Harassment At The Oracle Corporation
page 00
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
0. Meta
0.00 Table Of Contents......................................00
0.01 Summary Of Contents....................................01
0.02 Summary Of Events......................................03
1. Before
1.01 Personal Background....................................09
1.02 Professional Background................................11
1.03 Employment At Oracle...................................15
1.04 Email At Oracle........................................19
1.05 Email With BGUALA@US...................................23
1.06 "Breakfast ?"..........................................25
1.07 The Birthday Party.....................................27
1.08 The Accusation.........................................29
1.09 A Response - In Writing................................31
1.10 Human Resources Steps In...............................37
2. During
2.01 A Chat With Human Resources............................39
2.02 A Response - In Writing................................41
2.03 A Request For Closure..................................47
2.04 The Requests Escalate..................................49
2.05 A Depressing Christmas.................................57
2.06 New Year's : A Resolution Made.........................59
2.07 Part 1 : Adding To The Record..........................61
2.08 Part 2 : Bad Faith : An Analysis.......................65
2.09 Part 3 : Room For Improvement..........................73
2.10 Two Weeks' Medical Leave...............................75
2.11 My Dad's Death.........................................77
2.12 /var/spool/mail/rchilder: 1870 new messages............83
2.13 A Patient And Tactful Response.........................85
2.14 An Impatient And Tactless VP...........................89
2.15 Cause For Termination ? An Analysis...................93
3. After
3.01 Immediate Consequences.................................95
3.02 Continuing Consequences................................97
Appendices
A.01 Not The First Time - Religious Harrassment At Oracle...A1
A.02 Log Of Relevant Electronic Mail........................A5
page 01
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
0.01 Summary Of Contents
This document details a sequence of events which lasted over
three months, and resulted in my unlawful termination.
This document attempts to both document, and identify :
- specific, and repeated, violations of California state
laws, pertaining to employment and other matters,
- consistent rejection of civil rights,
- consistent rejection of due process,
- consistent rejection of public policy in general,
- consistent rejection of Oracle's own specific and written
commitments to their employees, as defined in the Oracle
Employee Handbook, in particular ... and
- consistent, documentable bad faith, virtually throughout.
This document is intended to address three audiences.
- The Department of Fair Employment And Housing, as a
description of events, pursuant to my prior complaint,
identifying specific circumstances which I believe to
consititute violations of DFEH regulations, seeking
permission to sue under those regulations.
- A Superior Court judge, in San Mateo County, as what's
called an "amicus brief", filed in the case _Adelyn Lee
vs. Oracle Corporation, et al_.
- The general public, both as a document sent to various
media and representatives thereof, and as an article to
be published, directly to the public, via the Internet.
page 02
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 03
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
0.02 Summary Of Events
I believe events can be most precisely, and consistently,
summarized, by presenting the same summary of events to
the general public, which I presented to a select set of
my peer employees, just before I was fired.
The proximity of events can only lead me to suggest that
there is a connection between the two events.
The reasons for my termination can only be described as
patently false, and demonstratably so.
However, as you will see, the sequence of events I have
described, is such that, the only existing alternative to
terminating me, and attempting to use me as a scapegoat,
would be to accept the fact that multiple highly-placed
individuals at Oracle were professionally incompetent,
and had been party to multiple and repeated torts, as
well as a conspiracy of silence regarding their failures.
Here's a little taste of the sort of treatment I received
at the hands of my fellow employees :
<< start of quoted email >>
From pmabon Mon Jan 25 12:40:34 1993
Received: by hqsun1.us.oracle.com (Oracle 1.12/37.7)
id AA06791; Mon, 25 Jan 93 12:40:27 PST
Message-Id: <9301252040.AA06791@hqsun1.us.oracle.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 12:40:27 PST
From: Pamela Mabon
To: unixsrv
Subject: Sequent admin change
Status: RO
Provided there is no occurance of death or insanity in the group this should
be the definitive list of Sequent Administration for a while:
hqseq, olsseq, wrseq, dvlseq, usoseq -- Gayle Woodhouse
ap1seq, ap2seq, appseq, ap4seq, misseq1, helpseq -- Don Beusee
dmdseq, ouseq -- Michael Glass
cvcseq, supseq, supseq2, mailseq -- Ken Geiselhart
wrseq3 -- Thanh Nguyen
Please remember that this is only a list of these people's Sequent systems.
It does not include any other duties or systems that they are also responsible
for.
Pam
<< end of quoted email >>
page 04
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
And here is my response. It was well-thought-out, detailed,
scrupulously honest, and straight to the point.
It got me fired - ostensibly, for unproductivity.
<< start of quoted email >>
From rchilder Tue Feb 9 16:36:35 1993
Received: by hqsun1.us.oracle.com (Oracle 1.12/37.7)
id AA28620; Tue, 9 Feb 93 16:36:29 PST
Message-Id: <9302100036.AA28620@hqsun1.us.oracle.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 16:36:29 PST
From: Richard Childers
To: arabkin, bcoe, bdemchic, dbeusee, dflexo, gwoodhou, jhanley, kgeiselh,
mglass, myearlin, ppai, pwaleski, pwilmot, rchilder, rrivera, scaughey,
tlnguyen
Subject: Gossip vs Fact
Status: RO
"Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 12:40:27 PST
From: Pamela Mabon
To: unixsrv
Subject: Sequent admin change
"Provided there is no occurance of death or insanity in the group ..."
While this is rather amusing, it also comes across as a bit unprofessional,
and leaves a bad impression.
I suppose it is equally unprofessional to attempt to correct the record,
but it is my responsibility to set the record straight ... as well as my
right. Normally I'd address these comments to Pam alone, but since she
saw fit to direct her words to unixsrv at large, I will do the same.
Everyone has heard all the rumors. Even I've heard a few of them. It's time
you heard the truth, at least as much of it as is available at this time.
-=*=-
Someone said I was harrassing them in October. HR looked into it and said
it was not harrassment, it was a personal conflict.
Unsatisfied with this, my accuser apparently went about telling as many
people as they could, that they had been or were being harrassed by me. The
exact sequence of events has not been determined, but the result was all
too tangible. A lot of people became aware of the accusations, and a lot
of them concluded that there must be a kernel of truth to the accusations.
page 05
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Human Resources either was unable to stop this, or did not believe it was
happening, or assumed that I deserved it because, like everyone else, they
found it simplest to believe that there must be a kernel of truth to the
accusations. The end result was what I regarded as an unacceptable level
of service on the part of Human Resources ... and I said so, many times.
During the next three months I first requested, then demanded, that Human
Resources examine my logs of outgoing email - by which mechanism I assume
complete responsibility for my words - and provide a written conclusion to
the charges - a basically thankless and time-intensive task that no one
had or has any taste for carrying out. Human Resources refused, even after
I escalated my demands to the email of PWILSON and ATOTTLE. ( HR's and my
VPs, respectively. )
Nobody - with the exception of Human Resources - has had any trouble seeing
why a written statement was mandatory. Silicon Valley is a very small world,
well networked together, and word travels rapidly. When - not if, but when -
this was next raised as a topic, whether here or at another company, it was
absolutely necessary that I have something to exonerate me of future efforts
to associate me with criminal behavior. Once I had left Oracle - something
I am not eager to do, surrounded, as I am, by many intelligent and thoughtful
people - I would have never been able to clear this up. Thus, it had to be
cleared up here and now.
Had this been an accusation of a stolen piece of hardware, this would have
been handled quite differently. However, the accusation of 'harrassment'
seems to bring out the worst and most prejudicial behavior in everyone,
and so I was presumed guilty until proven innocent ... treated accordingly
by HR and many of my coworkers ... and denied the opportunity to prove that
I was not guilty of any of this person's charges.
The consequences were predictable.
-=*=-
In early January I told them that between my accuser's systematic efforts
to hurt my reputation, and HR's refusal to provide me with documentation
I could use, were this ever to arise again as an accusation - they didn't
leave me a whole lot in the way of options ... other than suicide. I was
quite serious. That things should have ever reached such a point reflects
far more poorly upon Human Resources, than it does upon me, an employee of
Oracle. I believe that they are gradually coming to realize this.
Their response was to have me take off two weeks, with pay, and to ask me
to see a doctor and get certified as stable - which I did, without problems.
( The two weeks were fortunate, in that they allowed me to achieve a degree
of calm that proved to be invaluable when dealing with my father's demise,
so that it all worked out for the best. )
page 06
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
-=*=-
This may be an unacceptable way to communicate with Human Resources, but the
truth was all that I had left. I wasn't planning on anything so drastic,
but the massively unfair way I had been mistreated and under-represented
needed to be seen for what it was ... a failure on the part of the Human
Resources people to fulfill their responsibility to both parties in this
matter, and a threat, if not an all-out attack, upon both my self-respect,
and my physical wellbeing ( since the stress of being made into a pariah
in one's own department is _not_ trivial ).
As far as I am concerned, such a statement should never have been necessary
on my part, for the situation should never have been allowed to arise. But
it did, and the most responsible thing to do was to call it for what it was.
Some people may call this irresponsible behavior, or describe it as unstable.
This may be true, but I felt that I had a responsibility to my peer employees
to see this state of affairs identified and corrected, before someone else
suffered this sort of abuse at the hands of HR, and _did_ injure themselves.
If I did not do so now, someone else would have had to do so later, perhaps
after someone else had been hurt ... when it was too late.
-=*=-
So, why am I telling everyone all of this ?
A couple of very good reasons.
(1) Harrassment _does_ occur ... and it takes many faces.
We all need to police our own ranks, to keep this
from happening again. It has cost the company, as well
as the department and many people within it, much, in
time, money, and energy - which no one has to waste.
My keeping this particular piece of dirty laundry out
of everyone's sight only guarantees it happening again.
(2) Abuses of legal rights and human rights _do_ occur,
also ... and if you don't defend yourself vigorously
against such excesses, no one else will do so for you,
or at least no one will be able to do it as well as
you can do for yourself. Don't make the assumption
that Human Resources departments are not subject to
errors - they are painfully imperfect. )-:
(3) Working in an environment poisoned by accusations and
mistrust as no less toxic than working on a Superfund
site, and, although the consequences upon one's health
are nowhere near as detectable, they can still have a
very debilitating effect upon one, such that we stand
to all gain by trying to avoid making jokes about other
people's health - mental or otherwise. We work in a
very stressful field, and should treat each other with
a little more tolerance and forbearance, IMHO.
page 07
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
(4) Nobody has done anything which calls for discussions
of either harrassment or insanity or death, in any
manner whatsoever, humorous or otherwise. Especially
in email, addressed to a large group of people.
Now, can we return back to work and cease repeating unfounded stories and
engaging in unsubstantiated insinuations ?
I apologize for bothering those few of us whom hadn't the slightest idea
what this is all about, but I don't expect I'll have to do it again. I
shouldn't have had to do this in the first place.
-- richard
=====
-- richard childers rchilder@us.oracle.com 1 415 506 2411
oracle data center -- unix systems & network administration
... whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
<< end of quoted email >>
... and this is the story which I intend to tell to you.
page 08
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 09
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.01 Personal Background
Here, I'd like to provide a thumbnail sketch of exactly who I am.
I was born in March of 1962, in Tucson, Arizona, and moved to San
Francisco, with the rest of my family, when I was 10.
San Francisco was the birthplace of my stepfather, an astronomer.
I have been a member of a family, by the way, where both parents
worked, since my father divorced my mother, back in the early 60s.
I have been recycling cans, aluminum, and paper, since perhaps 1980,
more or less ... although I have probably been peripherally involved
in recycling since the late 1960s.
I have been donating whole blood since I was 18 years old, five
times a year ... and I have been an apheresis donor for several
years, also, having donated platelets to perhaps a hundred people
- a few of them children - whom were undergoing surgery.
( Apheresis is a process where a needle is inserted into one's arm,
and 4000 to 5000 milliliters of blood are slowly drawn out ...
centrifuged ... and returned, minus platelets or other specialized
blood cells, via another needle, inserted into the other arm. It
takes about two hours per sesssion ... and it hurts. )
As a result of watching my mother manage a household and raise three
boys while working full time, as a single mother in the 1960s, I am
also keenly aware of the inequality in status nd pay that competent
women receive in the workplace, even today.
-=8=-
Growing up in San Francisco, I naturally attended San Francisco's
fine public school system. Within less than year of moving here, I
was offered the opportunity to skip a grade, which I took ( it was,
in retrospect, not a wise move, as it put me out of sync with my
peer group and made me a target of hostility by those less inclined
towards literacy, and eventually resulted in my repeating a grade ).
In high school, I was not satisfied, and took the California High
School Proficiency Examination, determined my competency, and dropped
out, to attend City College of San Francisco.
Over the next few years, I worked odd jobs and went to a few junior
colleges, here in San Francisco and up in Sacramento, ending up as
a bicycle messenger in the San Francisco Financial District, while I
looked for jobs where my ( self-taught ) computer and programming
skills could be put to use.
page 10
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
At the same time, I met and began going with a woman of about my age,
a relationship which became permanent, resulted in us sharing a home
for nearly ten years, and ending only recently, when she became cli-
-nically diagnosed as borderline psychotic. ( A separate story. )
Over ths same ten years, I began a career in the computer industry,
as occasional programmer and full-time Unix systems administrator,
network administrator, and general-purpose systems analyst, as well
as trouble-shooter. This is a role I continue to occupy today - and
it is in those last two capacities, that I write this document.
Let's touch, lightly, upon my professional career, to demonstrate
that I am who I say I am, and do what I say I do.
page 11
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.02 Professional Background last updated 940612
Here, I'd like to provide a thumbnail sketch of exactly how I
came to be an employee of the Oracle Corporation, with an office,
a pager, a workstation, a terminal, voicemail, and all the other
detritus of modern responsibility.
As noted in section 1.01, "Personal Background", I acquired a
taste for working with computers in junior high school. That's
probably a good place to start.
In the San Francisco Unified School District, in the mid-1970s,
there weren't a whole lot of computers. There was exactly one.
It was a Hewlett Packard 2000, a multiport, multiuser system
that allowed users to create, modify and run programs written
in HP's Advanced BASIC programming language.
This HP provided a platform for a program which drilled students
in remedial mathematics. Math lab aides, such as myself, would
see to it that the phone numbers were dialled, the modems placed
in their 300-baud cradles, the terminals logged in and the BASIC
program loaded and running on each terminal, before classes began
in the morning ( sneaking in a game of TREK73 beforehand if the
timing allowed it :-).
This HP was available on the weekends, also, although, as it was
sited in the Bayview / Hunter's Point area of San Francisco, this
was a major undertaking, transit-wise, as well as a threat to one's
physical wellbeing. ( Insofar as the satellite classrooms were not
open, on weekends, one had to either have one's own modem and data
terminal - an impossible luxury in those days - or one had to be
physically adjacent to the physical computer, so that one could use
its physical ports and the attached terminals.
This led, eventually, to buying a CP/M computer, and learning both
Pascal, and Z80 assembler language, as well as structured methods
of programming ... which led into systems modelling and analysis.
During the day, I was a bicycle messenger, but on the weekends I
was a true-blue hacker ... like many of my peers, whom at this stage
of their existence pumped gas and otherwise earned their livings in
more traditional fashions.
For almost a year, I designed fonts and logos for a small engraving
firm, but that ended when they laid off their art department ( just
days before Christmas ), and I returned to being a messenger in the
San Francisco Financial District - but continued looking for an entry
into the professional computing world.
By this time, I had the unthinkable luxury of a home computer, and
a modem, and used BBSes to network. I had an account on the Well,
read net.jobs, and posted my resume. This led to being invited to
page 12
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
interview at a GE subsidiary, where the business was making CAD/CAM
design workstations, and a small department, assigned with the
responsibility of evaluating these new-fangled workstations and
various two- and three-dimensional graphics libraries, needed to
hire someone to manage these systems, back them up, keep them up
and running, liason with support organizations, install ethernet,
relocate workstations, diagnose problems ... I was young, I taught
myself, and my salary needs were very modest. I got the job.
Reaching this job was quite a challenge. I generally arose at 0400,
to catch a bus and get downtown by 0500, to catch the first BART
train across the Bay, to Oakland. There, I would switch to another
BART train going south, to Fremont, and ride all the way to the end
of the line. I would catch a local bus that covered the final 20
miles between Fremont and Milpitas, and get off in "downtown"
Milpitas. From there, I walked across the freeway now known as 880,
via the 237 overpass, and followed the frontage road for about a
mile or so more, alongside corn fields and greenhouses, to where
the industrial park, and my job, were located. In the evening, it
was exactly the reverse ...
