Partners Tracey Diamond and Evan Gibbs sit down with Megan Bigelow, assistant general counsel at Sonesta Hotels, to talk about the popular Apple TV series The Morning Show and harassment in the workplace.
What responsibilities do managers and coworkers have to prevent or stop harassment in the workplace? Is silence just as bad as the harassment itself? Partners Tracey Diamond and Evan Gibbs sit down with Megan Bigelow, assistant general counsel at Sonesta Hotels, to talk about the popular Apple TV series The Morning Show and harassment in the workplace. Hear all this and more in Episode 13 of the Hiring to Firing Podcast!
Hiring to Firing Podcast – “Bystander Responsibility in the Era of #MeToo: Lessons Learned From Apple TV’s The Morning Show”
Hosts: Tracey Diamond and Evan Gibbs
Guests: Megan Bigelow, Assistant General Counsel of Sonesta Hotels
Tracey Diamond:
Welcome to Hiring to Firing, the podcast. I'm Tracy Diamond, a labor and employment attorney with the Law Firm of Troutman Pepper. And together with my partner and co-host Evan Gibbs, we handle all employment issues from hiring to firing. Today we welcome our guest, Megan Bigelow, Assistant General Counsel of Sonesta Hotels. Welcome, and so great to have you here, Megan.
Megan Bigelow:
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Tracey Diamond:
Why don't you start by telling us a little bit about Sonesta and your role with the company?
Megan Bigelow:
Great. So, Sonesta International Hotels Corporation is a manager and operator and owner of hotels. We have about 1,200 hotels internationally and in the United States that includes both managed properties and franchised hotels. Sonesta's growth has been rapid. We grew by, I think 350% starting from the end of November, 2020 until May, 2021, so in about a six month time period. And I joined at the end of May, 2021. It's been busy and it's been nonstop, but it's great.
Megan Bigelow:
In my role specifically, I handle all litigation for the managed properties, which is about 250 hotels in the United States and Canada. All litigation means all litigation, ADA litigation, general liability suits involving guest claims, contract disputes with vendors, employment matters, whether they be purely in-house and HR related, or charges before the OC, or actual employment litigation or arbitration. We have a lot of wage and hour issues that come up with our workforce. I handle all trademark matters for the hotel and the Sonesta brands. I think that's-
Tracey Diamond:
It's like soup to nuts.
Megan Bigelow:
Yes, I think there's a lot. Everybody makes the joke that when things go bad, just call Megan. She's the one who's probably supposed to handle it.
Tracey Diamond:
Sure, and handle it successfully in your capable hands, I think you told us that you have something like 10,000 employees now. Is that right?
Megan Bigelow:
Yes, that's true. As you probably know, the hospitality industry has an incredibly high rate of turnover. So, the number fluctuates day to day, week to week. But yes, we've grown to about 10,000 employees across the entire portfolio. So, corporate and then hotel staff specifically.
Tracey Diamond:
Interesting how you've had so much growth during the pandemic in the hospitality industry.
Megan Bigelow:
It is. At the end of November, 2021, Sonesta had about 50 or 60 managed properties, and then we took over a large number of properties that were previously managed by other companies, Wyndham, Marriott, Hyatt, and they became Sonesta Properties. So the hotels converted in December, 2020 to Sonesta Properties and we took over that large portfolio and so that spurred that exponential growth over those ensuing six months.
Tracey Diamond:
We're really glad to have you here. And today we're going to talk about the TV show called The Morning Show, which is one of Apple TV shows and its stars, Jennifer Aniston, Reece Witherspoon and Steve Carell. Steve Carell plays the character Mitch Kessler, a morning show host, who is terminated for sexually harassing fellow employees, including a woman named Hannah who is the show's talent booker, who eventually commits suicide on the show. Here's a clip between Mitch and his co-anchor Alex played by Jennifer Aniston, where Mitch accuses Alex of being complicit in his bad behavior.
Alex:
How's that?
Mitch:
I am fighting for my life. Your life's going to be fine, your career too.
Alex:
You cannot guarantee that.
Mitch:
Actually I can. The world is not ready to hold women accountable for their complicity. Even the ones in power.
Alex:
My complicity?
Mitch:
Oh God, really? Are you really going to keep pretending that you didn't know what was going on?
Alex:
Oh my God.
Mitch:
Oh man.
Alex:
Oh my God.
