You Just Had To Speed Up? – Shawna’s story
While I don’t recommend taking pictures while you drive, I got so upset after this truck sped up to my car just to honk, I had to. Yes, I get it, I’m wearing a dress. It’s 101 degrees outside, after all. The worst part? I can see the future when it comes to street harassment. I absolutely knew as he got closer that he would honk. I was tense, waiting for the inevitable and trying to pull my dress down as close to my knees as possible, which is not the most safe thing to do when you are driving! Thanks for risking our lives, jerk. You better believe I’m calling the number on the side of the truck and complaining. I got a picture of the license plate, too!
UPDATE 7/10/2012: I called the recycling service/roll-off company to lodge a complaint. I gave them the date, approximate time and location of the harassment. Here are some paraphrased responses I got during the phone call:
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to harass you”
“I don’t know of any truck driver that is not going to look down at a woman”
“Ok dear, thanks for letting us know, I’ll talk to him”
I made sure to stress that it is not only unsafe for his workers to go around speeding up or slowing down solely to ‘check out’ women, honking for no reason (and therefore distracting other drivers), but it also looks bad for his company. That seemed to be more important to the man I spoke with than one of his employees making a fellow citizen uncomfortable with his behavior.
What should you do when you want to report a harasser to their boss? This is important because it is one of the few ways we can give street harassment a consequence, which leads to behavior modification.
Call the company, request a supervisor or manager, get their name and title.
Give the time, date, location and brief description of interaction.
Stress that this was on company time, looks bad for the company, if their actions were unsafe and how it made you feel.
Call it out as harassment.
THEN SHARE YOUR STORY WITH US!
Any other suggestions? Have you done this? When did it seem to work best?
One Response
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Since the company’s response didn’t sound very promising, you may also want to file a consumer complaint with the Maryland Attorney General’s office:
http://www.oag.state.md.us/Consumer/complaint.htm
Point out that as a Maryland citizen, you don’t appreciate a company licensed to do business here allowing their employees to harass and endanger people on the roadways. It’s an election year, so they may be more likely to take action. Also, you never know, this company may have had other complaints lodged against it, so this would allow the state to see a pattern of ill behavior.