Eventually, GE Calma had a layoff, and relocated the Advanced Work-
-stations Group, and all of their platforms and networks, down south
to San Diego. I used this opportunity to learn a lot about taking
apart, documenting, and reassembling systems in flux - then, moved
to another, similar position, at another company.
This was Quintus Computer Systems - a position that did not last,
due to various internal politics surrounding the loss of a previous
systems administrator, and the lack of challenge provided by a small
and undemanding network of workstations.
My next position was as the first full-time Unix systems adminis-
-trator at Network Equipment Technologies, where I :
- participated in planning, cabling, bringing online,
and documenting, several buildings ;
- was singularly responsible for the installation and
administration of over a dozen Sun 3/180 and 3/280
servers, and perhaps 200 to 300 Sun 3/50 and 3/60
workstations ;
- and supported the development and operation of NET's
Technical Assistance Center (TAC) bug-tracking database,
under Oracle v4.
Singlehandedly, I was primary support to the entire corporation, with
nary a complaint about slow response or problems being forgotten ...
and it is my understanding that I left a gap that required some three
to five administrators to fill.
page 13
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Leaving NET, I next went across 101, to Ampex, and supported the
entire R&D building - staying until a change in immediate management,
combined with a very large earthquake, convinced me that my talents
were better appreciated elsewhere.
This led to consulting for Cirrus Logic, for perhaps six months, as
well as contracting with the Veterans' Administration Hospital, in
San Francisco ( through the Bay Medical Foundation ), to provide the
administration and support for research and development in the San
Francisco VAMC's Department of Radiology, as well as, later, the VAMC
Department of Immunochemistry.
These contracts turned into permanent part-time positions, but were
insufficient to meet my fiscal responsibilities, so I ended up down
in Silicon Valley, contracting full-time through Oxford & Associates,
for a few months - and this, along with some major personal problems
involving the growing psychosis of my, then, girlfriend and fiancee,
led to me becoming, again, unemployed.
Which brings us, now, to my application for employment, with the
Oracle Corporation, of Redwood Shores, California.
page 14
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 15
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.03 Employment At Oracle
It was at this point, looking for work, that I applied with the
Oracle Corporation.
Previously, I had looked with disdain upon database companies, as
databases tend to be monolithic pieces of software which monopolize
all of the resources of the computer, to the detriment of all of
the other system processes, causing the phone of the systems admin-
-istrator to ring with shrill demands that they do something to make
the system faster - a thankless task, in any case, but when there
is a database involved, damned well impossible. ( In no small way,
much of this opinion had been acquired at NET, where - while the
Oracle consultants I worked with were highly competent, extremely
intelligent, quite creative, and very motivated - the database's
engine was a constant source of pain to me, professionally. )
However, my experience at other companies - the essentially bland
reality of nothing but Sun computers wherever one looked - had made
me aware that software companies are to be valued, insofar as they,
by necessity, must maintain a large population of diverse platforms
upon which to develop, test and support their software(s) ... and
that such environments demanded and valued people, whom demanded and
valued diversity in their administrative environments. After all,
it's not hard to manage a homogenous population of computers, each
one the same ... it is when the population becomes diverse, even
complex, that the interrelationships become less predictable, and
the need for detailed analysis, insight, even intuition become, not
"wasting time", but an appreciated - and, increasingly, rewarded -
set of skills.
Additionally, I valued the customer-driven perspective, finding in
it a new way to structure organizations and motivate individuals,
and having an active appreciation for the value it added to what was
all too often a confrontational relationship between a customer and
a member of a technical support group, within the corporations which
I worked.
I also felt that modern computing issues, as well as modern computing
problems, faced by modern data center staff, were multidisciplinary in
nature, and required a multidisciplinary approach in order to resolve
to the satisfaction of all concerned. I had, in fact, educated myself
myself in precisely this direction, for precisely this reason - it was
a prerequisite to good problem-solving, that one be able to understand
and discuss issues as diverse as bus timing, protocol conversion, the
different layers involved in a network transaction, and the electronic
characteristics of a piece of coaxial cable. ( For example. )
Relating these perspectives to my interviewers at Oracle, I found they
were appreciated, and understood, and shared - and my manager-to-be and
the Data Center's director, walked the requisition all the way to the
CEO, Larry Ellison ... and I was hired, despite the fact that there was
a hiring freeze at the time.
page 16
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
This is neatly documented, in the following series of electronic mails
between myself and my manager-to-be.
Essentially, I had applied at Oracle ... been accepted ... and the
requisition needed to be approved by Oracle's CEO, Larry Ellison.
In the meantime, being a realist, I had continued interviewing for
contracts and permanent positions, and had been made an offer by a
contract agency in San Jose, for an attractive rate. This provoked
me to explain the developing situation to my manager-to-be, in the
hopes that Oracle might be able to expedite their paperwork.
<< start of quoted email >>
From pmcelroy@us.oracle.com Fri Jul 19 01:11:22 1991
Received: by vixie.sf.ca.us; id AA22886; Fri, 19 Jul 91 01:11:19 -0700
Received: from hqsun1.us.oracle.com by gatekeeper.oracle.com (5.59.10/37.6)
id AA06467; Fri, 19 Jul 91 01:11:09 PDT
Received: by hqsun1.us.oracle.com (5.59.9/37.6)
id AB11307; Fri, 19 Jul 91 01:11:07 PDT
Message-Id: <9107190811.AB11307@hqsun1.us.oracle.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 01:11:07 PDT
From: Patricia H. McElroy
To: childers
Subject: Re: HR detritus
Status: O
Well, I know that the letter is up in LJE's office, cause Steve carried it
up there today(Thursday). Hopefully, you can hold off until about 2pm
on Friday. I will be at a dentist appointment in the morning, so I won't
be able to check on it until noon.
Pat
-=8=-
From pmcelroy@us.oracle.com Sat Jul 20 00:14:16 1991
Received: by vixie.sf.ca.us; id AA26945; Sat, 20 Jul 91 00:13:57 -0700
Received: from hqsun1.us.oracle.com by gatekeeper.oracle.com (5.59.10/37.6)
id AA25785; Sat, 20 Jul 91 00:13:53 PDT
Received: by hqsun1.us.oracle.com (5.59.9/37.6)
id AA19057; Sat, 20 Jul 91 00:13:50 PDT
Message-Id: <9107200713.AA19057@hqsun1.us.oracle.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 91 00:13:50 PDT
From: Patricia H. McElroy
To: childers
Subject: Re: HR detritus
Status: O
The offer letter has been signed by Larry Ellison as of 6:30pm this
evening. I just got home and heard my voice mail informing me of this.
I hope you will accept our offer of employment.
page 17
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
BTW, this offer letter was turned around within a week... pretty good for
a fairly large corporation, considering all the approvals that it had to
get.
The offer letter set a start date of 7/22. Please give me a call
at 408-244-9069 when you see this note..... I am generally up until
about 1am and on Saturday should be up by 9am.
Pat
-=8=-
>From childers Sun Jul 21 15:25:57 1991
Received: by vixie.sf.ca.us; id AA05580; Sun, 21 Jul 91 15:25:46 -0700
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 15:25:46 -0700
From: childers (Richard A. Childers)
Message-Id: <9107212225.AA05580@vixie.sf.ca.us>
To: childers@us.oracle.com, pmcelroy@us.oracle.com
Subject: Re: HR detritus
Cc: childers
Status: RO
I accept Oracle's offer, and am prepared to start 22 July 1991.
I'll call to confirm this with you, this afternoon or evening.
I appreciate the many layers of bureaucracy that have been dealt with,
and the effort implied ... and am most grateful to you, Pat, for your
efforts to facilitate things.
You don't seem to have an answering machine switched on, so I'll try
until I contact you or it's too late to call. Feel free to page me at
(415) 978-4463, also, if you read this before I reach you, and we can
complete arrangements for tomorrow - when and where to report.
-- richard
<< end of quoted email >>
Perhaps the fact that my brother was already an employee at Oracle
was helpful - we both have a track record for creativity, initiative
and innovation, in our separate but proximate specialities - and my
resume reflected this.
He'd been at Oracle for several years - and this will later prove
to be relevant to this story.
And that's how I became an employee of the Oracle Corporation.
page 18
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 19
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.04 Email At Oracle
Electronic mail - or "email", as it is known to the computer
subculture - is a means by which two people, separated by an
intervening period of space or time, may remain synchronized,
in their policies, as well as their actions.
Email may be used, that is, not just to synchronize separate
groups of people working towards a common goal, in diversely
located sites ... but also to synchronize separate groups of
people, separated by time ... such as people on the other side
of the planet, or people whom are only available during swing
or graveyard shifts.
Email can therefore be seen to be an ideal interpersonal
communications medium between two or more people, groups, or
departments, and is well suited for corporate needs.
-=8=-
Oracle, like most corporations, relies heavily upon computers
and state-of-the-art networking technology, to coordinate the
affairs of what is a farflung empire.
However, Oracle is somewhat different from the average large
corporation, in several respects.
(1) Oracle is a software company. Software companies make
heavy use of computers, implicitly - which not only
populates the work environment with PCs, servers and
workstations, but also with a large number of people
whose very subculture incorporates not just daily,
but hourly, regular use of electronic mail, for both
business and pleasure.
(2) One of Oracle's own products, layered atop their own
Oracle database, is their electronic mail product -
Oracle*Mail (tm) - making them not just a consumer of
electronic mail software, but also a producer of it.
(3) Oracle's use of electronic mail defies behavior I have
seen at any other software evidence. Specifically, I
have worked for many employers in Silicon Valley, all
of whom used electronic mail, and I have never seen a
population which exhaustively attached, without any
sort of summarization, previous emails pertinent to the
topic under discussion.
page 20
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
-=8=-
This deserves a little more detail. Allow me to describe
what I mean. Person A sends mail to B and C on Subject.
B responds, quoting A's original mail in its entirety,
and sends a copy to C, also. C responds, perceiving an
arguement brewing between A and B, and, quoting the
whole sequence of emails exchanged to date, replies to
both A and B, attempting to smooth the troubled waters.
A, whom is unsatisfied, escalates the matter to manager
D - attaching, of course, the entire exchange between
A, B, and C to document who said what to whom, when, in
what order, in response to what.
I believe the reason for this can be summarized in just
a single word.
Accountability.
Perhaps "blame" might be more accurate, insofar as the
Oracle Corporation, given its vast revenues and incomes
that accrue to managers and software engineers - not to
mention bonuses and stock options - is highly politicized.
This approach to email seems to have percolated through-
-out the Oracle corporation ... whether top to bottom,
or vice versa, I do not know, but this theme was common
to almost all email I saw at Oracle.
-=8=-
These three facts :
(1) the overwhelming dominance of a computer subculture in the
makeup of the Oracle Corporation's employee population ;
(2) the fact that Oracle, itself, is a manufacturer of elec-
-tronic mail software, and is presumably well positioned
to analyze the human and technological dynamics of email
in a corporate environment ; and
(3) the peculiar flavor introduced by Oracle's own subculture
of electronic mail utilization ;
... all of these would tend to suggest that Oracle, if any of
the Silicon Valley employers, would have an enlightened or at
least educated perspective towards electronic mail.
Although there are indications that this is true - Oracle has a
wide variety of internal mailing lists discussing a plethora of
topics, up to and including the Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual List,
page 21
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
but addressing sports and myriad other personal interests, as
well - there are also strong indications that no actual policy
exists that attempts to address the issues raised by electronic
mail in a corporate environment, staffed by human beings - and
that this lack of a specific policy has provided a means by which
people whom have done nothing wrong, but whom have displeased
their managers, may be terminated, for unchallengable reasons.
( It is interesting, in this juncture of topics, to note that one
of the things which the Oracle Corporation accused Adelyn Lee
of, after she filed her false termination suit against Oracle,
was forging electronic mail. )
This background having been provided, let us move forward in
this tragic tale, and proceed to some actual events.
page 22
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 23
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.05 Email With BGUALA@US.ORACLE.COM
As an employee of the Oracle Corporation, I had full access to
the entire range of electronic information resources - email,
netnews, topical digests pertinent to my responsibilities, as
well as topical digests related to personal interests - and I
participated in all of this.
Examples of topical digests pertinent to my responsibilities
would have to include :
- the Firewalls Digest, which addresses the issues
related to configuration and maintenance of Internet
gateways - which protocols to forward, which to reject,
which networking events should be logged, latest tricks
of the trade, et caetera ;
- comp.database.oracle, an Internet newsgroup devoted to
discussion of Oracle's products, problems, and fixes ;
- comp.systems.sun, an Internet newsgroup devoted to the
support and repair of Sun workstations and problems with
the various operating system releases ;
- et caetera.
Examples of topical digests pertinent to my personal interests
would probably include :
- the Home Brew Digest, which addresses the wide range of
recreational beverages creatable in the kitchen by the
judicious application of selected yeasts, fermentables,
and various flavoring adjuncts ;
- UUS-L, the Unitarian-Universalist mailing list which I
shared responsibility for, diagnosed problems of, and
otherwise maintained, as a public service ;
- et caetera.
Email included a constant stream of exchanges between people in and
out of Oracle, discussing both work-specific, and totally unrelated,
topics ... much as, when one encounters others in halls and on the
company's elevators, one's conversation might be related to topics
work-specific .... or perhaps not.
Amongst those whom I exchanged email with, were coworkers, and our
topics ranged, just as they did in other common media. Plans for
the weekend, favorite recipes, getting to know one another ... the
usual range expected within a diverse population of human beings.
One of these coworkers was a woman named Betsy Guala.
page 24
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Betsy loaded tape drives. I first met her when she was coming off
of the graveyard shift. We never really traded words, but our eyes
met, more often than one might expect, were it by chance ...
Over the months, as I gradually came to know Betsy as a coworker, I
occasionally addressed casual email to her, directly, and she always
replied, in kind. A comfortable space evolved, and we talked more of
ourselves as people outside of work, with interests, enthusiasms,
plans for the future.
page 25
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.06 "Breakfast ?"
One day, I asked Betsy if she would like to meet for breakfast,
one of these weekends, at a favorite cafe of mine, in the Mission
district of San Francisco.
This was not a casual choice. Not only was it a favorite cafe of
mine, a gathering place for bohemians of all stripes, a watering
hole of mine for nearly a decade ... but this was also convenient
to Betsy, as it was in her neighborhood, according to those of
her peers, there at work, whom were our common acquaintances.
She replied, rather curtly, saying "no". But, then, a few days
later, she suggested an alternative ... that we meet down in the
corporate cafeteria, in the entrance hall of 400 Oracle Parkway,
for breakfast, instead.
At first, I agreed. But, upon reflection, I changed my mind. It
was, I felt, an alternative that reflected fear of me, distrust
of my motives ... and it did not bode well for the relationship
that I had hoped, perhaps, might evolve between us. So I emailed
Becky a polite reversal of my earlier decision. She got angry.
-=8=-
Over the months that followed, I continued to occasionally address
email to her, or forward articles I thought she might be interested
in. The most controversial of these was probably an article which I
sent her, in August, which announced a seminar, to be held at San
Francisco State University ( which, I understood, she was a student
of ), addressing career choices for women in the 21st century ...
which I thought she might be interested in attending.
So it was quite a surprise, to be accused, in October, of sexual
harrassment ... by both Becky and her manager.
This is a tale in itself.
page 26
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 27
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.07 The Birthday Party
It was a tradition in the Oracle Data Center to have a monthly
gathering of the employees of the Data Center, to celebrate
those employees' birthdays which had occurred, or would occur,
during the month.
The Help Desk was the logical gathering place for this kind of
activity, as it was the only place on the floor where there
was enough standing space, and enough table space upon which
to spread out edibles, drinks and the like.
My office was direcly opposite the Help Desk - a location which,
along with the combination of my open-door policy, led to my
becoming the target of almost every problem that the Help Desk
staffers could not solve individually.
This also placed me in an excellent position to see the people
gathering, and to send out the alert to everyone, via email, to
come and have a piece of cake - a duty I happily fulfilled, as
needed.
-=8=-
So it was with some interest that I watched the Help Desk and
Operations groups gather, behind the Help Desk barrier, with
party materials and a cake, a few of them glancing guiltily in
my direction - apologetically, perhaps.
It seemed that they were having a birthday party separate from
everyone else. It was clear that only Help Desk and Operations
were invited ... and if my observations were not clear enough,
I watched several Data Center employees get turned away from the
gathering.
It seems - I gradually gathered - that someone had placed the
monies for the monthly departmental birthday cake, in the hands
of Betsy's manager ... and she had chosen to purchase a cake and
to celebrate Betsy's party, only, and to exclude all whom were
not immediate coworkers of Betsy.