Mitch:
Could we just act like grownups and just level with each other for once? Let's just be honest for one.
Alex:
Honest about what?
Mitch:
Are you actually going to look me in the eye and say that you didn't participate?
Alex:
Participate how?
Mitch:
Okay, I guess we're still pretending or I'm misremembering it. You didn't roll your eyes at these women? You didn't make jokes at their expense? You didn't mock their sometimes desperate behavior when I moved on? You were very cruel and words matter.
Tracey Diamond:
In this case, Jennifer Aniston's character, Alex, clearly knew what was going on, but said nothing. So, that leads the question that I posed to both Evan and Megan. What are the responsibility that bystanders or coworkers have to prevent or stop harassment from happening?
Evan Gibbs:
I think I'll jump in first. I think it depends on the bystander or the coworker's position in the company. And if it's a managerial employee versus just a low level employee, there might not necessarily be a duty for a low level employee and their actions or their inaction, not reporting it, might not have any kind of legal implications for the company. And of course, we're talking about legal issues and not ethical issues here. I think that's certainly two separate issues.
Evan Gibbs:
But from a legal perspective, if it's a bystander or a coworker, there's not generally a legal duty. The person's not going to get in trouble legally if they don't do anything. And their inaction, again, probably can't create liability for the company if they're just a low level employee and not in a supervisory or managerial type role.
Tracey Diamond:
What if they're supervisor though? In this case it was the co-anchor, so she's one of the top brass here. What if it's a supervisor who witnesses the bad behavior?
Megan Bigelow:
So, I was going to make the same points that Evan just made and the distinction between an ethical obligation, maybe and a legal obligation, and also the distinction between an ordinary run of the mill employee versus a supervisor. When it is a supervisor or a manager, the knowledge of that supervisor or manager can be imputed to the company itself and the higher ups in the company. And so employees, meaning supervisors or managers, need to be aware of that, not only from an ethical standpoint in terms of taking care of their lower level employees, the people who report to them. They have an ethical obligation, I would think, to care for those people. But also, if they have knowledge of improper behavior, or misdeeds, or harassment, or something like that, knowledge is then imputed to the company as a whole and can create liability issues for the company.
Evan Gibbs:
For employment lawyers, a lot of times we get so hyper-focused on the summary judgment standard in cases and what we could show a judge through an affidavit or declaration, but that really changes when you get in front of a jury and you can make that argument that the supervisor is really the only one who could create liability if he or she knew. But it can get really murky if you're in front of a jury or even if you have a bench trial in front of a judge. And let's say you've got multiple employees who knew about harassment and even though they're not supervisors, you're going to have a tough time convincing a jury that other people in the company didn't know. Even if you've got some supervisor that comes and swears under oath that, "I didn't know what was happening," and all that. And the standards of proof have changed, the jury instructions are not the same as the summary judgment standard in employment cases.
Evan Gibbs:
So, I think that as a hyper-technical manner for employment lawyers, it's easy for us to say the supervisor didn't know that there's probably not liability, but that really might not necessarily be the case, when you're talking about where the rubber meets the road and of a trial or maybe an arbitration or something like that. I think that sometimes it can be murky. As you were talking Megan, I was thinking, the co-anchors for the show are would they really be supervisory employees, did they really ... I've seen the show and it's not entirely clear. They have some, I guess executive level decision making about the content of the show and what they say on air, but did they really manage the employees in a legal sense were they actually managers or supervisors? I think that gets murky in a lot of organizations, where the chain of command is and who has responsibility.
Tracey Diamond:
Yeah, to your point Evan, I think it also goes to the standard of should have known. The supervisor should have known and they purposefully just stuck their head in the sand. The fact that all those other coworkers knew and it was a known thing in the office, makes it a lot harder for a supervisor to be able to claim ignorance, or at least be credible in claiming ignorance.
Megan Bigelow:
Yeah, I don't think willful ignorance is an excuse in these instances.
Tracey Diamond:
Just like intent is not an excuse. Exactly.
Evan Gibbs:
Yeah, and I think that goes to the broader issue of the corporate culture in the organization and ensuring that policies around things like this really are enforcement. People know whether they're a supervisor or a frontline employee, that if they see this stuff happen, that they really should, they really need to report it. Instilling that culture in people in the organization I think is really important.
