Drunkeness and Sexual Harassment Alleged At Microsoft UK 159
rtfa-troll writes "A picture of vodka fountains, indefinite amounts of Jaegermeister, and sexual harassment is emerging from Microsoft. The former second in command at Microsoft UK was accused of sexual misconduct involving at least five separate women. A Microsoft internal investigation was unable to prove the allegations but decided to fire Simon Negus for having 'behaved dishonestly, and thereby acted in a manner calculated or likely to destroy trust and confidence between him and Microsoft' and sue him £75k. Now Negus, who already has a new job as COO at Upstream Systems has struck back with a £10 million false dismissal suit alleging a culture of drunken parties and claiming that other (Male) management at Microsoft were so drunk they followed a female Microsoft UK manager into the ladies' lavatories. I guess we can now guess why senior managers go away to Microsoft vowing never to buy anything and come back with signed contracts; presumably it was just lying there next to them in the morning and they were too afraid to ask what happened."
Re:No case (Score:5, Informative)
Negus...has struck back with a £10 million false dismissal suit alleging a culture of drunken parties and claiming that other (Male) management at Microsoft were so drunk they followed a female Microsoft UK manager into the ladies' lavatories.
So because someone else acted improperly, he thinks it was OK for him to do so too? I hope he gets laughed out of court.
Did you miss the part of the article where he denied the accusations against him? Or the one where the investigation turned out no proof of the allegations?
He's not saying, "everybody else was acting improperly, so it was ok for me to do it." He's saying, "I was acting properly amidst massive impropriety. If anything, they fired me because I wasn't playing along."
Whether you believe him or not is moot. The question is, can he prove his allegations while Microsoft can't prove theirs? If that's the case, not only should this not be dismissed, but he should win.
Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
Well, actually the first article says that it was an annual sales conference, and generally you'd notice everyone even mentioned is a manager or HR consultant or such. E.g., the woman he asked to flutter her eyelashes is apparently a HR consultant, at a quick googling.
What? Did you think they had parties with unlimited vodka and JÃgermeister for the peons?
So unless you were some sales manager or such, yeah, probably you wouldn't see that happening at any company you worked for, or even at MS. They're not going to do that for the likes of YOU, of course.