I did not think this was a well-thought-out expenditure of the
department's funds. And I also thought that this act alienated,
rather than unified, the Data Center's separate groups. And I
felt kind of left out, myself.
I communicated all of this in a terse two-sentence email, which
I directed to Betsy, and the managers of Operations and the Help
Desk.
page 28
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 29
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.08 The Accusation
The next afternoon, the manager of Operations, Lisa Cussary,
came into my office, accusing me of harrassing her subordinate,
Betsy Guala, via email, and demanding that it stop.
I asked her to clarify her accusation, and, when we got to
the specifics, she had none. I invited her to examine the
record, insofar as all of my electronic mail was logged to
a spool in my home directory ... my home directory was
backed up to tape, every night, by her Operations staff ...
and the same Operations staff shipped these resulting tapes
offsite, where I could hardly modify them to reflect the
interpretation I wished her to take.
I was quite upset at her accusation. Embarrassed, as well
as furiously angry. Tears came out of my eyes as I tried to
convince her that she was in error.
She left my office not quite as confident as she had been,
when she arrived.
With good reason, in retrospect. Now that I have had a chance
to study California's Department of Fair Employment & Housing
regulations, I can suggest that she was in violation of quite
a few of them. Specifically :
- 7286.3, where general policy for the state of California in
matters of discrimination is declared ;
- 7287.6(b)(1)(A), where verbal harrassment, epithets, derogatory
comments are discriminatory behavior ;
- 7287.6(b)(2), where harrassment by an employer or agent thereof
is declared to be discriminatory action ;
- 7287.6(b)(3), where agents of an employer who know that such
harrassment is occurring, are bound to stop it - and I had :
- been accused, and
- found guilty, already, and
- was being treated as if, and
- explicitly called a,
... "sexual harrasser", by Lisa Cussary ;
- 7287.7, where aiding & abetting is mentioned, and :
- insofar as she had already assumed my guilt, and
- she had taken sides and
- was actually aiding Betsy in harrassing me ;
- 7290.6(b), where the public policy regarding sexual
discrimination is declared, as well as
page 30
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
- 7290.7(b), where "sexual stereotyping" is defined ;
- 7291.1(f)(1), where "sexual harrassment" is properly defined ;
- 7292.1, where public policy regarding the discrimination against
people, based upon their marital status, is first declared ; and
- 8107(a), the mandatory clause in all State of California contracts,
which mandates compliance with non-discrimination laws in the state
of California, by employers, on the pain of loss of their "approved
contractor" status for the offending employer.
( Alas, I did not realize all this, for many, many months. )
-=8=-
Over the weekend, I realized that a more tangible, specific
response was called for, in writing ... and I wrote it, and
emailed it to her.
( I subsequently provided Human Resources with a copy of this
same email, insofar as it represented an attempt to provide
a consistent, detailed, and tangible response to what were
nothing less than accusations of criminal behavior. )
Here is what I said.
page 31
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.09 A Response - In Writing
Below is the letter I sent the manager in question - which,
for some reason, she never replied to.
[ Written and emailed Sunday, 25 October 1992 ]
<< start of quoted email >>
Lisa --
( It's my hope that you will see fit to inform everyone you have spoken to
about this issue, starting with Betsy and working upwards, that you have
leapt to an unwarranted conclusion, as documented below. I have not sent
this email to anyone but you, at this point it time.
In addition, I wish to call to your attention that replying to this has
consumed several hours of several days which would otherwise have been
spent much more productively, studying and working, and that if I were to
turn these hours into the equivalent money I'm paid per hour to think, it
would evaluate to wasting a few hundred dollars of my time. I'm not count-
-ing nights spent staring at the ceiling, just work and study time, like
right now. Believe me, I have a lot of things to do during the weekends,
both work- and play-related. )
Originally, I thought this would just kind of be forgotten ... but, between
some subtle questioning from Scott, and my own growing awareness that this
needs to be nipped in the bud, I feel that a detailed reply to accusations
that I've treated Betsy in a less than professional fashion, is mandatory,
as otherwise, people might misunderstand the absence of a reply to indicate
the truth of the charges.
There is also the inevitability of this being raised in the future, and if
I were to have failed to reply to such charges now, it would be much harder
to provide answers _then_.
The nature of such charges, I would like to note, makes it very difficult
for those making the charges to admit that they may have overreacted, and I
hope that, as a result of this, you will be slower to entertain such ideas,
at least, until you have made a serious effort to acquaint yourself with
both sides of the issue.
When you came into my office, it sort of sounded like you'd already taken
sides ...
"This is the 90s ( such things aren't acceptable ) ..."
"This can get a lot uglier ..."
"I know about your asking other women for dates ..."
page 32
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
... which, I understand, suggest an effort to smooth over problems before
they get any larger, but also, to my ear, suggest a degree of bias, even
identification with one of the parties involved. I would like to call this
to your attention, so that in future circumstances you are aware of this.
Additionally, your words contaiend a built-in assumption that I would not
be entirely innocent of such behavior, would know what you were referring
to, and would naturally be defensive, for lack of any proof that I was not
engaging in harrassment. On the contrary, such evidence abounds. Not all men
are uncivilized, and, all feminist theories aside, I regard men and women
as equal partners in creating and maintaining civilization, and can prove it,
with material evidence, records, and character witnesses. ( That I should
have to do such a thing is, I wish to note, deeply offensive. )
My understanding of reality is such that I would regard a person who voiced
accusations of harrassment, falsely, as just as serious a problem as any
person whom _practiced_ harrassment. Words like 'slander' come to mind, as
well, although - as several of the people in the Data Center know, among
them Steve Zoppi and Pat Mcelroy - I much prefer to deal with problems as
directly as possible, and have no affection for legal confrontations. It is
my hope that you will also entertain _this_ concern.
In a finite universe of human beings - and their relationships - I assure
you that, along with abusive and harrassing men, there are men whom are
not abusive, or harrassing, and whom are very sensitive to the issues. I
regard myself as one of these, and can prove it, meeting standards imposed
by any arbitrator ... up to and including polygraph testing.
In a finite universe of human beings - and their relationships - I assure
you that, along with abusive and harrassing men, there are also abusive
and harrassing women ... and that you might take this into account. It is
no doubt very gratifying for a woman to merely say she is being harrassed,
and receive all the respect and attention she feels she deserves, and for
that reason I have to note that it is a source of problems, as well as a
source of solutions, in those cases where abuse is genuinely occurring.
There are also many psychological dysfunctions which might explain this,
most of which are not sufficient reason to disqualify a person as a useful
and productive employee. It is my informed opinion that Betsy is project-
-ing upon me, anger that she feels towards men at large, and this is not
a situation that will be solved so easily, as it is her personal problem.
-=*=-
Simply put, I have been using computers to communicate since the age of 13,
and while I have exchanged email with many different people, I have harrassed
none of them, and no one has ever accused me of such a thing before.
page 33
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
In that almost two decades, I have had my fair share of confrontations with
disagreeable people, and have refined my approach to problem resolution to
a fair degree. This email is an example. I have also met many people through
networking, and have never had any problem distinguishing when someone does
not want to meet me ... although, neither have I ever had any trouble see-
-ing that such people - universally, women - had experienced something that
left them fearful of either men or strangers. I have no problem seeing that
Betsy doesn't want to 'go out' with me, if you consider a civil invitation
to get better acquainted over breakfast some convenient weekend 'going out',
which I don't.
However, Betsy is still a coworker, and someone I care about, to some small
degree, for that reason. Also, she is an intelligent and independent person,
attributes that I respect and admire. I humbly submit that everything I have
said and done in connection with Betsy Guala meet these simple criteria.
As noted in our conversation, I log my outgoing mail. I encourage you to
join me in reviewing everything I have said to Betsy via email - which, if
my unrefreshed memory serves me accurately, include one invitation to meet
for breakfast, one or two followup messages, some discussion about finding
beads and their application to macrame ... and that's about it. You should
also consider restoring my log from previous months to assure yourself that
I have not edited anything.
It is true that Betsy has not replied to many of my emails, but this is not
very definitive. When I asked _you_ if you were interested in going out to that
Lily Tomlin movie, at the Castro, you replied, pointing out that your husband
would probably object. I apologized that I had not noticed your wedding ring,
and we continued on our separate ways. If you had not replied, I might have
asked again ... or noticed your wedding ring, and caught on. If this is what
is called 'harrassment', then virtually anything that one party dislikes or
cannot cope with in a straightforward manner without projecting negative
behavior upon the other party, can be called 'harrassment'.
I encourage you to sharpen your - and Betsy's - understanding of 'harrassment'
by reviewing everything I have said to her in email, and if she has been so
mistaken as to assert that I am harrassing her verbally, by having me undergo
polygraph testing. ( I don't think I've said much of _anything_ to her, in a
year of coworking. I've talked more with visiting field engineers. :-)
Quite simply, I determined about a decade ago that to lie was to invite such
deceit to be used against oneself, whereas to tell the truth was a very good
way of conducting business - and I have always sought to avoid manipulation of
the facts, distortions of the truth, or any other corruptive behaviors. The
past ten years have established to my satisfaction that, by having nothing to
hide, I cannot be lied about, not forced into a defensive posture by others,
whom assume that because _they_ have things to hide, that _everyone_ must. I
have never harrassed Betsy, knowingly or otherwise. I _have_ sought to know
her better, as a coworker whom I would like to like, and as someone whom seems
to be rather estranged, if not alienated, perhaps even victimized.
If caring is a criminal offense, then this world is in very sad shape.
page 34
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
-=*=-
What sort of evidence might I be referring to ?
Well, first off, I was raised by my mom, primarily, my dad having left her
when I was three, for a departmental secretary. I am intimately acquainted
with the woman's side of things, seriously support equal pay for equal work,
practice equality wherever I go, and can probably cook, wash, iron and scrub
floors with the best of them. ( Who do you think keeps the espresso machine
so clean ? )
I am assistant coordinator of a BITNET-based electronic mailing list, UUS-L,
which serves to network Unitarian-Universalists together around the world.
We just recently finished a long exchange on the topic of sexual abuse, and
my comments are available in my outgoing mail spool. It started when I saw
a posting about sexual abuse and harrassment from a woman at Stratus, on the
East Coast, and invited her to bring her discussion to UUS-L, as it involved
a UU minister who was being prosecuted for sexual abuse. It finished when I
posted my own experience - which ended only recently, in the past few weeks -
with my significant other, whom has been diagnosed as psychotic, depressive,
suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder, and a victim of sexual abuse
herself, courtesy of her father ... and whose presence and participation in
codependency clinics does much to lower my respect for codependency theory,
as these groups accept what she says uncritically, indifferent to the fact
that they are dealing with a certified madwoman, so long as what she says
continues to affirm their own collective distrust of men. ( But I digress. )
I exchange email with various women on a regular basis. One such is Brandy
Tuzon, formerly a receptionist at 400 Oracle Parkway. She was kind enough to
email me her new address on CompuServe, as I was one of the few individuals
whom bothered to greet her and wish her a good morning when I saw her, and
we have remained in touch as a result. ( Yes, I asked her out. Dealing with
a madwoman is a lonely business. She has a boyfrind. But we're friends. )
Another is Elaine Richards, booter@autodesk.com. Elaine is a good character
reference, as she used to be my enemy, as a consequence of being married to
someone who forged netnews articles, and whom disliked me for my intolerant
attitude towards forgery. She has since divorced this person, and, although
she was initially afraid to meet me in person, we finally met one afternoon
and talked for a few hours and found that we were pretty similar. I just saw
her last week at the AIDS Memorial grove workday, in Golden Gate Park, which
she posted to the Net, and I'll probably see her at the next workday, also.
( Yup, I asked her out, too. Still do, every once in a while. She never says
'yes', but she does entertain the idea, and we enjoy each other's company. )
When I went up to Portland, last year, for classes at Sequent, I stayed a few
days extra to visit my dad, and also drove up to Seattle to have lunch with
a radical lesbian I'd become acquainted with over the Net. She worked at the
AIDS Public Health study unit, part time, and, after asking if it was OK, I
drove up and we had a pretty congenial lunch just before I flew back. I can
provide you with her email address, and you can ask her yourself if I treated
her with anything less than total respect. ( No, I didn't ask her out. :-)
page 35
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Oh, yes, there's also Kennita Watson. I met Kennita at Quintus Prolog, where
she was their technical writer. We've gone out together once or twice, and
she later worked here at Oracle, until she quit to run for California
Secretary of State, on the Libertarian ticket, I believe. The last time I saw
her was last winter, when I helped her move her stuff from storage, in Santa
Cruz, to her new apartment in East Palo Alto, near University and 101. She's
a good character reference if for no other reason thn because she has known
me for many years, and is herself a diverse person.
Everything I have said so far would tend to suggest that I am a caring, if not
compassionate, person, and I humbly submit that everything I have said and done
in connection with this issue - including calling to your attention the poorly
conceived idea of eliminating the rest of the Data Center from what used to be
a large and public monthly celebration of birthdays, as well as wishing Betsy
herself a happy birthday - supports this one hundred percent.
-=*=-
What more can I say ? It would be nice if you retracted everything you have
said to everyone, so that I didn't have to do so myself ... and contemplated
why this ever happened in the first place, and how it might have been averted.
As far as I'm concerned, this never happened, it was all a foolish mistake on
the part of all concerned. I will obviously be slower to care about coworkers'
personal problems in the future. No doubt, this will make for a tightly-knit
Data Center, if we all sink to the lowest common denominator, as represented
by those members of the staff whom would rather level accusations of harrass-
-ment than communicate with their coworkers on a level of simple sociability.
If these kinds of accusations had been levelled against anyone else, they
might well have been unable to marshall such a carefully delineated reply,
their thinking muddied by the anger and pain that such a charge elicits in
those victimized by it ... and this lack of a response would be easy to lever
into an admission of guilt by biased parties in responsible positions. I now
wonder how many men have been abused in _this_ fashion ...
As my mother would say, "Look at the kettle call the pot black."
'Nuff said.
-- richard
=====
-- richard childers rchilders@us.oracle.com 1 415 506 2411
oracle data center - unix systems & network administration
Klein flask for rent. Inquire within.
<< end of quoted email >>
page 36
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
I think that says it all rather nicely, still, even years later. It not
only summarized the issues, but also neatly identified the dangers, and
the consequences.
Rereading it, even now, it is startling, how precisely I described what
would happen in the months ahead.
For, although that should have brought everything to a screeching halt,
it did not.
page 37
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1.10 Human Resources Steps In
I had sent Lisa Cussary, my accuser's manager, this email, on a
Sunday - the 25th of October, 1992.
Monday, I received an invitation from a person named Michael
( "Mickey" ) Satterwhite, Manager of Human Resources, to drop by
and talk with him for a bit.
( It is interesting, in retrospect, to analyze the timing of this
event.
Insofar as the invitation was issued Monday morning, it occurs
to me that the complaint was probably issued to Human Resources
at the end of the prior week.
If this is so, then it would indicate a degree of bad faith on
the part of the plaintiff, insofar as it would seem to indicate
that a complaint was filed with her manager - and then, before
her manager had time to act to correct or even analyze the prob-
-lem, the plaintiff had gone and filed a separate complaint with
Human Resources. This does not seem to indicate a desire to
find solutions, so much as does a desire to create complaints. )
I did not expect a problem. I felt that I had laid out the facts
with precision, honesty, and deliberation. My facts were easily,
readily corroborated by an independent examination of existing
files, and selected backups.
However, I had prepared the statement I had given to Lisa Cussary
with the understanding that it might, thereafter, necessarily have
to be published or at least shared with other managers ... and so
I printed off several copies of my letter to Lisa Cussary, before
I went to my appointment with Mickey Satterwhite, so provide them
with an identical and consistent statement on the matter at hand.
I took these copies with me when I went to my appointment.
page 38
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 39
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.01 A Chat With Human Resources
Mickey Satterwhite had invited me to meet with him. So it was
a bit of a surprise when I arrived and found that there were,
not one, but two people waiting for me.
One was Mickey Satterwhite. The other was a woman to whom I was
introduced, but whose function, I learned later, was to act as
EEOC representative, to see that regulations were followed and
that criteria were met.
The first thing I said, once I had sat down and introductions
had been made, was that I had a prepared statement, and that I
wished for both of them to read it, so that we would all be in
sync with one another when we began discussing the topic that
confronted us. I handed each of them a copy, kept a third copy
for myself ( I had anticipated up to five people being present -
Mickey Satterwhite, myself and my manager, Scott McMahan, and
Betsy Guala and her manager, Lisa Cussary. ), and we all sat in
silence for a few minutes and read my statement, as presented
previously to Lisa Cussary.
