With friends like these...

Flaring tempers and risqué jokes

When a businessman is looking to hire someone to work for him in his office and knows of a friend who he thinks will fit well with the job, it may be tempting to just hire the friend right away. After all, having someone you know well and get along with working for you can be a great situation. On the other hand, what passes between friends on a casual basis may not translate as well in the workplace environment and it could be tempting to take advantage of that relationship.

A Sudbury man who had a job opening thought a friend of his would be great as his sales assistant, but things didn’t work quite as well in practice. What might have been laughed off or dismissed as fun banter and differences of opinion turned into accusations of sexual and psychological harassment in the office. In this case, the dynamic between two friends led to fireworks and stress for one woman who decided to work for a friend.

Sometimes when friends work together they can enjoy a casual, friendly atmosphere at the workplace. However, if things become too casual or someone crosses a boundary, they dynamic between them can backfire and lead to problems, especially if the friends are in a boss-employee relationship.

When Dora Cooke became an administrative assistant for an Ontario company, she was looking forward to having a certain comfort level because her boss was an old school chum. However, things may have been a bit too casual between them and before long Cooke was out of a job and stressed out and her old buddy was facing a sexual harassment complaint.

Went to work for a friend

Cooke, 42, was working as an office administrator in Sudbury, Ont., when she decided to leave her employer and join HTS Engineering, a supplier of heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment for commercial and industrial use that had just opened up an office in Sudbury. One of the two men who headed the new office was Patrice Comeau, 46, who was a friend of Cooke’s.

When Comeau and his partner opened the Sudbury office and decided they needed a sales assistant, Comeau told Cooke about it. He offered her the job in December 2006 and Cooke accepted. She started working for HTS on Jan. 22, 2007 after she completed some outstanding work at her old job.

Things seemed to be fine for a while as the two friends were able to work together in a employer-employee relationship. In April 2007, Cooke finished her three-month probationary period and Comeau and his partner took her out to lunch to celebrate. They also invited Cooke to come along with them and other employees on a company trip to the Bahamas that was a reward for meeting financial goals. However, Cooke didn’t go.

Argument over new office software led to tears

However, signs that the relationship might have been going sour started to pop up in early May 2007. HTS developed a software program that would allow it to do most of the administrative work electronically with very little use of paper. All information relating to the company’s jobs would be stored and updated on computer. Cooke had some trouble learning the software and couldn’t get comfortable using it. She preferred keeping paper records of jobs in binders.

Comeau told Cooke she didn’t need to use the binders anymore because all the necessary information was on the computer and she should use that. Cooke felt Comeau was unfairly criticizing her and became upset. The discussion escalated into an argument that led to Cooke running to the bathroom in tears.

In July 2007, Comeau found problems with the way Cooke prepared the documents on bids HTS made for jobs. As with the previous incident, Cooke didn’t take the criticism well and felt she was being picked on. Another argument ensued that resulted in Cooke crying.

Three months later, in October, Comeau needed Cooke to do a large amount of photocopying for a bid he was preparing. He told her she hadn’t properly photocopied a previous bid and told her how to do this one correctly. Cooke didn’t like his tone and it led to another argument between the two. She became upset and left the documents with

Comeau to copy.

Sick leave followed by sexual and psychological harassment claims

Soon after the photocopying argument, on Nov. 7, Cooke claimed she arrived at the office and both Comeau and his partner began criticizing her about a mistake she had made. The two men claimed she asked them how she was doing and they told her she would need to improve. Cooke said she didn’t think she was the right person for the job and didn’t return to work after lunch. He father called the office to say she would be taking sick leave.

Since Cooke hadn’t indicated how long she would be off work, HTS began looking for a temporary sales assistant. Cooke brought a doctor’s note a week after she had left that said she would be off work until Dec. 3. She also complained that she had suffered mental, verbal and sexual abuse from Comeau and filed a suit for harassment, bullying and constructive dismissal.

Cooke claimed Comeau frequently engaged in sexual banter with her but she was an unwilling participant. She said he asked her about her sex life and made many unwelcome comments. She also said Comeau bullied her and the incidents in which she ended up in tears were part of an atmosphere of psychological harassment in which he insulted her and her boyfriend. She only participated in the sexual banter because of the bullying, she claimed.

Comeau disputed that Cooke was an unwilling participant in the sexual banter and said she was the one who usually started it. He also said she never complained that it made her uncomfortable. Comeau admitted he got angry sometimes but said whenever he raised performance issues with Cooke she didn’t take it well and over-reacted. Both he and his partner said she had never indicated she was uncomfortable.

The court said the case boiled down who’s version of events was the most believable — Cooke or Comeau. It heard testimony from some of Comeau’s former co-workers that he didn’t shy away from making sexual comments to co-workers, but this didn’t necessarily mean it was forced upon Cooke at HTS. If the sexual harassment and bullying was ongoing throughout her time at HTS as Cooke claimed, the court said it would have impacted her mental health for some time. However, it found her doctor made no reference to work-related stress until November 7, when she had been working at HTS for nine months.

The court also saw as evidence an e-mail Cooke sent to her former employer in September 2007 that said she was happy at HTS, which contradicted her claim that she was being bullied and harassed at the time. Cooke had also tried to set up Comeau with her best friend in the summer of 2007, which the court found strange if she was feeling poorly treated by him.

The court found it was “likely” the sexual banter took place at HTS but Cooke was a willing participant and as such did not constitute sexual harassment.

However, the court found Cooke was the victim of psychological harassment. There was no dispute over the arguments that took place and Comeau admitted he sometimes had angry outbursts, which may have intimidated her even if they weren’t always directed at her. When Cooke saw her doctor in November, she did mention Comeau had become verbally abusive. This behaviour did happen and led to constructive dismissal, the court ruled.

“Although Mr. Comeau may well have raised legitimate performance issues with Ms. Cooke, the degeneration of those discussions into shouting matches in which he was an active participant was unwarranted. His other outbursts of anger in the office, albeit directed at customers, suppliers or a shelf of books, would reasonably have contributed to the intimidation of Ms. Cooke, particularly given the very close physical proximity in which they were working. No employee should have to tolerate such conduct in the workplace,” said the court.

The court found Cooke was constructively dismissed from HTS, not from sexual harassment, but from bullying and psychological harassment. HTS was ordered to pay her two months’ salary in lieu of notice plus a regular bonus and benefits for the two months, minus what she earned in a new job during the notice period. It was also ordered to pay Cooke an additional $3,500 in damages for mental distress she suffered as a result of the harassment, bring the total award to $13,381.35.

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