Human Resource Blog

Girlfriend of Employee Harassing Other Employees

Two part question:

Do you have any suggestion on how to deal with an employee’s girlfriend who is constantly harassing the employee’s supervisor and the employee’s manager with abusive phone calls? I’ve tried rationally to ask her to stop which works for a few days. I’ve also invited the girlfriend to come into the office to discuss any issues which she has refused to do.

Second question is that if I can’t get the girlfriend to stop the harassing calls, can I fire the employee?

Any help is appreciated.

This type of behavior actully occurs more often than you would suppose at work. However, often the harasser is male and the situation involves a divorce or domestic abuse.  We do have some suggestions to deal with it.

1) Contact the police. Repeatedly making harassing phone calls to a business is disruptive, and often illegal. File a complaint, and the police will contact her. That will most likely stop the phone calls. If not, you may have to get a restraining order or press charges.

2) You absolutely should NOT fire the employee due to his girlfriend’s behavior. Presumably he has no control over her behavior — it’s like punishing an employee because their spouse smoked pot. What the employee does at work is entirely separate from his girlfriend’s conduct. He may have a legitimate case of wrongful termination if you fire him for something he has absolutely no control over. You can ask the employee nicely to get her to stop. I assume that he knows how big a problem this is, and he would stop her if he could.