At the end, the woman looked up, waited for Mickey to finish, and
said that she felt it was a personal conflict. We spoke some more,
I tried to communicate my confusion and distress and my genuine
desire to see this corrected, without legal confrontations ... and
parted, with the assumption that this would be cleared up quickly.
I was sorry that it had reached the stage where I had to share my
personal email, to Lisa, with Human Resources - as it reflected poorly
upon her capacities for reasoning and objectivity, both of which are
critical to good management ( in my opinion ).
But I had no choice.
page 40
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 41
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.02 A Response - In Writing
I said to Human Resources, exactly what I had said to Lisa
Cussary ... in writing, hand-delivered. Here it is.
[ Written and emailed Sunday, 25 October 1992 ]
<< start of quoted email >>
Lisa --
( It's my hope that you will see fit to inform everyone you have spoken to
about this issue, starting with Betsy and working upwards, that you have
leapt to an unwarranted conclusion, as documented below. I have not sent
this email to anyone but you, at this point it time.
In addition, I wish to call to your attention that replying to this has
consumed several hours of several days which would otherwise have been
spent much more productively, studying and working, and that if I were to
turn these hours into the equivalent money I'm paid per hour to think, it
would evaluate to wasting a few hundred dollars of my time. I'm not count-
-ing nights spent staring at the ceiling, just work and study time, like
right now. Believe me, I have a lot of things to do during the weekends,
both work- and play-related. )
Originally, I thought this would just kind of be forgotten ... but, between
some subtle questioning from Scott, and my own growing awareness that this
needs to be nipped in the bud, I feel that a detailed reply to accusations
that I've treated Betsy in a less than professional fashion, is mandatory,
as otherwise, people might misunderstand the absence of a reply to indicate
the truth of the charges.
There is also the inevitability of this being raised in the future, and if
I were to have failed to reply to such charges now, it would be much harder
to provide answers _then_.
The nature of such charges, I would like to note, makes it very difficult
for those making the charges to admit that they may have overreacted, and I
hope that, as a result of this, you will be slower to entertain such ideas,
at least, until you have made a serious effort to acquaint yourself with
both sides of the issue.
When you came into my office, it sort of sounded like you'd already taken
sides ...
"This is the 90s ( such things aren't acceptable ) ..."
"This can get a lot uglier ..."
"I know about your asking other women for dates ..."
page 42
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
... which, I understand, suggest an effort to smooth over problems before
they get any larger, but also, to my ear, suggest a degree of bias, even
identification with one of the parties involved. I would like to call this
to your attention, so that in future circumstances you are aware of this.
Additionally, your words contaiend a built-in assumption that I would not
be entirely innocent of such behavior, would know what you were referring
to, and would naturally be defensive, for lack of any proof that I was not
engaging in harrassment. On the contrary, such evidence abounds. Not all men
are uncivilized, and, all feminist theories aside, I regard men and women
as equal partners in creating and maintaining civilization, and can prove it,
with material evidence, records, and character witnesses. ( That I should
have to do such a thing is, I wish to note, deeply offensive. )
My understanding of reality is such that I would regard a person who voiced
accusations of harrassment, falsely, as just as serious a problem as any
person whom _practiced_ harrassment. Words like 'slander' come to mind, as
well, although - as several of the people in the Data Center know, among
them Steve Zoppi and Pat Mcelroy - I much prefer to deal with problems as
directly as possible, and have no affection for legal confrontations. It is
my hope that you will also entertain _this_ concern.
In a finite universe of human beings - and their relationships - I assure
you that, along with abusive and harrassing men, there are men whom are
not abusive, or harrassing, and whom are very sensitive to the issues. I
regard myself as one of these, and can prove it, meeting standards imposed
by any arbitrator ... up to and including polygraph testing.
In a finite universe of human beings - and their relationships - I assure
you that, along with abusive and harrassing men, there are also abusive
and harrassing women ... and that you might take this into account. It is
no doubt very gratifying for a woman to merely say she is being harrassed,
and receive all the respect and attention she feels she deserves, and for
that reason I have to note that it is a source of problems, as well as a
source of solutions, in those cases where abuse is genuinely occurring.
There are also many psychological dysfunctions which might explain this,
most of which are not sufficient reason to disqualify a person as a useful
and productive employee. It is my informed opinion that Betsy is project-
-ing upon me, anger that she feels towards men at large, and this is not
a situation that will be solved so easily, as it is her personal problem.
-=*=-
Simply put, I have been using computers to communicate since the age of 13,
and while I have exchanged email with many different people, I have harrassed
none of them, and no one has ever accused me of such a thing before.
page 43
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
In that almost two decades, I have had my fair share of confrontations with
disagreeable people, and have refined my approach to problem resolution to
a fair degree. This email is an example. I have also met many people through
networking, and have never had any problem distinguishing when someone does
not want to meet me ... although, neither have I ever had any trouble see-
-ing that such people - universally, women - had experienced something that
left them fearful of either men or strangers. I have no problem seeing that
Betsy doesn't want to 'go out' with me, if you consider a civil invitation
to get better acquainted over breakfast some convenient weekend 'going out',
which I don't.
However, Betsy is still a coworker, and someone I care about, to some small
degree, for that reason. Also, she is an intelligent and independent person,
attributes that I respect and admire. I humbly submit that everything I have
said and done in connection with Betsy Guala meet these simple criteria.
As noted in our conversation, I log my outgoing mail. I encourage you to
join me in reviewing everything I have said to Betsy via email - which, if
my unrefreshed memory serves me accurately, include one invitation to meet
for breakfast, one or two followup messages, some discussion about finding
beads and their application to macrame ... and that's about it. You should
also consider restoring my log from previous months to assure yourself that
I have not edited anything.
It is true that Betsy has not replied to many of my emails, but this is not
very definitive. When I asked _you_ if you were interested in going out to that
Lily Tomlin movie, at the Castro, you replied, pointing out that your husband
would probably object. I apologized that I had not noticed your wedding ring,
and we continued on our separate ways. If you had not replied, I might have
asked again ... or noticed your wedding ring, and caught on. If this is what
is called 'harrassment', then virtually anything that one party dislikes or
cannot cope with in a straightforward manner without projecting negative
behavior upon the other party, can be called 'harrassment'.
I encourage you to sharpen your - and Betsy's - understanding of 'harrassment'
by reviewing everything I have said to her in email, and if she has been so
mistaken as to assert that I am harrassing her verbally, by having me undergo
polygraph testing. ( I don't think I've said much of _anything_ to her, in a
year of coworking. I've talked more with visiting field engineers. :-)
Quite simply, I determined about a decade ago that to lie was to invite such
deceit to be used against oneself, whereas to tell the truth was a very good
way of conducting business - and I have always sought to avoid manipulation of
the facts, distortions of the truth, or any other corruptive behaviors. The
past ten years have established to my satisfaction that, by having nothing to
hide, I cannot be lied about, not forced into a defensive posture by others,
whom assume that because _they_ have things to hide, that _everyone_ must. I
have never harrassed Betsy, knowingly or otherwise. I _have_ sought to know
her better, s a coworker whom I would like to like, and as someone whom seems
to be rather estranged, if not alienated, perhaps even victimized.
If caring is a criminal offense, then this world is in very sad shape.
page 44
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
-=*=-
What sort of evidence might I be referring to ?
Well, first off, I was raised by my mom, primarily, my dad having left her
when I was three, for a departmental secretary. I am intimately acquainted
with the woman's side of things, seriously support equal pay for equal work,
practice equality wherever I go, and can probably cook, wash, iron and scrub
floors with the best of them. ( Who do you think keeps the espresso machine
so clean ? )
I am assistant coordinator of a BITNET-based electronic mailing list, UUS-L,
which serves to network Unitarian-Universalists together around the world.
We just recently finished a long exchange on the topic of sexual abuse, and
my comments are available in my outgoing mail spool. It started when I saw
a posting about sexual abuse and harrassment from a woman at Stratus, on the
East Coast, and invited her to bring her discussion to UUS-L, as it involved
a UU minister who was being prosecuted for sexual abuse. It finished when I
posted my own experience - which ended only recently, in the past few weeks -
with my significant other, whom has been diagnosed as psychotic, depressive,
suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder, and a victim of sexual abuse
herself, courtesy of her father ... and whose presence and participation in
codependency clinics does much to lower my respect for codependency theory,
as these groups accept what she says uncritically, indifferent to the fact
that they are dealing with a certified madwoman, so long as what she says
continues to affirm their own collective distrust of men. ( But I digress. )
I exchange email with various women on a regular basis. One such is Brandy
Tuzon, formerly a receptionist at 400 Oracle Parkway. She was kind enough to
email me her new address on CompuServe, as I was one of the few individuals
whom bothered to greet her and wish her a good morning when I saw her, and
we have remained in touch as a result. ( Yes, I asked her out. Dealing with
a madwoman is a lonely business. She has a boyfrind. But we're friends. )
Another is Elaine Richards, booterautodesk.com. Elaine is a good character
reference, as she used to be my enemy, as a consequence of being married to
someone who forged netnews articles, and whom disliked me for my intolerant
attitude towards forgery. She has since divorced this person, and, although
she was initially afraid to meet me in person, we finally met one afternoon
and talked for a few hours and found that we were pretty similar. I just saw
her last week at the AIDS Memorial grove workday, in Golden Gate Park, which
she posted to the Net, and I'll probably see her at the next workday, also.
( Yup, I asked her out, too. Still do, every once in a while. She never says
'yes', but she does entertain the idea, and we enjoy each other's company. )
When I went up to Portland, last year, for classes at Sequent, I stayed a few
days extra to visit my dad, and also drove up to Seattle to have lunch with
a radical lesbian I'd become acquainted with over the Net. She worked at the
AIDS Public Health study unit, part time, and, after asking if it was OK, I
drove up and we had a pretty congenial lunch just before I flew back. I can
provide you with her email address, and you can ask her yourself if I treated
her with anything less than total respect. ( No, I didn't ask her out. :-)
page 45
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Oh, yes, there's also Kennita Watson. I met Kennita at Quintus Prolog, where
she was their technical writer. We've gone out together once or twice, and
she later worked here at Oracle, until she quit to run for California
Secretary of State, on the Libertarian ticket, I believe. The last time I saw
her was last winter, when I helped her move her stuff from storage, in Santa
Cruz, to her new apartment in East Palo Alto, near University and 101. She's
a good character reference if for no other reason thn because she has known
me for many years, and is herself a diverse person.
Everything I have said so far would tend to suggest that I am a caring, if not
compassionate, person, and I humbly submit that everything I have said and done
in connection with this issue - including calling to your attention the poorly
conceived idea of eliminating the rest of the Data Center from what used to be
a large and public monthly celebration of birthdays, as well as wishing Betsy
herself a happy birthday - supports this one hundred percent.
-=*=-
What more can I say ? It would be nice if you retracted everything you have
said to everyone, so that I didn't have to do so myself ... and contemplated
why this ever happened in the first place, and how it might have been averted.
As far as I'm concerned, this never happened, it was all a foolish mistake on
the part of all concerned. I will obviously be slower to care about coworkers'
personal problems in the future. No doubt, this will make for a tightly-knit
Data Center, if we all sink to the lowest common denominator, as represented
by those members of the staff whom would rather level accusations of harrass-
-ment than communicate with their coworkers on a level of simple sociability.
If these kinds of accusations had been levelled against anyone else, they
might well have been unable to marshall such a carefully delineated reply,
their thinking muddied by the anger and pain that such a charge elicits in
those victimized by it ... and this lack of a response would be easy to lever
into an admission of guilt by biased parties in responsible positions. I now
wonder how many men have been abused in _this_ fashion ...
As my mother would say, "Look at the kettle call the pot black."
'Nuff said.
-- richard
=====
-- richard childers rchilders@us.oracle.com 1 415 506 2411
oracle data center - unix systems & network administration
Klein flask for rent. Inquire within.
<< end of quoted email >>
page 46
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 47
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.03 A Request For Closure
In early November - having met with Human Resources, having met
their conditions, having perhaps exceeded their expectations -
I asked Mickey Satterwhite for closure in the case.
As I had previously noted, I had been accused of what most would
regard as criminal behavior. It did not seem unreasonable to want
them to provide me with a tangible conclusion that I could retain,
should this accusation ever be voiced anew in the years to come.
After all, I could hardly request, N years after the fact, that
the Oracle Corporation provide me with a statement of facts, well
after the majority of the participants had departed Oracle.
I had come to this conclusion on my own, and had it confirmed by
a tale I heard, from a friend, of a lawyer whom settled for the
verbal conclusion to his own accusation, at a law firm in the area
- one of those friend-of-a-friend stories - only to have it raised
anew, at another firm, by an anonymous letter ... which had caused
his professional downfall.
Regardless of this rumor's accuracy, it reflected a concern I
identified with all too well, and confirmed my judgement. And, it
was hardly a new suggestion, to "get it in writing".
So I was not just surprised ... but deeply shocked, then upset,
then angry, when Oracle's Human Resources - specifically, Mickey
Satterwhite, Manager of Human Resources - told me that nothing was
in writing, that they had no intention of giving me anything in
writing, and that the matter was closed.
( It is interesting, here, to note that while Oracle's Human
Resources had become involved under the color of regulations
and concerns related to the protection of essentially helpless
individuals against powerful, abusive, coercive or manipulative
workplace behaviors ... when it became possible that they were,
not defenders of the law, but transgressors - as they would
have had me be, apparently - they, themselves, became nothing
more or less than powerful, abusive, coercive and manipulative
individuals, engaged in violating the personal and civil rights
of an essentially helpless individual. )
It's worth noting that at this juncture, Oracle seemed to be in
violation of several relevant regulations :
- 7290.6(b), where the public policy of the State of California,
with respect to sex discrimination, is concerned - since it was
clear that, given two complaints of harrassment, they had made
the choice to give one complaintant, greater credence than they
would give to the other complaintant, a clear case of discrim-
-ination based upon gender ;
- 7290.7(b), where "sexual stereotypes" are defined ;
page 48
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
- 7291.1(d)(1)(B), where the responsibility of an employer whom
has become aware of conditions which promote or allow discrim-
-ination, includes training and education, as I had separately
and repeatedly suggested ; and
- 8107, where employers whom engage in such discrimination render
themselves disqualified to participate in bids or receive contracts
from the State of California.
Not that they cared, it seems.
-=8=-
At the same time, my professional environment at work was degrading.
People looked at me when they walked past my office, and they looked
away when we met in the halls. More specifically, women looked away,
or treated me differently.
It became apparent to me that the 'powdervine' was at work - whether
as an act of Betsy herself, or someone else. I later had it confirmed
that Betsy was herself raising the issue with many people, claiming
I had harrassed her via email and continued to harrass her ... but I
have no reason to believe that she was the only one discussing it, as
her manager had direct knowledge of the accusation ... my manager had
direct knowledge of the accusation ... and it may well have been made
a topic of discussion at a meeting of managers - making it well worth
broadcasting to the world, as a major piece of gossip.
The next week or two were very bad ones, and, while I continued to
escalate my requests for closure, I also began to suffer from the
stress I was experiencing ... and - an unprecedented event in my
life - I asked for an entire week off, and spent it driving about in
Oregon and Washington - trying to get as far away from Oracle as I
could, during those wonderful seven days.
page 49
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.04 The Requests Escalate
Over the period of November and December, 1992, my requests
were escalated, systematically, for a tangible conclusion to
this increasingly unpleasant business.
My requests escalated from simple closure, to a suggestion to
meet informally ( as I had originally expected ), to a request
for a formal hearing.
None of these seemed like unreasonable requests. I felt I was
being remarkably magnanimous in not going to a lawyer. Who wants
to sue their employer ? A good way to get blackballed, I felt.
It seemed, as a matter of fact, increasingly, as if this was only
due ... that this was my right, and it was their duty, under law.
-=8=-
They had, after all, initiated this process ... not I.
They had, it now seemed, acted _before_ taking a complaint in
writing, and now that my accuser, Betsy Guala, knew that I had
logged and was logging all my email, she refused to discuss her
accusation, according to Mickey Satterwhite ... refused to meet
with me or Human Resources to discuss this matter ... and Human
Resources, said Mickey Satterwhite, had no power to compel her
to do so.
Oracle's Human Resources had accepted this complaint without a
formal written statement - deliberately, perhaps. This would be
an easy way, I suppose, to allow the guilty party to resign ...
and "nothing would be in writing".
But this incorporated some remarkably uncivil thinking, as it not
only assumed that this would be the outcome of every accusation ...
but failed to take into account the opposite possibility - more
precisely, what I would call the statistical certainty - of :
- total innocence, on the part of the accused ;
- false accusations ;
- or any other sources of error.
