Bullying at the Pine Street Inn

August 24, 2014

Lily is an employee of the Pine Street Inn.  Today, she is at the desk to the right of the front door of the shelter, where she asks every guest who walks into the shelter for identification.

Lily frequently sexually harasses me with loud, obviously exaggerated and degrading coughing.  She did that today when I walked into the shelter, several minutes ago.

There is no excuse for someone who works at a shelter to sexually harass or otherwise antagonize a guest of the shelter.  That is always true; also, I do nothing to antagonize or provoke any guests or employees of this shelter.  All of the sexual harassment and other antagonism that is directed toward me at this shelter has no basis except for the conglomerate telling people to do it and the shelter tolerating it.  When an employee of a shelter antagonizes a guest of the shelter, it signals to other guests that bullying is allowed at the shelter, that any guest could be a target of that bullying at any time, and that guests who want to bully other guests will be able to do it and to get their victims in trouble for objecting to it, as long as the guest-bullies carefully choose their victims from the group of guest-targets whom staff members have already bullied.

I would not have written this post if, when I had asked other people who are in the office today to speak to Lily and tell her to stop harassing me, they had not first denied that she had meant something by the coughing and then refused to talk to her about it.


Copyright L. Kochman, August 24, 2014 @ 1:48 p.m.