't over. 

I was curious as to what he would say about me if anyone called for a reference. So I had a couple of friends, who were recruiters, call for a reference check. Yes, you guessed it. The feedback was terrible, despite having glowing performance reviews prior to his arrival.

The whole experience devastated me and rocked my confidence. I had always believed that dealing with difficult people, conversations and relationships was a strength, yet there was seemingly nothing I could do to deal with this difficult relationship. 

It took me about a year and an "in-between job" to find my confidence again. Thankfully, during all my years at Laing+Simmons, under three different owners, I have worked with wonderful people and have never had to deal with anything even remotely like this again. But the recent conversations in our industry have taken me back to this experience, and I am saddened to think that it is still happening almost 30 years later.

We all need to call it out. It is not 'harmless fun', it is not 'a compliment', and we definitely should not be taking it with a 'grain of salt'.