Insofar as these people were acting in a legal capacity, it
seems to me relevant to note that they were apparently totally
indifferent to the Fifth Amendment of the United States Con-
-stitution, and that their selection of laws that were to be
enforced, and laws to be ignored, seemed to have more to do
with what was best for their short-term interests, than it did
with what was legal ... or what was right, for that matter.
page 50
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Apparently, it was their wish that I suffer the consequences of
what could only be described as criminal carelessness, perhaps
negligence - a carelessness that now, it seemed, made them more
concerned about their civil liability, than about my civil rights,
my future employability, my personal relationships, or my various
other trivial concerns.
-=8=-
I wanted a conclusion and my suggestions not only escalated from
pleas, to diplomatically phrased demands, but they also escalated
upwards in the chain of responsibility, until I was addressing the
Director of Human Resources ... then, the Vice Presidents, of both
Human Resources and the Data Center.
( This is, incidentally, the suggested method for coping with
such problems - although I was oblivious of this at the time,
and relying upon my native understanding of the hierarchical
nature of corporate responsibility and accountability. )
It seemed to me that Oracle owed me an explanation of what had
happened - and a tangible conclusion - and the longer they waited,
the harder it was going to be to correct the situation that had
come into being, through their own action, and been perpetuated
through their own continuing inaction and refusal to acknowledge
my pleas for closure, my requests for a meeting of all concerned,
my demands for a formal hearing to address my perception that I
was, increasingly, the target of harrassment and malicious rumors.
I made this repeatedly, explicitly clear, using common English,
and small words, and short sentences, to every single manager,
member of Human Resources, and officer of the company I had the
opportunity to communicate with, on this subject.
In writing.
Here's one such example ...
<< start of quoted email >>
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 92 22:27:59 PST
From: Richard Childers
To: msatterw@us
Subject: Betsy Guala & Richard Childers
Cc: bdemchic@us, bguala@us, gsanchou@us, kdwyer@us, lcussary@us, rchilder@us,
smcmahan@us
"Richard, sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Can you call me at 5143
to discuss this ..."
I'm sorry, this is taking entirely too long.
page 51
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
To recapitulate events briefly ...
- In late October Betsy complained to her manager that she was
being subjected to harrassment by me, or so I understand.
- In Mid-November, the week before I went on vacation, I met with
Human Resources, whom Betsy apparently also contacted, and
provided them with my written statement ( reproduced below ).
- The Monday after Thanksgiving had passed, I left voicemail for
Mickey, requesting this appointment. ( I really don't see
why whatever needs saying cannot be committed to writing,
by the way. ) It is now Thursday evening and I have not
heard anything back, via phone or email.
To summarize my position ...
- Human Resources exists to serve the dual interests of employees,
and employers. In this case, there is no conflict, as least
not between these two interests, and so I would expect that
the service Human Resources offers its customers - Betsy,
myself, and everyone else employed by the Oracle Corporation -
would be some sort of reconciliation service to ameliorate
this situation. In fact, I have have explicitly requested this,
and see no reason why it should not have been implemented.
Human Resources, it seems to me, has room for improvement.
- Human Resources has two responsibilities here - to represent Betsy's
interests, and to represent my interests. I have reason to
believe that, since most of the Data Center seems to know of
Betsy's accusation(s), Human Resources has let me down badly
and has an obligation to correct this - an obligation which
grows substantially larger and more difficult every day.
- Human Resources also has an obligation to see this through to the
bitter end. I'm afraid you can't just waltz into my life,
tell me I've been accused of a crime, and then expect it to
quietly go away when it turns out that you are in error.
I will _not_ accept such a level of 'service' from HR.
suggested solutions ...
- Well, first off, I repeat my mind-bogglingly simple suggestion,
that Betsy and I simply meet and try to talk to one another
and straighten this out to everyone's satisfaction. If this
had been done by Data Center management in the first place,
this might have been resolved a month ago. ( Such a meeting
would of course include Data Center management and others. )
page 52
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
- This suggestion is perfectly in accordance with English common
law, as described in Blackstone and other legal references.
The right to face and question your accuser is as old as
the Magna Carta, a response to Star Chambers.
- Another alternative is to engage a neutral negotiator. This service
is actually provided by lawyers whom are seeking to stem the
rising flood of suites, and I have high opinions of them. One
such service is Community Boards, a free neighborhood conflict
resolution service in San Francisco ... (415) 863-6100. This,
too, would involve Betsy and I being in the same room at the
same time, talking to one another like human beings.
- Another alternative is to resort to the courts. I have been shamed
in the eyes of my peers and can probably collect damages if
I so choose to pursue that line of prosecution. Again, this
would involve Betsy and I being in the same room at the same
time, talking to one another like human beings.
- Another alternative is polygraph and voice stress analysis by one
or more sets of professionals. I have made it quite clear I
have nothing to hide and will insist on this if necessary.
I will not accept anything less than the truth about this
set of circumstances. The San Francisco Yellow Pages lists
four or five seemingly reputable services ( and one fly-by-
-night operation that tries to help people pass lie detec-
-tor tests for job applications with autohypnosis :-).
- The simplest alternative is for Betsy, myself, our respective
managers and perhaps a few Human Resources representatives
to get together and clear the air over this, and this is
my suggestion.
In closing ...
- I'd like to point out that I'm perfectly prepared to find that
Betsy attributed to me motives and attitudes which she has
encountered before ... provided that there is a clear under-
-standing that her perception was a mistake and needs to be
corrected to the best of her ability, as well as my ability.
After all, none of us are perfect and the world is, as we
all know, full of abusive and hate-filled men ( and women )
whose misdeeds we all have to pay the price for.
- However, if it proves that there are genuine allegations which are
not retractable, I expect the participants to roll up their
sleeves and find out the answer. There are a fixed number of
people in this scenario, each of them has only five senses
by which harrassment and innuendo can enter and exit their
page 53
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
minds, and it all happened in a fixed number of weeks. Also,
there is substantial evidence in the form of email logs by
which to determine if anything approaching 'harrassment'
occurred. ( I trust nobody will object if we use the dic-
-tionary to define 'harrassment', for starters, although I
expect the legislation on harrassment and sexual harrassment
is more precise. ) I don't think the Air Force, or the FBI,
would have any problem getting to the bottom of this.
- In any case, the current state of affairs is unacceptable, unstable,
and an open invitation to future problems. It leaves the door
open to Betsy telling all whom care to listen, that she told
HR she was being harrassed, and her 'harrasser' - that's me -
ceased his nefarious practices. It leaves the door open to
Betsy claiming I have again harrassed her, and since HR
seemed willing enough to entertain the possibility the first
time, I assume they'd be similarly quick to overreact again.
And it borders on the schizophrenix, in an organizational
sense, in that it invokes and enforces a double bind, here
I am expected to coexist peacefully with a woman whom is free
to interpret my least word, tone or glance as harrassment -
a massively toxic, not to say incompetent, state of affairs.
Human Resources may not have just left the problem unsolved -
they may have made it worse.
- Since I have nothing to hide, I expect the truth and will not
settle for anything less.
- Clearly, this whole tragicomedy has a lesson for us all. I suggest
we get off our butts and find out what that lesson is.
-- richard
=====
-- richard childers rchilder@us.oracle.com 1 415 506 2411
oracle data center -- unix systems & network administration
Klein flask for rent. Inquire within.
<< end of quoted email >>
It was, and remains, very clear that Human Resources was concerned
that I would file a lawsuit ( and this blinded them to the very
real likelihood that much worse things might accrue ), and this
is a conclusion communicated to me by none other than my manager,
Scott McMahan, in a closed meeting.
But, let us examine the actual sequence of events ...
-=8=-
page 54
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1992
October
21 departmental email, re: 'happy birthday'
replied to. Coworker demands that I cease email
on anything but company business.
22 departmental email, re: 'work-related comments'
22 Lisa Cussary accuses me of harrassing one of her
personnel - I deny this, and become quite upset.
23 Notify manager Scott Macmahan of accusations.
25 Personal email, re: 'followup to Betsy Guala's
complaint(s)' - I provide a detailed response to
Lisa's accusations, via email. I make copies for
my future reference.
November
12 Meet with M Satterwhite, 1030-1100, & EEO person,
believed to be one Milana Solganik, to discuss the
charges of harrassment levelled at me by another
member of Data Center staff. I provide them with a
copy, each, of the letter I provided in my original
response to Lisa Cussary's accusation that I was
harrassing one of her people.
12 Email to Michael Satterwhite of HR, re: 'recent
meeting' - request resolution to accusations.
12 Email to S Mcmahan, re: 'Betsy Guala's Allegations',
briefing him on accusations and providing him with
a copy of letter given to Lisa Cussary, M Satterwhite
and M Solganik.
12 Departmental email to relevant managers, noting that
I am experiencing considerable stress and that I am
willing to take a polygraph if we cannot come to any
other conclusion.
12 Request vacation.
13 Email to S Mcmahan and M Satterwhite making it clear
I will not settle for anything less than complete
resolution of these accusations.
15 As an act of good faith, I download a thesis by a
woman at MIT on the topic of the perceptions of women
in a male-dominated technological work environement,
and notify managers of its availablility, going so
far as to come in to work, print it out, and leave
copies outside my door for people to read during my
weeks-long absence on vacation.
page 55
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
16 On vacation in Oregon.
17 On vacation in Oregon.
18 On vacation in Oregon.
18 Mickey Satterwhite notifies me via email that we need
to discuss the contents of my email of 13 November.
19 On vacation in Oregon.
20 On vacation in Oregon.
December
03 I complain that this is taking too long to resolve,
sending copies to multiple managers, via email.
08 Mickey Satterwhite requests a meeting, but I am
out sick.
09 I notify Mickey Satterwhite that I am available
to meet.
09 After no reply from Mickey Satterwhite ( whose
voice mailbox is full ), I call Kirsten D Lee,
the Data Center's liason with HR. I brief her
on the situation, learning in the process that
the accusations of harassment have been stated
to the HR group in a recent meeting, and that I
am filling in the missing pieces for Kirsten.
I forward to her my original email to Lisa Cussary,
and ask her to put me in touch with Mickey
Satterwhite as soon as possible.
( Later, I learn that she has been ordered to
remain uninvolved with the matter and does not
want to know anything more about it. )
15 I make it explicit I am unsatisfied with HR's
failure to close the issue in writing, after I
am told that, as far as Oracle is concerned,
nothing is in writing and it never happened.
I note that six weeks have now passed.
18 I repeat myself, noting specifically HR's refusal
to acknowledge that I have been accused of harass-
-ment, CC:ing VPs of HR and the Data Center.
23 After mysterious comments from Data Center VP during
departmental Christmas party, I email VP directly
regarding my innocence and request for intervention.
... and that's what my Thanksgiving and Christmas were like, in 1992.
page 56
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 57
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.05 A Depressing Christmas
Given the previous events, I trust that I will not be misunder-
-stood if I say that I had a pretty depressing Christmas.
Christmas, in any case, is a pretty depressing season ... but
this was much worse.
This time around, I was dealing with the breakup of a ten-year-
old relationship, and the associated mental illness of someone
I cared about deeply ... and an accusation of harrassment ...
and the small fact that I had become an Untouchable, within my
own peer group at work.
I hurt, deeply. I wondered if this would follow me all of my
life. I wondered if only my death would satisfy people. And I
wondered if this would be the end ... for I had no one to talk
to, and was painfully lonely. I was painfully depressed.
I was also very busy. I was the Unix systems administrator for
that week - I had volunteered, as someone whose roots were local,
and as someone whom had no need or want to be elsewhere. And the
three days of the Christmas holiday, I spent almost continually,
working at Oracle, on a crashed Sequent which had, it turned out,
a dysfunctional disk controller.
-=8=-
1992
December
24-27 Responsible for Oracle's entire West Coast, and
actually on site repairing a broken Sequent for a
large part of the four days.
28-31 Determine the necessity of providing my own analysis
of events. Identify three points needing attention:
(1) demonstration of plaintiff's bad faith
(2) demonstration of oracle hr's failure(s)
(3) suggested corrections to perceived problems
-=8=-
... and that brings us up to New Year's, 1993.
page 58
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 59
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.06 New Year's - A Resolution Made
I hadn't really meant to make a New Year's resolution, as such.
My stepfather was an astronomer, and I am well aware of the quite
arbitrary nature of the New Year's official date and time.
But I had realized that Human Resources had had a reasonable time
in which to respond, and in which to act responsibly.
The primary resource I provide to my employers, is responsibility.
To me, this means "the ability to respond". Not to react, that is,
to re-act, to re-play a pre-recorded sequence of events ... but to
take a fresh, original look at things ... to see what needs to be
done ... and to see that it is done, to my satisfaction, so that
I may issue my personal word that it is done, and so that others
may accept it, with confidence, so that they may use it to carry
out _their_ responsibilities.
I did - and continue to do - this job quite well. ( Interested
parties are invited to request a copy of my resume. )
It became clear to me that Human Resources would not accept any
responsibility for changing things, or even acknowledging that
a mistake had been made or that procedures were less than perfect.
Perhaps they were concerned for their jobs. With good reason, in
retrospect. As previously noted, they were in painful and glaring
violation of a non-trivial number of DFEH regulations, and their
inaction had already cost the company and its personnel thousands
of dollars in wasted time, wasted energy, and misdirected emotions.
I realized, in those last days of 1992, that if something were
to be done about the situation, that I would need to do it.
I identified three things that I wanted to see accomplished.
(1) Adding To The Record
I wanted to demonstrate to everyone's satisfaction that
there were absolutely no grounds for accusations by any
individual, of anything that could - however vaguely - be
construed as harrassment, by publication of my email
log and its contents - since no one seemed to have the
courage to examine it for themselves, despite my many
explicit, written requests ( and demands ).
(2) Bad Faith : An Analysis
I wanted to share with others the growing awareness that
this was a documentable case of a bad faith accusation
by and angry and otherwise unempowered woman of no means -
using the readily available email log that no one would
page 60
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
examine ... now that it turned out it wouldn't be easy to
tar and feather me, that my prosecution would not provide
a quick and cheap rush of self-righteousness and a glow
of Political Correctness ... that it would take hard work,
that it would involve taking a chance on a woman who had
already demonstrated her unreliability.
(3) Bad Faith, Bad Procedure, Suggested Corrections
I wanted to document the repeated failures of Oracle Human
Resources' personnel and policies, and, based upon my very
painful experience, I wanted to suggest some fairly simple
ways that Oracle's Human Resources could try to keep this
from happening, again.
In doing so, although I did not know it at the time, I was
actually urging them to comply with 7291.1(d)(1)(B), where
employers identifying discriminatory working conditions are
mandated to work at changing them - where 'training' and
'education' are specifically mentioned.
However, I wanted to share with Human Resources what it had
felt like ...
- to be falsely accused,
- to struggle against lies,
... so that they would be less reactionary, in the future.
I wanted to sensitize them to the issues, you might say.
The following chapters describe my efforts to do this ... and what
happened to me, as a consequence of this humble intention.
page 61
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.07 Part 1 : Adding To The Record
( This was sent on the 11th or 12th of January. )
<< start of quoted email >>
To: msatterw kdwyer bdemchic smcmahan gsanchou lcussary
Subject: 'He kept sending her email'
In October of 1992, Betsy Guala accused me of harrassing her.
In November, I was told that I was never accused of harrassment, and
that my request for explicit exoneration in writing was denied, since
'nothing had happened' and the issue was closed to HR's satisfaction.
However, as I have been accused of a crime, in the eyes of both Human
Resources and my own coworkers, this cannot be forgotten until I have
been exonerated, in the eyes of both Human Resources and my own peers.
( Human Resources has denied that this is the case, but they did not
do this until late November, and in the meanwhile much evidence had
accrued to the contrary. )
To do anything else to invite this to return again, when I am not as
prepared to defend myself against libel. Clearly, I have a duty to my-
-self to protect my own interests.
I also have a duty to my peer employees, whatever their gender and
orientation, to insure that this sort of inadequate response on the
part of Human Resources is not suffered by anyone else.
When I was hired, I was hired because I was intelligent, honest, and
self-motivated. I humbly submit that my current behavior meets these
criteria admirably, and that these goals are respectable ones.
-=*=-
My first area of concern is to dispel the allegations that I "kept
on sending email to Betsy", and was thus harrassing her. I do not
know where this phrase came from - probably Betsy - but I do know
that Human Resources never investigated it in any detail, yet was
satisfied to repeat this allegation to my management.