Tracey Diamond:
One of the things that makes The Morning Show so interesting to talk about from an employment law perspective is that it really thinks about it from the different perspectives of other people's culpability, if not legal liability. Alex's culpability as the co-anchor who's ignoring the fact that this is going on. Hannah, the victim's, culpability or liability putting herself into that kind of situation. And then the corporate brass's culpability and buying off Hannah's silence.
Tracey Diamond:
One of the issues that the show grapples with, or attempts to grapple with, is the concept of cancel culture that alleged to harassers, particularly high profile ones, are being judged too swiftly. This came about a whole lot in the Me Too movement. There was talk about cancel culture and our celebrity figures being quote unquote crucified before there's really been a judgment against them and the court of public opinion. And in The Morning Show, one of the producers says quote, "The whole Me Too movement is probably an overcorrection for centuries of bad behavior, that more enlightened men like you and me had nothing to do with." Of course, you and me was Mitch talking to one of his coworkers who was also a misogynist. What are your thoughts on this? Are harassers being condemned without due process? Because of the Me Too movement?
Megan Bigelow:
I couldn't disagree more. I think the knee-jerk reaction is to say these men, these harassers are vilified in the public sphere in the media. And no one's checking to see whether anything that these women is saying is the truth. It's far from accurate. I think it takes, as we all know, a lot to stand up and to share your story and to confront these issues and to confront these companies and their harassers. I also think it's important to note that very few of the men who were so-called vilified or canceled during the Me Too movement or in the aftermath of it, have actually had their livelihoods, or their reputations, or their careers permanently destroyed or tarnished. There are a lot of examples that come to mind. Lewis CK comes to mind. All these people who fade away from the limelight for a few ... They're quiet for a little while, they do a little penance and then they come back and it's stronger than ever. I think in actuality, the backlash to women and to women speaking up about these things has actually been stronger than any of the backlash ever was about the men, in the immediate aftermath of the Me Too movement.
Evan Gibbs:
I think anybody who is in a position of high public visibility, I think they have to really mind their Ps and Qs because they are really going to be under the microscope if allegations like this come up. I think that whether it's a politician or celebrity when accusations like this come around or come out, they have to deal with it and they have to deal with a fallout in my opinion. I think that, look, I've been on the other end of having the press make disparaging remarks or jumping to conclusions about a client, when I know more about the facts, I'm like, "The media is just as getting this wrong." But that's just the way it works. That's just if you're a big company or you're involved in a big case or whatever. I mean, you just have to expect that people are interested in it and the press is going to say what they hear.
Evan Gibbs:
Reporters get their facts from people involved in the case or people tangentially involved and it just comes with the territory. So, I don't think that folks who are the targets of these types of allegations, I think they just have to deal with them. If there's a lawsuit, they deal with the lawsuit and deal with any kind of fallout. I just think it comes with a territory.
Tracey Diamond:
And to Megan's point, it does seem like more often than not, there was a period of time where when the Me Too movement was very popular, right before the pandemic, where it seemed like there was going to be some justice for the folks that did actually do the harassing and leaving aside Evan's point of maybe the media is misconstruing or twisting things, but where there was bad behavior that maybe finally some light was being shed on it. But you fast forward a couple of years now and a lot of the public figures that were accused seem to be doing just fine.
Tracey Diamond:
What message does this give to harassers who are not public figures? Is there a license to engage in improper behavior in the workplace?
Evan Gibbs:
I will say that I have genuinely seen and heard, and felt, a paradigm shift over the last, especially the last five years, five, six years, the sort of locker room talk and things that used to hear. I don't really hear a lot of stuff anymore. I hear less offensive stuff now than I used to. My opinion is that I think things have gotten somewhat better. I do think that people are much more mindful about the things that they say and do, especially at work.
Evan Gibbs:
I'm not saying that the problem has been fixed by any stretch of the imagination, but a lot of bad behavior has been corrected and reduced in a lot of ways. I think there's still a long way to go, but I do think that the Me Too movement had a lot of very positive long-term impacts.
Tracey Diamond:
I'd be curious to whether there's statistics to back that up, whether it is true that the number of cases have gone down, that the number of internal complaints have gone down, and if there's a way to measure whether the number of actual incidents have gone down, because so much is not reported in the first place.
Tracey Diamond:
So, let's bring it back to The Morning show again cause there's just so much material here to talk about. I want to talk about Hannah next, the victim.
