In male-dominated industries, lines between professionalism and harassment can get dangerously blurred.

After receiving inappropriate messages from an inebriated contractor, one engineer turned to her manager for help, only to be met with a smirk and a dismissive joke.

Now she’s concerned HR won’t take her seriously either.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

WIBTA if I went to HR anyway?

So I work in engineering, and I manage multiple projects, each one with one or more contractor companies. It’s pretty standard practice to give contractors and key employees my phone number so I can contact them.

The job requires a lot of on-the-fly decisions, and that way they can text me with whatever is wrong, and I can get started on solving it.

Unfortunately, this often means working after-hours.

I also don’t have a company phone, so I’m left using my personal phone for work. It sucks a bit because that makes me available 24/7, but usually people are considerate and at least apologize if they are texting late at night about work.

Then she started getting some concerning messages from a contractor.

Tuesday night, I started getting a number of texts from a field supervisor from a third-party company. They were very inappropriate.

I replied that I was very uncomfortable with the conversation and stopped replying. The guy briefly apologized, then resumed texting.

Honestly, he sounded drunk from the nonsensical things typed between “compliments.” He also started calling my phone non-stop.

But when she tried reporting it to her boss, he didn’t seem to take it seriously.

Later, I went to talk to my manager, said that I wasn’t comfortable working with the supervisor (I often am alone at the factory with contractors while we inspect machines and installations), and that I’d like to remove him from the team (in theory, something I’d have authority to do).

My boss thought I was getting too worked up over nothing, admonished me to not care so much, and told me that it’s a normal thing to happen and that I should learn to deal with it, as it wouldn’t be the last time.

While I talked to him, he was also smiling the whole time and even cracked a joke (“Your fault for being pretty! haha”).

She decides she wants to try and escalate the issue, but she knows it won’t be a straightforward path.

Today, I have invited the owner of the third-party company here so I can talk to him. I want to have the supervisor removed.

Despite that, I expect that his response will be in line with my boss’ (they are longtime friends), and the supervisor will remain working here (“We don’t want to short-staff them during the project. It might be months before they can replace him, and by then the project is over anyway”).

WIBTA if I went to HR anyway and told them what happened?

Speaking up could ruffle feathers, but staying silent shouldn’t be her only option.

What did Reddit have to say?

Fighting this issue won’t be easy, but it can be done.

No competent boss would let this behavior fly.

There are multiple infractions here that need to be addressed.

It’s time to start making a paper trail.

Her boss may have laughed it off, but there’s nothing funny about feeling unsafe at work.

If no one else will protect her, then she’ll have to protect herself.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.