To do this, I have excerpted _all_ email addressed to Betsy Guala
over the past two years, and analyzed it according to both content
and frequency. That analysis is below.
page 62
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
( there were no messages of relevance during 1991. )
Tue Mar 17 17:36:43 1992 que pasa ?
invited Betsy to join rest of Help Desk in sampling ale,
asked if she was interested in breakfast some weekend
< reply from Betsy, noncommittal but not unfriendly >
Wed Mar 18 13:09:41 1992 Re: Hello!
acknowledged Betsy's uncertainty regarding breakfast
< reply from Betsy, suggesting breakfast would be a bad idea >
Sat Mar 21 11:46:58 1992 reflections upon communication meltdown
apologized for invitation, clarified that I wasn't asking
for a date, but enjoyed running into Betsy
< reply from Betsy, stating that "I smile at you because I am happy
to see you. You seem to be very real and very nice." >
Wed 25 Mar 17:18:10 1992 Re:
reply to Betsy's email, going into detail as to our separate
lifestyles, interests, and recent personal problems, as well
Here we have a total of seven messages, as well as clear indication of
an exchange of ideas. Breakfast is suggested, turned down, but we go on
to discuss other things of mutual interest.
Fri May 15 00:13:06 1992 that pesky curiosity ...
ask again if Betsy might be interested in spending a day
going bicycling, in followup to her comments regarding
her preference for spending her weekends out of doors
< reply from Betsy, where she describes how she spends her time,
shopping for beads, writing poetry, playing violin, enter-
-taining her mom ( coming next week ) and planning to
move to a new living situation - Betsy also suggests that
we have breakfast downstairs, instead of the Mission >
Sat May 16 21:13:31 1992 beads, macrame, etc
discussing macrame in response to Betsy's mention of beads
Mon May 18 14:58:42 1992 in retrospect ...
I suggest that breakfast on site doesn't really meet my
idea of a friendly meeting, but thank her for the offer.
< Betsy finally makes it explicit that she is not interested in
knowing me any better. >
Tue May 19 11:21:51 1992 Re: in retrospect ...
I thank Betsy for being explicit.
page 63
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Here we have another exchange of emails, where clearly both sides are
participating equally. I ask her if she'd like to go bicycling, she is
not interested, as she does not have a bicycle. She suggests breakfast,
but I decline, having gotten the impression that she is intimidated by
me. ( I would like to note that going to breakfast with someone who is
apparently intimidated seems far more insensitive and 'harrassing' than
simply asking them out to breakfast in the first place. ) We conclude
when Betsy states that she is no longer interested in getting to know
me better.
Wed Jul 22 07:15:41 1992 for your information
I forward some email on "Woman's Wellness Conference"
happening at SF State University in mid-August to Betsy
and half a dozen other female friends/acquaintances
An article I thought Betsy might be interested in, requiring no reply,
containing no personal messages whatsoever.
Thu Aug 13 21:12:32 1992 ancillary fallout
Where I describe a very cheap source for beads, found
as a consequence of my own macrame efforts in my office
- discarded beaded automotive seat liners ...
Another message essentially devoid of anything but human kindness.
Thu Aug 27 19:36:06 1992 women, technology & careers
Where I forward an article from people interested in
counselling 'the future workforce', from NASA.
Another article forwarded, for Betsy's contemplation.
Wed Oct 21 15:50:05 1992 happy birthday
Where I wish Betsy a happy birthday, CC:ing those
managers whom saw fit to exclude the rest of the
Data Center from an affair normally open to all.
< Betsy replies ordering me to cease emailing her on matters
unrelated to business affairs >
Thu Oct 22 12:43:41 1992 work-related comments
Where I suggest that a party which consumes Data
Center monies should neither reject nor conceal
their activities from other Data Center staff -
and note that the 'happy birthday' was serious.
Bam. All of a sudden I am harrassing Betsy, and she goes to Human
Resources and files a complaint.
page 64
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Please note that it is a very peculiar attempt at harrassment that
sends carbon copies to two managers - and that in this case, I was
acting in the interests of the rest of the Data Center, and did
nothing to earn this particularly vitriolic accusation.
Please also note that nowhere was there an earlier request for me
to cease and desist ... in fact, there was just the opposite, an
illusion, apparently, of friendly behavior.
I should point out at this time that there is a superabundance of
evidence suggesting that I was acting in good faith throughout this
process, was not acting unprofessional, and have been, apparently,
a victim of bad faith on Betsy's part.
Furthermore, I will also note that I explicitly extended invitations
to all and sundry to examine my email, and that no one did so. Had
they done so, this sequence of events would never have happened, and
I would like to note that Human Resources dropped the ball here. As
it exists now, it looks more like I was denied due process - instead,
being railroaded down the chute reserved for men unfortunate enough
to be accused of harrassment.
In my next post I will analyze the abundant evidence suggesting
that Betsy Guala was acting in bad faith.
-- richard
=====
-- richard childers rchilder@us.oracle.com 1 415 506 2411
oracle data center -- unix systems & network administration
... whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
<< end of quoted email >>
page 65
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.08 Part 2 : Bad Faith : An Analysis
Please see the notes, afterwards, for some important details.
( This was sent on the 12th or 13th of January. )
<< start of quoted email >>
To: smcmahan bdemchic gsanchou lcussary msatterw kdwyer
Subject: Is Betsy Guala Acting In Bad Faith ?
Is Betsy Guala acting in bad faith ?
Now that I have, through an objective analysis of my email logs, demon-
-strated that there are no grounds for Betsy's claim that I 'kept on
sending her email', my next concern is to determine whether her actions
betray any _other_ suggestions of acting in bad faith.
Unfortunately, there is an abundance of evidence suggesting that this
is in fact the case.
Using the same condensed log of email, I have this time analyzed the
events with respect to the second area of concern, and that analysis
is below.
( there were no messages of relevance during 1991. )
Tue Mar 17 17:36:43 1992 que pasa ?
invited Betsy to join rest of Help Desk in sampling ale,
asked if she was interested in breakfast some weekend
< reply from Betsy, noncommittal but not unfriendly >
Wed Mar 18 13:09:41 1992 Re: Hello!
acknowledged Betsy's uncertainty regarding breakfast
< reply from Betsy, suggesting breakfast would be a bad idea >
Sat Mar 21 11:46:58 1992 reflections upon communication meltdown
apologized for invitation, clarified that I wasn't asking
for a date, but enjoyed running into Betsy
< reply from Betsy, stating that "I smile at you because I am happy
to see you. You seem to be very real and very nice." >
Wed 25 Mar 17:18:10 1992 Re:
reply to Betsy's email, going into detail as to our separate
lifestyles, interests, and recent personal problems, as well
page 66
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
So here we have the same seven messages, clearly conveying a certain degree
of mutual respect, with nothing to indicate anything otherwise.
Fri May 15 00:13:06 1992 that pesky curiosity ...
ask again if Betsy might be interested in spending a day
going bicycling, in followup to her comments regarding
her preference for spending her weekends out of doors
< reply from Betsy, where she describes how she spends her time,
shopping for beads, writing poetry, playing violin, enter-
-taining her mom ( coming next week ) and planning to
move to a new living situation - Betsy also suggests that
we have breakfast downstairs, instead of the Mission >
Sat May 16 21:13:31 1992 beads, macrame, etc
discussing macrame in response to Betsy's mention of beads
Mon May 18 14:58:42 1992 in retrospect ...
I suggest that breakfast on site doesn't really meet my
idea of a friendly meeting, but thank her for the offer.
< Betsy finally makes it explicit that she is not interested in
knowing me any better. >
Tue May 19 11:21:51 1992 Re: in retrospect ...
I thank Betsy for being explicit.
Here we have another exchange of emails, where clearly both sides are,
again, participating equally. It is marred by Betsy's sudden change of
character after I turn down her invitation for breakfast. This would
seem to indicate that _I_ am the one who is being harrassed, for not
meeting _her_ criteria ... whatever those may be.
I should note that her sudden change of character - where, previously,
she was behaving and expressing herself in a friendly fashion, now she
is rather cold and to the point and suggests that 'she has made herself
clear', when nothing could be further from the truth - is very odd and
does nothing to demonstrate the degree of consistency she has, I would
guess, represented herself as rejecting my email with, to HR. If she has
said that she told me, multiple times, that she did not wish to spend
any time with me, I have to say that this is not a true statement.
Wed Jul 22 07:15:41 1992 for your information
I forward some email on "Woman's Wellness Conference"
happening at SF State University in mid-August to Betsy
and half a dozen other female friends/acquaintances
Thu Aug 13 21:12:32 1992 ancillary fallout
Where I describe a very cheap source for beads, found
as a consequence of my own macrame efforts in my office
- discarded beaded automotive seat liners ...
page 67
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Thu Aug 27 19:36:06 1992 women, technology & careers
Where I forward an article from people interested in
counselling 'the future workforce', from NASA.
And here we have three messages after that rejection ... all conveying
regard for Betsy as a person, and a good faith attempt to bridge the gap
that appears - however irrationally - to have sprung into existence. It's
true that Betsy does not reply to these messages, but neither does she
ask me to stop. Clearly, she has not asked me to stop ... and I have not
offered her any reason to, as I am simply trying to behave civilly.
During this period, I was interested in macrame, and continued studying
it, producing, among other things, two plant hangers in short succession
over a period of weeks ... which plant hangers still hang in my office at
this very moment, as I write.
Now things get interesting.
Wed Oct 21 15:50:05 1992 happy birthday
Where I wish Betsy a happy birthday, CC:ing those
managers whom saw fit to exclude the rest of the
Data Center from an affair normally open to all.
< Betsy replies ordering me to cease emailing her on matters
unrelated to business affairs >
This is clearly uncalled-for, irrational, and totally unjustifiable,
in light of my earlier publication of my mail log's contents.
I have no idea why it happened, but I have some speculations.
(1) It was Betsy's suggestion that everyone be left out
of her birthday party, to Lisa, and as a consequence
she feels that my criticism is aimed at her, with
respect to the wisdom of holding private parties with
departmental funds, in sight of the rest of the dep-
-artment, such that only those invited may attend -
as was the case with her birthday party.
(2) Betsy was undergoing some sort of personal trauma at
the time and transferred her anger at other things to
me. ( I question this, as her efforts to establish
that I harrassed her extend over several days, perhaps
several weeks, and are hardly a consequence of some
short-term emotional dysfunction. )
page 68
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
(3) Betsy perceived me as some stereotypical antagonist,
and decided to strike back at me as symbolic of all
the men she has had disagreements with, using the
wiles of femininity to set me up as the fall guy for
her frustration(s). I must say that if this is how
New Age womyn entertain themselves, it leaves much to
be desired, and causes more problems than it solves.
(4) Betsy genuinely feels that she has been harrassed, in
spite of massive evidence to the contrary and a lack
of _any_ evidence supporting her contentions. In lieu
of the recent debates over the Hill - Thomas debacle, I
and everyone else feels that 'harrassment' is well
defined, and Betsy would have had to have been well
insulated from reality in order to be oblivious of
this defintition.
None of these is sufficient cause for Human Resources to act as they
have, I believe, and all of them suggest strongly that _Betsy_ is not
behaving either responsibly or professionally, to be quite frank.
Had Human Resources bothered to examine the evidence at hand, they, too,
could have reached these conclusions, without my assistance.
Thu Oct 22 12:43:41 1992 work-related comments
Where I suggest that a party which consumes Data
Center monies should neither reject nor conceal
their activities from other Data Center staff -
and note that the 'happy birthday' was serious.
Bam. All of a sudden I am harrassing Betsy, and she goes to Human
Resources and files a complaint.
Again, note that it is a very peculiar attempt at harrassment that
sends carbon copies to two managers - and that in this case, I was
acting in the interests of the rest of the Data Center, and did
nothing to earn this particularly vitriolic accusation.
Please also note that nowhere was there an earlier request for me
to cease and desist ... in fact, there was just the opposite, an
illusion, apparently, of friendly behavior, up to and including
an invitation to breakfast ( which I could not honor, as I regard
breakfast as something to be savored, hardly something to have in
the entrance hall of a highrise, however dramatically decorated -
better enjoyed offsite, at one's leisure ).
And let us not forget that 'harrassment' is defined as a situation
where person A persists in communicating with person B despite the
repeated efforts of person B to communicate to person A that such
communications are not welcome. Clearly, Human Resources does not
understand even the most basic of laws, in this respect - or chose
to ignore the counsel of the participating EEO representative.
page 69
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
-=*=-
There are a few more details worth mentioning which are not email-
-related, but which bear analysis nonetheless.
(1) There is the question of Betsy's behavior, with
respect to her complaint. First off, we have her
complaining to her manager. Her manager comes to
me immediately to discuss it. But, before anyone
she has spoken to on the issue has any time to
do anything at all, she appears to have gone to
Human Resources. Why did she escalate this, if
she had not given her manager a chance first ?
(2) There is the question of Betsy's spreading her
accusations far and wide. I know, I know, it never
happened. But everyone in the Data Center knows
this to be a falsehood, and knows wells that Betsy
did this thing. Why she did it remains a question
to be answered, presumably by Human Resources, as
the responsible entity in this context. However,
one thing is clear - she did not wait for Human
Resources to act before she began to spread rumors -
rumors which are clearly without substance.
(3) In neither (1) nor (2) is there any indication, by
her word or anyone else's, of _any_ event which
might have served to trigger this escalation. So I
am compelled to ask ... what was the trigger ? It
would seem that if no 'trigger' can be found, then
another motive has to be postulated ... and that,
I submit, is to cause trouble and - deliberately -
to destroy the respect of my friends and coworkers.
In this goal she has succeeded admirably ... and I
have the names of several people whom she spoke
with - as do others. It would seem to me that such
behavior is, prima facia, cause for dismissal, as
unpleasant as such a suggestion may be to hear.
(4) Then, of course, we have the question of what it was
that she intended to accomplish. It seems clear that
she did not expect me to be around for long, as she
went about her character assassination with consid-
-erable vigor, and apparently never considered that
I might stay around long enough to oppose her efforts
to besmirch me. Clearly, one does not accuse some-
-one whom one expects to work with for months into
the future, of a crime. Therefore, she did not expect
that she would have to work with me. Therefore, she
was trying - for whatever reason(s) - to get me fired.
page 70
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
(5) The afternoon of the day I first talked with Human
Resources, I walked into the Help Desk, looking for
one of the people there, and, walking about a part-
-ition, I saw Kenny Geiselhart ... and, sitting next
to him, Betsy Guala. I looked at Betsy ... and she
smiled. I cannot think of any reason to smile at one's
enemy unless one has just struck a major blow at one's
enemy. The smile was a malevolent one, and when I saw
it, I flinched. Kenny saw me flinch, and saw me look-
-ing at Betsy ... and looked at Betsy, as if to see
what it was that had caused me to flinch. The smile
vanished. I don't know whether Kenny saw it or not,
but if he did, that is a powerful piece of evidence
supporting my contentions that I have been purposely
slandered by Betsy Guala, insofar as she was pleased
by my flinching, and my facial expression of pain.
(6) There is one other interesting tidbit. After this, I
began to receive phone calls at home. The caller would
never say anything ... just hang up. One time, the call
came at 4 AM ... a likely hour for an operator who is
expected to arrive early in the morning to wake up. I
am aware that this is not conclusive, but hang on for
a moment. Another time - recently - I received such a
call ... but it was during the day, when I was home
sick. This would seem to indicate that the person whom
was calling me knew that I was not at work, since the
calls only came once a day, when they occurred, and
they all occurred before, say, 8 PM, never after ...
more evidence consistent with an operator's schedule.
The interesting thing about this last tidbit, is that
it occurred only a few days ago ... I believe it was
Tuesday the 29th of December, 1992. I had been on call
during Christmas weekend, and after dealing with the
blackout and a few other machines, I slept through the
28th, and awoke the 29th with flulike syptoms, such
that I was home for the next few days, out sick.
If this _was_ Betsy, this can be established by look-
-ing at the internal phone records and seeing if any
person called 753-1776 from any extension in Oracle
WHQ during the 29th of December. This would be very
strong evidence of bad faith on Betsy's part, espec-
-ially if it came from a phone on 4op3 or 4op4. ( It
would also demonstrate remarkable naivity regarding
systems logging, IMHO. )
As of 02 January, this number was changed, and the
problem is no longer occurring. But I mention it in
case the phone logs _do_ document this, since again
it suggests that I have been telling the unvarnished
truth.
page 71
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
In closing, I would like to take note of the damage Betsy has inflicted
upon me - both tangible and intangible.