Tracey Diamond:
In the show, Hannah accepts a significant promotion and raise an exchange for her silence when she first attempts to report the incident of Mitch taking advantage of her. It isn't until Mitch is fired and Bradley Jackson who is Mitch's replacement, played by Reese Witherspoon, starts to investigate Mitch's behavior in an effort to bring it to light, that Hannah then comes forward and confronts Mitch about what happened between them. Here is a clip of an exchange between Hannah and Mitch.
Hannah:
... just want you to understand how it might have felt for me.
Mitch:
We were getting to know each other, Hannah, I didn't lure you up there. I didn't coerce you. I didn't trick you. We went up there and it happened. You're an adult, you could have said something. Hey, you're a smart woman, aren't you? From what I can tell you, you're pretty intelligent. And a smart woman knows what it means when the lead anchor who makes $20 million a year is hanging out with an assistant booker. A smart woman doesn't think, "Oh, he's inviting me up to his hotel room because he wants a new best friend.| You're a booker, you charm people into being on the show. You seduce them. You know what? You can't be mad because you got seduced.
Tracey Diamond:
Do victims have a duty to avoid putting themselves into compromising situations with colleagues at work? What do you think?
Megan Bigelow:
What is a compromising situation? In my mind, in my view, victims, or would-be victims, have no responsibility but to conduct themselves in a professional manner. Where the line of a compromising situation gets drawn is it's not clear. It's not fair that business gets done and deals are made and networking is conducted on the golf course, or over drinks, or on a trip somewhere, and that a woman might not feel safe or comfortable in those kinds of settings alone with a man. That puts a woman at a natural disadvantage for advancing her career. I can tell, you I had drinks with two partners when I was a summer associate and it led to me getting my first job. And the only thing we discussed was work and business. But I was young, I was a young kid basically, and these were two older men. And is that a compromising situation? I don't think so.
Megan Bigelow:
But if we put the onus on women to identify what could constitute a compromising situation, we're placing responsibility on the wrong parties. It's women should be conducting themselves in a professional manner. Harassers, and I don't want to just say women should be, because harassers can be women, superiors or would-be harassers, should also be conducting themselves in a professional manner. It shouldn't matter the environment or the setting in which you're in.
Tracey Diamond:
And I also want to make a disclaimer that same sex harassment situations proliferate as well.
Megan Bigelow:
Exactly.
Tracey Diamond:
But The Morning Show is about a male anchor harassing of female subordinate. At the risk of oversharing on a podcast, lots of people hearing us, but I had a situation when I was in my first job out of college where I was at a work event and met somebody in a bar and he said, "I just want to put my briefcase away and we'll go grab some dinner." I followed him into his where he locked the door and I was very close to putting myself in a bad situation. But luckily, he took no for an answer. I had no idea, as a stupid young kid, that that's where we were leading. I just came from an environment in college where people hung out in dorm rooms all the time, so I didn't think twice about it.
Tracey Diamond:
Of course, looking back on it, did I have some culpability there? Did I give the wrong message by innocently following him into that room? I don't know. I don't want to say that I was completely ... that I'm completely off the hook there. I think that there, as Megan said, everybody bears a responsibility to act professionally.
Tracey Diamond:
What about work travel, though? Talking about travel? We're going to use the male/female construct here just for purposes of this discussion. Are women at a disadvantage when it comes to work travel because they have to be careful not to put themselves in a situation where it could potentially lead to something that's unsafe or unwanted?
Megan Bigelow:
Not to sound like a raging feminist here, but women are at a natural disadvantage for these reasons. Women have to be careful when they're out alone at night. Women have to be careful not to drink too much when they're out by themselves and don't have a friend nearby. It's the same thing with work. And again, I don't think it's necessarily not putting yourself in a compromising situation necessarily, but a woman has to stop and think about things that a man just simply would not have to in the same instance. At a law firm, a male associate is not going to think twice about going out for drinks at 10 o'clock at night with a male partner. But a young female associate might think twice about that. And yeah, that does put her at a natural disadvantage.
Tracey Diamond:
I often use in harassment training, the example of a young woman associate with a bunch of older male partners who are entertaining a male client, and the client wants to go to a strip club, but the partner says to the associate, "I don't think you'd be comfortable. We're not going to invite you." So is that right? Or what is the alternative to invite her? What are the alternatives here? And often when I give that hypothetical across industries, the people that are taking the training really struggle with this question, which always really is surprising to me because it seems to me the answer is put the client in an Uber and you say goodnight because you're not going to put your associate in a compromising situation.
