Quick Takes: Quick Takes — February 27, 2007

Sex Jokes: How to Create a Hostile Work Environment

A study finds that 34 percent of U.S. employees have seen or heard co-workers making sexually inappropriate remarks.

Sex Chatter: About one-third of all employees in America hear sexually inappropriate comments at work, according to Novations Group, a Boston-based consulting firm. Sex jokes and the like are the “most frequent type of ridicule” endured by employees, heard by 44 percent of men. By comparison, only 22 percent of women say they have heard such lewd remarks. Close behind the sexual gibes are insults based on a person’s race or ethnicity. Strikingly, 6 percent have witnessed workplace jerks [link to John’s jerks column] ridiculing people with disabilities.

—Garry Kranz

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Index: Quick Takes — February 27, 2007