(1) She has done her level best to destroy my reputation,
and, to some degree, has succeeded. As someone pointed
out to me recently, those people whom are in the habit
of making up their mind on nothing more than hearsay,
have made up their mind, and no effort of mine will be
able to correct this ( although action on the Data Cen-
-ter or Human Resources level might ameliorate this ).
I regard those people as lacking in maturity ... but
I hold Betsy responsible for utilizing this as a weapon
against me, even moreso since she has no cause to do
such a thing.
(2) She has endangered my professional future, with help -
if noncompliance with state and federal laws can be
regarded as help - from Human Resources.
(3) She has given me reason to consider killing myself, as
the shame that I have to bear is close to unbearable. I am
fortunate in that I own no weapons, otherwise it is
not impossible that, one day, Data Center employees
might have heard a shot ring out, and come to find my
brains spattered all over the celing, as I sought the
only way out of a situation made unbearable by the
combination of her ( apparently malicious ) slander,
and Human Resources' deliberated indifference to the
circumstances I had, through no action of my own, been
placed.
It is this, incidentally, which makes it imperative, as
far as I am concerned, that this be set straight, and
Human Resources explicitly modify its procedures so as
to keep this from ever happening again. Human life is
not so cheap as to be wasted playing power games such
as this.
I have heard that Oracle is beset by suites by former
employees .... and I have been told, by many, that Human
Resources is incompetent. I now know this to be true,
and I now know why. This may be painful to hear but it
is necessary to state if it is to be corrected.
It seems to me that there is considerable evidence that Betsy Guala has
acted, and continues to act, in bad faith.
There is some evidence that Human Resources has also acted in bad faith,
and this will be the topic of my last email on this topic, along with
some evidence to document my own repeated claims of possessing good faith.
page 72
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
( As if the fact that I have waited this long for Human Resources to do
the job that is their responsibility, is not evidence enough. )
-- richard
=====
-- richard childers rchilder@us.oracle.com 1 415 506 2411
oracle data center -- unix systems & network administration
... whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
<< end of quoted email >>
Pretty disturbing reading.
It was even worse to live through.
Was I threatening suicide ? Hardly. I didn't own weapons and had
already passed through my personal valley of darkness, had come
to some firm decisions regarding what needed to be done, and had
begun to implement those decisions.
One of those decisions - a direct consequence of having dealt with
the attempted suicide of someone close to me, a short while before
- was to call to the attention of Human Resources, in the strongest
terms possible, the inhumane nature of their behavior.
However, Human Resources didn't see it that way ...
page 73
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.09 Part 3 : Room For Improvement
The third analysis I intended to write, was intended to focus
on the points, in the whole sequence of events, where following
any one of the many, many established procedures for dealing
with accusations - almost all of which I had at least once, if
not repeatedly, proposed to both Data center management, and
to Human Resources staff - would have kept this from happening.
The resistance of Human Resources in general, and Mickey Satter-
-white in particular, to common sense solutions to the problem
at hand, was of a truely gargantuan scale. I felt that, as someone
who had a first-hand appreciation of the state of affairs, and
an ability to articulate my understanding, I had an obligation to
do my best to see that things were changed.
However, this was not to be ...
page 74
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 75
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.10 Two Weeks' Medical Leave
The morning after I posted the second part of my analysis,
Mickey Satterwhite, of Human Resources, and Scott McMahan,
my department manager, walked in, closed the door, and told
me that they wanted to me to take two weeks' leave.
I agreed, and then they said, as an afterthought, that they
wanted me to see a psychiatrist, and get certified as mentally
and emotionally stable ... and that this was a prerequisite
to my returning to Oracle.
When I asked, they assured me that it was a paid leave, and
admitted that it was a medical leave, paid for by Oracle.
They didn't want me to do anything but gather what I might
want or need for the next few weeks, so that I wouldn't have
to return during that time ... and they also mentioned that
they were going to disable my login, temporarily, so that I
wouldn't be distracted by work matters during my leave.
( It can be seen by analyzing the hour and day of the week of
most of my email included in this document, that I tended to
work about eighteen hours a day, six or seven days a week,
as is not uncommon amongst the salaried systems administrator
staff of most corporations ... so this was understandable. )
So I gathered up my backpack, my books, a few tapes, and left.
As I was escorted out by Scott and Mickey, I was assured that
nobody would know about this, by both of them. Fool that I was,
I thought they meant it, but I was later to see that this was
only more bad faith dealing, from Oracle's Human Resources ...
As it so happened, I had no problem getting a letter from a
psychiatrist, certifying my mental and emotional stability -
although, in retrospect, if I had gone to any psychiatrist,
and explained what I needed, virtually no doctor would be so
foolish as to certify, as stable, a person whom had been put
on medical leave by his company, under the circumstances, as I
have described them.
However, as a result of having needed to deal with the problems
pursuant to a suicidal and psychotic significant other, I was,
in fact and in deed, well acquainted with such a doctor, and she
did in fact write me a letter which met Human Resource's strict
criteria for re-admission to Oracle.
But it can be suggested that this was a Machiavellian trick, on
the part of Human Resources, to get me off of the property - and,
thus, be in a position to deny me permission to return ... to the
relief of all those managers whose judgement might otherwise be
subject to questioning.
page 76
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
But whom would have guessed that, during those two weeks, my dad
would be killed by a truck ?
page 77
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.11 My Dad's Death
OK, technically, he's my stepfather.
But this was the person whom had had a great deal of influence
on me, whom had made mathematics respectable in my eyes, whom
had influenced me in a thousand different ways. He was the father
of my mind ... and of my spirit.
Denied access to the Internet by Oracle's disabling of my access,
I had acquired an account at a local Internet vendor - Netcom - and
I used this medium to post the requiem I had written. I think the
requiem says it all ...
( This article was posted to ba.general, ca.traffic, sci.astro and
other newsgroups ... perhaps forty to eighty people replied, some
of them former students and peers of Leon, in the weeks afterwards. )
<< start of quoted email >>
Leon Salanave died on the 30th of January, 1993. He had been struck by a
speeding pickup truck while crossing Geary Street at 9th Avenue, and was
apparently tossed from the crosswalk to the island in the middle. ( I'll
have a little more to say about that below. )
He was 75 years old, six feet tall but only 120 pounds in weight. The
San Francisco Chronicle's obituary described him as 'A slightly built,
gentle man of unending curiosity ...', and that described him to a tee.
He was a man of no small accomplishments, but he rarely spoke of them
and some I learned of only at his bedside during his last hours.
He was a true San Francisco Frenchman. Both of his parents were French,
and were here during the 1906 Earthquake, and his grandmother arrived in
San Francisco from Missouri in the 1880s. His taste in french bread was
exquisite, as was his taste in wine and food. He was a serious gourmet,
loved curried dishes, and was an excellent cook, with a fondness for
cast iron skillets, old knives handed down from his parents, and simple,
hand-powered tools. He was someone on whom a beret looked natural, not
an affectation but appropriate, and he spoke the language well.
He was a bit of a craftsman, having built many telescopes in his day, as
well as a radio or two and many, many other gadgets. He was recycling
both aluminum and iron cans, compacting them, back in 1968, and had been
always interested in new things and ways to recycle, through a simple
understanding of the fact that the ecology was a closed system - free of
any concern with financial profits.
-=*=-
page 78
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Leon graduated from Galileo High School in 1936, where he was the first
student curator of Galileo's astronomy observatory ( which has probably
been vandalized into nonexistence by now, although the dome remains )-:.
When I was younger, he told my brothers and I of the torture of going to
school across the street from Ghirardelli, which at the time was merely
a chocolate factory. (-:
I learned, by his bedside, that when he was sixteen, he discovered a star -
no small accomplishment. This was characteristic of him - he rarely spoke
of his past accomplishments, and in fact was rather gruff at times - which
covered his shyness and sensitivity, characteristics I can understand, as
I share them. His actions spoke much louder than his words, and betrayed
his true depth - something it took me over a decade to appreciate.
To his credit, although we had some turbulent times when I was a teenager,
he also learned to appreciate my depth of being, although it took him a
long time, too. When he died, we had no disagreements, and a true respect
for one another that - as stepson and stepfather - was not easy to create.
He never appreciated my taste for science fiction, although he admitted to
a rather grudging appreciation of Robert Forward's _Dragon's Egg_ - written
by a fellow scientist, like Fred Hoyle's _The Black Cloud_, it seemed to
be easier for him to allow his imagination to flow if it was guided by a
_real_ astronomer ( something that Carl Sagan, alas, was not ).
He graduated from UC Berkeley with a MS in Astronomy in the 1940s, and
during World War II taught celestial navigation to the 'ninety-day wonders'
in the Naval Officer Candidate School. In the 1950s he was involved with
the Morrisson Planetarium, responsible for calculating the locations of the
stars on the plates of the projector ( in the archives of Morrison is a
photograph of a young Leon at the far end of a hundred or so feet of printed
results ) and involved with developing its educational programs. He kept a
loose affiliation with Morrison to the end of his life, using their shop to
maintain telescopes and working on improving the California Academy of Sci-
-ences' observatory and equipment.
During the 1960s and early 1970s he taught astronomy at the Department of
Astrophysics, University of Arizona, in Tucson, and conducted what the Chron-
-icle described as 'one of the world's most extensive studies of the spectro-
-scopy of lightning', originally as a research grant from the Naval Research
Institute, but culminating in an atlas of lightning photography, published
by the University of Arizona in 1980. He gathered his data by going out to
a shack maintained in the desert ( what is now a sea of suburbian homes ) and
going upstairs, rotating the shack to point in a given direction, cranking
up an old Air Force radar to watch the clouds for electrical activity, and
pointing ancient cameras with focal lengths of feet towards the horizon, the
shutters opened for predetermined periods of exposure.
He was well known to the local Bay Area amateur astronomical community, the
San Francisco Astronomical Association, the San Francisco Sidewalk Astro-
-nomers, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific ( which I suspect he was a
charter member of ), whose journal, _Mercury_, he edited for many years, and
probably many, many others, far too many for me to know or name.
page 79
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
He was also well known to a generation of City College of San Francisco
students, where he taught astronomy and celestial navagation as well as
maintained the College's observational facilities.
He spent much of his professional life siting astronomical observatories,
and it will probably horrify many American Indian activists to learn that
Leon was instrumental ( hah, hah, little astronomy pun there :-) in siting
Kitt Peak, which we now learn is a sacred mountain top. All I can say in his
defense is that I doubt he knew, he might well have cared if he had known,
and that many of those whom work at Kitt Peak share his appreciation for the
cosmos - both the planetary and the astronomical - and that maybe the Great
White Spirit doesn't mind _that_ much, since astronomical observation is a
lot like worship ...
-=*=-
It's normally not part of a requiem to itemize what happened to the one
who has died, but in the case of traffic injuries, perhaps it should be.
Leon's brain was bleeding, and pressure was building in his cranial cav-
-ity, so that they had to drill holes to release the fluid. They found
clots in his brain, and had to operate twice on his brain, getting two
out of three. The third was the size of a quarter and was in the speech
area of his left lobe, if memory serves me correctly.
Clots developed in both of his legs and they operated for twelve hours,
trying to save the legs. One had to be amputated before gangrene set in.
When they had time to examine elsewhere, they found a broken wrist, broken
ribs, broken pelvis, broken hip, some internal bleeding here and there.
He never regained consciousness, of course, and after considerable dis-
-cussion with the surgeons, neurosurgeons, and attending residents that
were involved, as well as evaluation of Leon's medical power of attorney
granted to his wife and stepsons, the family agreed to withdraw life
support Friday afternoon. Saturday morning they came in and stood by as
Leon, very gradually, over about two hours, faded away and died, with
the Unitarian minister standing by as well.
They say that people in a coma have, when recovering, reported that they
could hear everything about them during their coma. We proceeded on this
assumption, even after we had decided to withdraw life support, and it is
my clear impression that his hand squeezed mine only once, just after I
said something to him to let him know it was me holding his hand ... so
I choose to believe that he knew what was happening ... and I think he
understood. Leon would not have wanted to live if he could neither read
_Scientific American_, write letters to the editor, attend a symposium,
or articulate his responses. And he had said as much, very specifically.
Services are scheduled for early afternoon, this Sunday, 14 February 1993,
at the San Francisco Unitarian Church, where Leon was well known for his
contributions to the Buildings & Grounds Committee, most specifically as
the person whom had solved a tricky problem with a slowly corrosive combi-
-nation of metals in a courtyard pump, with the help of the California
Academy of Science's workshop and staff.
page 80
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Leon had his body's volume of blood replaced some four times during the
thirty-six or so hours on the operating table. I haven't determined how
many units of blood that is, but I've spoken to the administrator for
the First Unitarian Church's blood bank account at Irwin Memorial Blood
Bank, and she has given me a blank check for the units.
I donate every two or three weeks, and my brother has a few units, also,
from his occasional donations, but together they probably don't seriously
add up to more than one quarter of the total amount. I expect this may
well drain the Unitarian account, and so I'd like to ask those whom are
in the practice of donating blood or doing an apheresis session to think
about donating your next unit or two, or calling up your bank and having
existing units transferred to, the First Unitarian Church's account at
Irwin Memorial Blood Bank. The Bank's phone number is (415) 567-6400,
and the account number for the First Unitarian Church is 00427-000.
To learn more about apheresis or make an apheresis appointment, you can
call the Apheresis Staff at (415) 749-6656. This takes longer but also
saves more lives per donation, IMHO, and gives more credits, I believe.
And isn't life what being here is all about ?
-=*=-
So I want to ask everyone - can we all drive a little slower ? Take the
corners a little more cautiously ? Turn on our headlights, use our horns
to warn people of our presence instead of retaliate for their aggression ?
I know the hottest, fastest, latest cars stop on a dime. Problem is they
start so well, they handle so well, that you forget the frailty of human
beings outside. Leon was hard of hearing ... but he followed the rules.
He was in a crosswalk, and the light was green. Everything indicates that
someone came around a blind corner at a brutal, tire-squealing speed that
sounded just like it did on TV ... and Leon and his family paid a stiff
price for that moment of heady egocentric pleasure.
No goal could possibly be worth the amount of pain this caused me and my
family.
Please do what you can to make this a slightly more patient and friendly
world ...
-- richard
"It is obligatory, within the limits of capability, to commend the
good and forbid evil." _Kitab_Adab_al-Muridin_, by Suhrawardi
richard childers pascal@netcom.com
<< end of quoted email >>
page 81
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
I wasn't in shape to return to work, as you can guess.
Oracle was gracious enough to permit me an extra week off ...
... although they did not extend that gracious behavior to my
brother, Tom, who was in an important support position with
respect to a product deadline, and whom was, I understand,
indispensable.
So it was three weeks later, and I was a changed man, when I
returned to Oracle.
page 82
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 83
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.12 /var/spool/mail/rchilder: 1870 new messages
When I returned to Oracle, I had my note in hand, certifying
me as acceptable to return to work, and so I had no problems
while returning to my office, unlocking my door, and logging
into my workstation ... although a lot of people looked at me
oddly.
Upon logging in, I learned that I had some 1870 messages that
I needed to read. So I began to wade through three weeks of
administrative email.
In the midst of this, one of the low-level managers, Bruce Coe,
dropped by and attempted to persuade me to not bother reading
all of my email ... but I insisted that it was my responsibility,
and, in fact, I was curious as to why Bruce might not want me to
read all of my email, and, instead, to indiscriminately delete them.
I continued reading, while resuming other tasks I was responsible
for, simultaneously ... such as :
- being the primary contact for IP addresses,
for Oracle employees within North America ;
- reading all email directed to the "root" login
of several dozen servers and perhaps a hundred
workstations ; and
- and examining the TAR queue for tasks assigned
to me by the Unix TAR dispatcher of the week -
whom, if memory serves me correctly, I also was,
that week.
I found this.
<< start of quoted email >>
From pmabon Mon Jan 25 12:40:34 1993
Received: by hqsun1.us.oracle.com (Oracle 1.12/37.7)
id AA06791; Mon, 25 Jan 93 12:40:27 PST
Message-Id: <9301252040.AA06791@hqsun1.us.oracle.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 12:40:27 PST
From: Pamela Mabon
To: unixsrv
Subject: Sequent admin change
Status: RO
Provided there is no occurance of death or insanity in the group this should
be the definitive list of Sequent Administration for a while:
page 84
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
hqseq, olsseq, wrseq, dvlseq, usoseq -- Gayle Woodhouse
ap1seq, ap2seq, appseq, ap4seq, misseq1, helpseq -- Don Beusee
dmdseq, ouseq -- Michael Glass
cvcseq, supseq, supseq2, mailseq -- Ken Geiselhart
wrseq3 -- Thanh Nguyen
Please remember that this is only a list of these people's Sequent systems.