Evan Gibbs:
I will say, for the record, I have never taken a client to a strip club. I've never had a client that asked to go to a strip club.
Tracey Diamond:
Evan Just wanted to note that.
Evan Gibbs:
Yeah, just full disclaimer, I have never been in that situation. I've heard about it from a really long time ago. If any of my clients asked to go, I would be so surprised if they were like, "Hey man, let's go to a strip club after dinner." I'd be floored. I don't know, man. Yeah, that would be very surprising. I have never had that come up before.
Tracey Diamond:
All right. In a prior episode before that last clip, Mitch takes advantage of Hannah in his hotel room and The Morning Show shows it in great detail in a way that's really both chilling and cringey to watch, in my opinion, takes a promotion anyway and keeps her silence. Does she have an obligation to keep reporting the incident until somebody listens? So, she does initially try to report the incident. She's given this promotion to be quiet and she takes the promotion. Does she have any obligation here to keep reporting?
Evan Gibbs:
I mean, think in terms of, again, I think it comes down to a legal or ethical obligation there's no ... She's not disqualified from reporting just because she took the hush money. Because she took the position, it doesn't disqualify her from continuing to report the issue. I think if it turned into a lawsuit, and let's play out the hypothetical, if she initially takes the promotion, takes a step back and says, "Okay, I'm not going to report. I'm going to take the promotion," waits some period of time and then comes back six months later and said, "No, you know what?" I just can't stomach this and makes the report. And then let's say it turns into a lawsuit and how does that play into her claim against the company? How does it play into the company's liability?
Evan Gibbs:
I think the company could try to make hay about that and say, "Oh, but she accepted this position." I suspect that a judge would let that come in front of a jury and that would be a fact that the jury could hear and the company would try to discredit her in that way. And she'd probably hear that brought up in every part of the case. But I don't think that it would impact the company's liability. A supervisor or coworker engaged in illegal conduct, then what she did after the fact, I don't think it’s going to really matter. I think that's a separate issue, I think they could look at that as ... I think the company, the defense lawyers in the case, they would try to say it really didn't impact her or they could say, "Oh, it wasn't unwanted harassment because look, she took the job and she just continued in this new role with the company and didn't report it until later on. And then she second guessed her earlier decision." Ultimately, I think that the company could still be on the hook for it.
Tracey Diamond:
And maybe it goes to consent, maybe it just goes to credibility. Is she really credible? Did it really happen, if it took her that long to report it, or was she just trying to take advantage of a situation to gain a career advancement in her job?
Megan Bigelow:
I think it does go to credibility and I think it would be harmful to her credibility. But if she made attempts, let's say she made attempts to report it, or even one attempt and she was rebuffed, or told, "It's not a big deal, let it go." I can't really fathom, I can't put myself in that position and imagine how discouraging that would feel for somebody to feel like you need to just suck it up and get on with it. And so, in order ... You take a job offer or you take a promotion, sure, I can see how that would be a chain of events. I think it goes back to what we've discussed earlier and what Evan mentioned is it's a legal obligation versus an ethical obligation. Protecting herself at the expense of not holding the company liable, not holding the harasser liable, and potentially leaving open the possibility that this could happen to other individuals.
Tracey Diamond:
So, that leads us right to our third clip. In our third clip, Alex engages with Bradley Jackson about the network's efforts to buy Hannah's silence, take a listen.
Alex:
I did nothing wrong, Mitch did something wrong. And if Fred enabled it, who cares? It's business.
Bradley:
I didn't-
Alex:
He protected him because Mitch was financially beneficial and it was a boys' club. And whatever else you're trying to point out, everybody knows that this silencing culture exists. We don't need you telling us all how the world works. We need you to sit down and do your job, which includes just one little shred of loyalty to me.
Tracey Diamond:
So, there has been a movement across the country to ban private arbitration of harassment claims and prohibit employers from requiring harassment victims to keep their claims and settlements of claims confidential. Do you think this will have the intended effect?
Megan Bigelow:
So, I don't think as a whole, companies across the country were thrilled about this, most turn to arbitration. But I do think that there is an additional consequence to that. And that is that yes, companies try to protect their images and their reputations, and so that's why they go to arbitration most of the time. But there is an element of privacy and confidentiality for the victim as well. I do believe that the new federal law is optional. It just outlaws compulsory arbitration for harassment claims. So the victim still has the option to go to arbitration, which I think is the right thing to do. I think it's the right thing to give the victim in those situations the option to choose which venue they want to proceed in and how public they want their story to be.
