> find a seemingly unrelated reason to terminate you (or > make you leave). That doesn't make sense. The guy who is going around harassing people is creating

> find a seemingly unrelated reason to terminate you (or > make you leave). That doesn't make sense. The guy who is going around harassing people is creating the liability, not the victim, and will probably create more liability in the future. I would be very surprised if there was any jurisdiction in the world where terminating an employment contract terminates employer liability for harassment; a terminated former employee who has been harassed is a much bigger threat to company profits than a current one. The only reason any reasonably competent HR department would fire someone for making a valid complaint of harassment would be if they were ordered to by their superiors to protect themselves or their management colleagues (which is, sadly, a risk in some companies). Obviously, going to HR should not be someone's first move for a one off comment. The person probably doesn't realise that they are being offensive, so a reasonable escalation is to tell them you are offended (and why) first, and if it continues, then go to HR. If it still continues, and HR doesn't do anything meaningful to address the problem (or fires you wrongfully in retribution), then escalate by hiring an employment lawyer to bring a lawsuit against the company, or depending on your jurisdiction, complaining to the relevant government body. This is fair to the person making the remark (they have a chance to learn that their conduct is offensive), the company (they have a chance to know about and address the problem before facing any external action), and the person who was offended (the problem is fixed one way or the other). In this case, both sides were potentially in the wrong - throwing your drink on someone could be viewed as an assault and more serious than a single offensive remark. I think that had Kelly Ellis followed a reasonable pattern of escalation, there would be less harassment at Google now, all three parties (i.e. the two people and the corporation) involved would be better off, and we wouldn't be hearing about this now. Obviously it would be even better if the remark had never been made in the first place. It makes me wonder if Google HR does not give employees training about not harassing people and how to respond to harassment - that is pretty much standard at most big companies of their size, and probably pays for itself in reduced liability (if they get sued out of the blue, they can point to the training to try to shift the blame to the person doing the harassing rather than the company - obviously that won't work if the plaintiff complained to them and they did nothing).