I Lied About How I Handled My Workplace Sexual Harassment

Here’s why I did, and why I wish I hadn’t.

During a job interview, I was asked one of those typical questions about a challenge I had faced and how I handled it. What came to mind at the time was the sexual harassment I had encountered during my summer as a river guide.

Could I have thought of other examples? Probably, but for some reason it was still really weighing on me and before I knew it, I had already spit it out.

I suppose that’s what happens when you suppress something awful and don’t talk about it for years.

And as we know, sexual harassment is something that absolutely needs to be talked about.

I was nineteen. This was my first “official” job — the first one for which I had to fill out tax forms and got pay stubs, anyway.

That spring I had saved up for the 10-day intensive guide school, which was grueling and freezing, but also exhilarating. It made me feel like a total badass, and I was pretty proud of myself. After passing the course I was hired by the same company and became a whitewater rafting guide.

Out of eleven people who had taken the course, there were three of us hired.

I was the only woman hired, and I passed my final test run before the two men — a fact that made me secretly proud but definitely sparked some resentment.

As you can imagine, this was a very male-dominated industry. Testosterone central.

That in itself didn’t bother me. But while everyone started out acting friendly around me (and some of them were actually great people), throughout the summer many of my coworkers’ treatment of me got progressively worse.

They would gang up and loudly tell the customers that I would be doing the safety presentation every time they didn’t want to, so that I had no choice and had to gear up faster than they did. Then I would be standing in front of our crowd of customers for fifteen minutes giving the presentation while my male counterparts goofed off in the boathouse, making fun of the way I talked.

One of them made a point of regularly telling me to go get the boat down off the bus, knowing full well that I couldn’t do it by myself and that I’d have to ask for help.

Then he would routinely make fun of me for being one of the “weaker sex”.

Being a huge, broad-shouldered man, he was one of the very few who could do it himself, and to me it seemed like he just enjoyed the fact that I had to ask other people.

One time we were all gearing up with our life vests and helmets, and the same guy was going around jokingly punching his coworkers in the side of their life vest to make sure their gear was “tough enough”. He came over to me and said if I wanted to be “one of them” I’d have to take it too, and then before I could even respond he punched me in the side so hard that it knocked the wind out of me.

I was shocked, furious, and biting back tears, but somehow managed to shake it off and ignore him, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of getting upset. He clearly wanted to see me cry, to prove I wasn’t strong enough to “handle it”.

I never admitted that it actually left a bruise on my ribs.

A different coworker told me multiple times that I should come sleep in his tent with him (eyeing me up and down as he said it), and when I told him I had a boyfriend he said to my face, “Just because there’s a goalie doesn’t mean you can’t score”.

I could go on and on with examples, but you get the picture.

Right at the end of the summer, we were floating down the river in one of the calm stretches before the rapids, and I was talking to my boatload of customers. My coworker came up beside us in his raft and loudly told us an incredibly sexist and inappropriate joke (I don’t recall exactly what it was now, but it was something about female river guides being loose and hairy), and then paddled away laughing.

I didn’t react.

One of the customers in my boat (a man) turned to me and said, completely straight-faced, “That’s sexual harassment. You are being sexually harassed”.

I remember being shocked and embarrassed that he said that to me, and brushing it off once again. I could tell the man was appalled, but I honestly didn’t know what to do at the time.

After that trip I was so incredibly ashamed that I had ignored it for so long and allowed my coworkers to continue treating me that way. It had taken a random customer blatantly pointing it out for me to realize that this really was not okay. Of course I knew that the way my coworkers treated me was terrible, but the entire summer it had just been part of my job, and had become normalized.

I had stayed because I loved the water, loved my customers, and despite all the stress and harassment, I was a damn good river guide. Until then that had outweighed how badly I had been treated.

Looking back, I should never have had to choose.

But I was young, extremely naïve, and frankly I was scared the whole time that if I said anything it would immediately get worse. They certainly had the power to make my life even more of a living hell if they wanted to.

So I let it be my normal.

Unfortunately that’s not the worst part. During this interview when I was talking about the challenge of dealing with sexual harassment, I lied about how I handled it.

Although I know that many people lie during interviews, it’s no excuse. Especially because I swept an issue under the rug that really, really needed to be talked about.

So in this interview, I talked about the manner in which I wish I had handled it, rather than what actually happened. I said that I went to my boss and reported the sexual harassment, so that it was on file and hopefully they would be held accountable, and their behavior would change.

I wanted so badly for that to be the truth.

But in reality, I stayed silent. I worked that last week of summer, packed up my things, and never looked back.

I recall the interviewer being clearly impressed that I had said I had reported it, and she said she was glad there was a chance that would change. At that, I almost broke down and cried, but I held it together and got the job. But I felt like I had betrayed all of womankind by lying about it.

That was the first and only time I’ve lied during an interview, and that was the last time I stayed silent about sexual harassment.

Why do we stay silent?

Fear of confrontation, self-preservation, shame? For me it was a combination of all of the above, and add to all that the fact that I was still pretty innocent and hadn’t had a lot of life experience yet. I had no idea how strong I could be.

This was almost a decade ago now, and I am a much stronger, more outspoken, and more confident woman than I used to be.

I wish I’d been brave back then.

I truly wish I had gone back and reported it, but at the time I was so relieved to be done with the situation that I didn’t want to be involved anymore. I didn’t even want to think about it.

But therein lies the problem — if I hadn’t stayed silent, then even though I wasn’t going to be there anymore, maybe I could have made the environment better for the women to come after me. By not speaking up I allowed it to continue being the norm, and that means that someone else probably had to go through the same thing that I did. Though I hope to God it has changed.

But ultimately, hoping is never going to be enough.

Too late I learned to speak up. If the treatment of women in the workplace — any workplace, whether it’s in an office or outside on a river — is ever going to change, we can’t allow this to be the norm. Sexual harassment is all too real, and it is unacceptable in any circumstance.

I wish I could go back in time and change so many things — stand up for myself, speak up, report it, quit — but unfortunately the past is in the past.

Luckily, we can learn from it. I’m never going to let that happen again. I’m done sweeping issues like sexual harassment under the rug because it’s inconvenient, embarrassing, or unfortunate.

Change is scary, but necessary.

Women have voices. I hope you use yours. I’m going to use mine.

And hopefully the more I talk about it and the more women stand up for themselves and one another, the less likely it is that another nineteen-year-old girl who doesn’t yet have the guts to take action, won’t have to be put in that position.

That’s the goal, after all.

© Samantha Blake 2020

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