Tracey Diamond:
Yeah, because some victims may not want to publicize what happened to them. Just because you became the victim, doesn't mean you necessarily want to be the bearer of victimization, right, out in the world?
Megan Bigelow:
Exactly, exactly.
Tracey Diamond:
You might have valid reasons why you want to keep it confidential. And I agree with you. I think that companies as a whole want to keep it confidential for a lot of reasons, but some victims do too. What about when the alleged harasser moves on another company? So do employers have an obligation to notify other potential employers of the alleged harasser regarding the complaints that were made against him or her? And if not, isn't it just too easy for the perpetrator to do it again somewhere else?
Evan Gibbs:
I think that goes back ... ties into your point from earlier about defamation claims. If a client came to me and said, "Evan, should I report this harassment allegation against this employee, to his or her new employer?" I would tell them, "No, don't do it because, if you ... " The company will be opening itself up to a potential defamation claim if the statement that is allegedly defamatory, if it relates to their career or to their profession, then depending on what state you're in, it can be a lower pleading standard. It can entitle them to additional punitive damages and things like that. Especially in the context of employment. I think companies have to be really careful about what they report to others. But it's certainly a problem.
Evan Gibbs:
I mean it's because it's not even ... Let's go a step further and say that it was investigated and it was confirmed that this person ... that the company's investigation found that the person did in fact commit sexual harassment, or sexual assault, or something like that and they fired the person, or the person agreed to resign, or however. The person exits the company and they feel like we have not only just credible allegation, but we have clear evidence that this did occur. Should we tell future employers? And I think the answer's the same. They have to be very careful about how they report that. It's unfortunate because there's not like a harassment database where you go and check, see how many creeps live on your block.
Tracey Diamond:
There's Megan's Law for harassment, unless there's-
Megan Bigelow:
That's right.
Tracey Diamond:
... actually a crime, a conviction of a crime against a minor.
Evan Gibbs:
That's right.
Megan Bigelow:
Yeah, I agree with Evan. I think most companies have a policy of confirming or denying dates of employment, and that's pretty much the extent of usually what they're allowed to say because of all of these concerns, defamation concerns. But a situation in which an investigation has occurred and the person was terminated, my hope would be that the investigation was thorough and detailed, and they reached a definitive conclusion at the end of the investigation. And maybe at that point, the company says he was terminated or, "He was let go, or after discussion he resigned." But not just state the reasons. It's a very thorny issue and it's a very fine line to balance and to discuss internally with the major stakeholders. It all goes back, I think, to what we've been discussing, which is your ethical obligation versus your legal one, or the legal ramifications of a decision.
Tracey Diamond:
To your point about sexual assault though, if it rises to the level of sexual assault, does the company have any reporting obligations to the police?
Evan Gibbs:
Usually there's not an obligation to report a crime, it's a tort law. There's not a duty to assume a risk to rescue somebody that's drowning, for example. Unless I could see if the ... If criminal statute at issue had something like an aiding and abetting component and the company was somehow complicit, or something like that but I've never ... I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but I'm not aware of a company being charged criminally for something, for example, like aiding and abetting a sexual assault, or some kind of criminal involvement. I just haven't seen it. I bet it's happened somewhere, but I think that there's probably not a legal requirement to do so. I think there are a lot of reasons they would want to, and not just ethical, but also legal.
Evan Gibbs:
I mean, I think if a sexual assault occurred and they didn't report it to the police and they got sued later, boy they're going to wish they had reported it to the police. So, I think they definitely should. But do they have to? I can't think of a particular statute or anything like that that would require it, but I can't say, I also can't find a reason why they wouldn't want to.
Tracey Diamond:
Yeah, the trouble is, in reality, investigations are usually a lot murkier than that, because it's so hard to know what happened behind closed doors. So, from a company's perspective, in my experience anyway, more often than not, it becomes a matter of he said, or he said, she said. And it's very hard to know for sure what really happened or make a conclusion as to whether harassment occurred.
Tracey Diamond:
Lots to discuss here and we could go on and on, but I think it's time to get back to our day jobs. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today, Megan, and thank you for your time today as well, again, Evan. And I want to thank our listeners for joining us. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast. You could find it on all the major platforms, and also take a look at our blog hiringtofiring.law. Thanks again.
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