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bmgoldman

[CA] VP/Manager Level Staff Sexual Harassment - Appropriate Action

Hello!

I work for a very small company; there isn't an actual HR representative. I have partially taken on the HR role for the company under the supervision of our Ops Manager. As a result, my manager and I are both realizing what we don't know as we go and adjusting as we learn.

The company was started by the CEO, who quickly brought on 2 of their very close friends to be Managers of the company, the three of them run and supervise all of the company's goings-ons. We'll call the 2 managers Manager A and Manager B.

The CEO and Manager A recently received a formal complaint from an employee. In the complaint the employee states that during the course of a work meeting, their direct supervisor (Manager B) shared very sexually explicit personal details and also went as far as to send explicit photos to the employee via text during the meeting.

The meeting was a regular occurring meeting, however the employee happened to ask for a raise right before the explicit conversation began.

The CEO and Manager A have begun an investigation into the complaint and met with the employee to gather all relevant details. During that meeting it was revealed that this is not the first time Manager B has divulged extremely explicit details of their sex life to the employee in the course of a work meeting.

It has come to my attention that the CEO intends to remove Manager B as the employees supervisor, and also will require Manager B to re-do their Sexual Harassment Training. However, I am not under the impression that there will be any further disciplinary action taken.

I was already not a huge fan of Manager B. I feel strongly that Manager B should be terminated for this conduct - there have been multiple explicit conversations with this employee interjected into regular work sessions, the manager has directly sent the employee explicit photos, and the manager did this despite completing their harassment training only 4 months ago.

I feel like the CEO is not taking further action because Manager B is their friend... Am I overreacting? Is the outlined disciplinary action enough/typical for this type of transgression?

TIA!!

Posted Nov 5, 2025, 1:48 AM UTC

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