It does not include any other duties or systems that they are also responsible
for.
Pam
<< end of quoted email >>
.... so much for the promises Michael Satterwhite and Scott Mcmahan had
made, about this remaining a private matter. Perhaps this had been the
topic of a meeting of a few managers ... maybe all of them.
I have to wonder if, perhaps, some hasty conclusions were drawn, and then
published, in a managers' meeting, to defend the rather controversial
actions on the part of my immediate management and Human Resources ...
relying upon the foolish assumption that I'd never return to offer any
other explanation.
I thought about it, for the rest of Monday, and part of Tuesday, sleeping
on it, trying to decide how I should answer this public statement ... or
if.
But it seemed that I had no choice. I could find no other alternative ...
Tuesday afternoon, I replied.
page 85
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.13 A Patient And Tactful Response
Here's what I said, in my own defense.
I didn't post it to the entire group, as Pamela Mabon had ...
I only posted it to those people whose opinion I cared about,
my immediate coworkers whom were well-enough acquainted with
me to give my words a fair hearing.
And I sent a copy to Pamela Mabon, also, for her rebuttal. In
retrospect, I suspect she was the one whom carried it higher.
Which makes a fair amount of sense - she had a lot to lose if
it became accepted that she had slandered her coworker without
cause, based upon hearsay.
Clearly, she was not alone ...
<< start of quoted email >>
From rchilder Tue Feb 9 16:36:35 1993
Received: by hqsun1.us.oracle.com (Oracle 1.12/37.7)
id AA28620; Tue, 9 Feb 93 16:36:29 PST
Message-Id: <9302100036.AA28620@hqsun1.us.oracle.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 16:36:29 PST
From: Richard Childers
To: arabkin, bcoe, bdemchic, dbeusee, dflexo, gwoodhou, jhanley, kgeiselh,
mglass, myearlin, ppai, pwaleski, pwilmot, rchilder, rrivera, scaughey,
tlnguyen
Subject: Gossip vs Fact
Status: RO
"Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 12:40:27 PST
From: Pamela Mabon
To: unixsrv
Subject: Sequent admin change
"Provided there is no occurance of death or insanity in the group ..."
While this is rather amusing, it also comes across as a bit unprofessional,
and leaves a bad impression.
I suppose it is equally unprofessional to attempt to correct the record,
but it is my responsibility to set the record straight ... as well as my
right. Normally I'd address these comments to Pam alone, but since she
saw fit to direct her words to unixsrv at large, I will do the same.
Everyone has heard all the rumors. Even I've heard a few of them. It's time
you heard the truth, at least as much of it as is available at this time.
page 86
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
-=*=-
Someone said I was harrassing them in October. HR looked into it and said
it was not harrassment, it was a personal conflict.
Unsatisfied with this, my accuser apparently went about telling as many
people as they could, that they had been or were being harrassed by me. The
exact sequence of events has not been determined, but the result was all
too tangible. A lot of people became aware of the accusations, and a lot
of them concluded that there must be a kernel of truth to the accusations.
Human Resources either was unable to stop this, or did not believe it was
happening, or assumed that I deserved it because, like everyone else, they
found it simplest to believe that there must be a kernel of truth to the
accusations. The end result was what I regarded as an unacceptable level
of service on the part of Human Resources ... and I said so, many times.
During the next three months I first requested, then demanded, that Human
Resources examine my logs of outgoing email - by which mechanism I assume
complete responsibility for my words - and provide a written conclusion to
the charges - a basically thankless and time-intensive task that no one
had or has any taste for carrying out. Human Resources refused, even after
I escalated my demands to the email of PWILSON and ATOTTLE.
Nobody - with the exception of Human Resources - has had any trouble seeing
why a written statement was mandatory. Silicon Valley is a very small world,
well networked together, and word travels rapidly. When - not if, but when -
this was next raised as a topic, whether here or at another company, it was
absolutely necessary that I have something to exonerate me of future efforts
to associate me with criminal behavior. Once I had left Oracle - something
I am not eager to do, surrounded, as I am, by many intelligent and thoughtful
people - I would have never been able to clear this up. Thus, it had to be
cleared up here and now.
Had this been an accusation of a stolen piece of hardware, this would have
been handled quite differently. However, the accusation of 'harrassment'
seems to bring out the worst and most prejudicial behavior in everyone,
and so I was presumed guilty until proven innocent ... treated accordingly
by HR and many of my coworkers ... and denied the opportunity to prove that
I was not guilty of any of this person's charges.
The consequences were predictable.
-=*=-
In early January I told them that between my accuser's systematic efforts
to hurt my reputation, and HR's refusal to provide me with documentation
I could use, were this ever to arise again as an accusation - they didn't
leave me a whole lot in the way of options ... other than suicide. I was
quite serious. That things should have ever reached such a point reflects
far more poorly upon Human Resources, than it does upon me, an employee of
Oracle. I believe that they are gradually coming to realize this.
page 87
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
Their response was to have me take off two weeks, with pay, and to ask me
to see a doctor and get certified as stable - which I did, without problems.
( The two weeks were fortunate, in that they allowed me to achieve a degree
of calm that proved to be invaluable when dealing with my father's demise,
so that it all worked out for the best. )
-=*=-
This may be an unacceptable way to communicate with Human Resources, but the
truth was all that I had left. I wasn't planning on anything so drastic,
but the massively unfair way I had been mistreated and under-represented
needed to be seen for what it was ... a failure on the part of the Human
Resources people to fulfill their responsibility to both parties in this
matter, and a threat, if not an all-out attack, upon both my self-respect,
and my physical wellbeing ( since the stress of being made into a pariah
in one's own department is _not_ trivial ).
As far as I am concerned, such a statement should never have been necessary
on my part, for the situation should never have been allowed to arise. But
it did, and the most responsible thing to do was to call it for what it was.
Some people may call this irresponsible behavior, or describe it as unstable.
This may be true, but I felt that I had a responsibility to my peer employees
to see this state of affairs identified and corrected, before someone else
suffered this sort of abuse at the hands of HR, and _did_ injure themselves.
If I did not do so now, someone else would have had to do so later, perhaps
after someone else had been hurt ... when it was too late.
-=*=-
So, why am I telling everyone all of this ?
A couple of very good reasons.
(1) Harrassment _does_ occur ... and it takes many faces.
We all need to police our own ranks, to keep this
from happening again. It has cost the company, as well
as the department and many people within it, much, in
time, money, and energy - which no one has to waste.
My keeping this particular piece of dirty laundry out
of everyone's sight only guarantees it happening again.
(2) Abuses of legal rights and human rights _do_ occur,
also ... and if you don't defend yourself vigorously
against such excesses, no one else will do so for you,
or at least no one will be able to do it as well as
you can do for yourself. Don't make the assumption
that Human Resources departments are not subject to
errors - they are painfully imperfect. )-:
page 88
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
(3) Working in an environment poisoned by accusations and
mistrust as no less toxic than working on a Superfund
site, and, although the consequences upon one's health
are nowhere near as detectable, they can still have a
very debilitating effect upon one, such that we stand
to all gain by trying to avoid making jokes about other
people's health - mental or otherwise. We work in a
very stressful field, and should treat each other with
a little more tolerance and forbearance, IMHO.
(4) Nobody has done anything which calls for discussions
of either harrassment or insanity or death, in any
manner whatsoever, humorous or otherwise. Especially
in email, addressed to a large group of people.
Now, can we return back to work and cease repeating unfounded stories and
engaging in unsubstantiated insinuations ?
I apologize for bothering those few of us whom hadn't the slightest idea
what this is all about, but I don't expect I'll have to do it again. I
shouldn't have had to do this in the first place.
-- richard
=====
-- richard childers rchilder@us.oracle.com 1 415 506 2411
oracle data center -- unix systems & network administration
... whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
<< end of quoted email >>
page 89
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.14 An Impatient And Tactless VP last updated 940711
I thought this was a pretty straightforward response, and one
that was even-handed, just, fair, practical, and common sense,
to boot.
Let's face it ...
- My dad had just died.
- I had been accused of insane thought and behavior.
- I'd been misrepresented, under-represented, and ignored,
if not outright suppressed.
Yet, I was still appealing to everyone's best interests, and
trying for a peaceful solution to the conflict. I had not hesi-
-tated to assign responsibility where it was due, but neither
had I lambasted anyone with blame. My concern was the future,
not the past.
Apparently, Alan Tottle, one of the two vice presidents named
in the document, did not agree. At least, his name has been
mentioned to me, as the source of my termination ... and it
makes sense, if the only alternative he had other than to fire
me, was to admit the total truth of what I had said, in my email.
-=8=-
I had replied to Pam, Tuesday. That evening, I had electrical
problems with my car. I'd replaced an alternator, tightened it,
and, lacking the third bolt needed to securely fasten the alt-
-ernator into place, it kept coming loose and I needed a shop
to help repair it. I ended up in the Mission, with a nearly
dead battery ... dropped the car off at a machine shop ... and
worked from home, via dialup modem and separate voice line, as
per Data Center SOP.
Here are the IDs of some of the problems I worked on, that day :
TAR # user description
====== ======== ===========
177247 lrebarch DNS down on stealth
177281 ? resolved
177421 wwhite@bethesda Sun w/s prob
177456 cfinkels Sun w/s prob
177514 pwilson Next w/s prob
177710 mbertnic Ora*Mail question
177712 mstuhmer kermit @ denver
177786 skraus NCD terminal windows
177810 vnataraj NCD dead
page 90
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
177818 mklein Sun w/s boot prob
177822 jliang Sun NIS prob
177842 ameyer Sparc 10 keyboard
177940 mckelly wrseq:/home dir
178045 sbuxton procs @ wrpyr4
I also read "root" email - 138 messages that day.
-=8=-
That evening, I collected my car, and was ready to report to work
the next day.
Which I did, arriving as usual, working as usual, until about 4
that afternoon, when I'd been asked to meet with my immediate
manager - Burt Demchick - the _real_ manager, Scott Mcmahan -
and, of course, Michael Satterwhite, of Human Resources.
They told me that my relationship with Oracle was being terminated.
When I asked why, I was told that it was because I had been unpro-
-ductive.
( Note, please, one of the problems :
177514 pwilson Next w/s prob
It's worth noting that this is the same PWILSON, vice-president
of Oracle's Human Resources ... so the question of how the Human
Resources department arrived at a verdict of "unproductive" is
an interesting, and potentially embarrassing, one.
Paul Wilson sounded like a perfectly nice guy, over the phone,
and showed absolutely no sign of recognizing my name at all.
One has to wonder if, perhaps, he never read his email ... )
I asked if they were referring to the period of the past three
weeks, when I was on paid leave, initiated by Oracle. No, that
was not the period of unproductivity they meant.
I asked if it was the period during Christmas, when I had handled
a blackout, repaired a major resource of World-Wide Support during
a grueling multi-day ordeal ( wrseq3's DCC controller, if memory
serves me correctly ) and supported the Western Region alone ? No,
it wasn't that period, either.
Was it the period of the six months previously, for which I had
received a bonus ? Nope, it wasn't that period, either.
page 91
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
They wanted me to sign an agreement, a cursory exit form, by which
signature I acknowledged receipt of my severance check, two weeks'
salary. On the last page was an annotation noting that I would not
sue Oracle, in exchange for the severance pay. I refused it.
Burt Demchick was silent. This was not his gathering, and it was
not of his choosing. They were using his office, but he was only
a prop, and had never had a word to say in the whole debate. He
had been the recipient of all of the email on the subject and knew
what was going on as well as I did - I was being scapegoated.
( This perception was reflected in his words to the EDD on this
topic, in the days to come. )
So I boxed up my office, and left, escorted by nervous security.
No one saw me leave ... they had all been given the afternoon off.
page 92
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 93
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
2.15 Cause For Termination ? An Analysis
In the months afterwards, when I examined HR files, I saw
that they had added "and causing a disruption of the work
environment" to the form describing my cause for dismissal.
However, it is a fact that they never raised this issue in my
exit interview, and apparently they added it afterwards. ( I
daresay I should be glad that they didn't add something worse
and even more defamatory ... and I question the right of an
employer to spuriously modify employee records to substantiate
and make legal and patently illegal action ... to cover up the
evidence of wrongdoing, as it were. )
However, it is a violation of DFEH regulations to fire a person
for communicating to his or her coworkers, that their employer
is in violation of the law. And this, essentially, is what I did.
There is some question as to whether sending email to selected
individuals can be described as "disrupting the work environment",
insofar as I used no work-related email distribution lists.
Pamela Mabon, on the other hand, did use work-related distribution
lists. And her message definitely disrupted the work environment,
I understand, insofar as it provoked some sort of meeting, which
I heard about subsequently.
And, of course, is calling for everyone to cease gossiping and to
return to spending their time productively, a call to riot ? I'm
pretty sure it is exactly the opposite.
It is, in fact, what Human Resources or VP Alan Tottle should have
done over two months before.
-=8=-
How about this "unproductivity" nonsense ?
I believe that before one fires a person for unproductive behavior,
one has an obligation to give them some sort of warning. No such
warning was given. No one had ever brought this topic up. And it
isn't hard to understand why ... I was anything but "unproductive".
The metrics in the TAR database ... the opinions of the users whom
requested IP addresses from , and got them,
the same day ... the opinions of users and peer administrators ...
all say exactly the opposite.
The day I was fired, I was scheduled to assume responsibility for
the Unix pager - I had volunteered to take another person's duty,
so that they could go skiing at Lake Tahoe. ( Sorry about that,
Kenny. :-)
page 94
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
-=8=-
If this isn't enough, let's take a look at what Burt Demchick said
to the EDD representative, or, more precisely, what the EDD rep-
-resentative understood Burt to have said :
"... client stated he was told he was being terminated because
he wasn't productive during the past three weeks he was employed
- the last three weeks he was on leave - 2 weeks stress leave and
while he was off his father was hit by a car & killed - when he
returned to work was terminated - he's getting a lawyer - because
they had no grounds to fire him - except to cover up their handling
of his situation - employer - burt demchick - not available ...
employer returned call & stated client behavior was not wilful
misconduct - mgmt felt his actions were disruptive for the dept.
- "but definitely not wilful misconduct" ... couldn't give me any
more information"
Why couldn't Burt say any more ? Because, I suspect, he had been
told in no uncertain terms to say nothing to anyone ... because,
I learned, that Oracle was very concerned that it might be sued.
-=8=-
There's also the question of terminating someone for being ill.
If, as Oracle insists, I was ill, then, by firing me after they
forced me to take a medical leave, they violated another DFEH
regulation ( California Government Code 12940-12945, effective
01 January 1993 ).
page 95
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
3.01 Immediate Consequences
The whole thing reeks of bad faith, carelessness, indifference,
and incompetence on a grand scale.
So, it was no surprise to learn that, a few months later, Michael
Satterwhite was no longer with Oracle. I don't know if he quit,
or was also scapegoated, in the weeks and months afterwards. It
would not, for instance, surprise me to learn that he was follow-
-ing the instructions given to him by Kirsten Dwyer, Director of
Human Resources, to the letter ... but that she had neglected to
put them down in writing, against this very possibility.
Or perhaps he was offered another position, elsewhere, where he
would not be required to place himself in a position of civil,
if not criminal, liability, as a representative of Human Resources.
-=8=-
Burt Demchick left shortly thereafter, also, not at Oracle's
request, but by his own choice.
Coincidentally, I was contracting at a company where his housemate
worked, and he filled the very same position, and office, that I
had occupied for two months, as a contractor ... fulfilling all of
my concerns about the 'small world' nature of the Silicon Valley
community, rather neatly, in the process - and validating my concern
over the inevitable propogation of the behavior attributed to me by
one angry, irresponsible, immature woman, by small-minded gossips ...
-=8=-
I also lost the trust and the affection of my older brother ...
page 96
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page 97
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
3.02 Continuing Consequences
At this time, Oracle continues to tell people, whom call for
a reference, that I was terminated - for "being unproductive,
and causing a disruption to the work environment".
To date, this has cost me several permanent jobs, and no small
amount of income I would have received as a consequence.
The "unproductivity" accusation can be easily settled, by :
- asking my coworke4rs at Oracle, and examining the
available records, metrics and the like ;
- asking my previous manager, at Ingres - where I
filled three positions in the group's organiza-
-tional chart ; or
- by asking another former manager and coworker,
whom saw my vacant position, when I left Network
Equipment Technologies, require four people, to
achieve the same sort of response time and quality
control ; or
- by asking the people I worked for and with, when I
was contracting at Charles Schwab - where my one-
month contract was extended twice ;
... et caetera.
However, convincing interviewers to do this is rather difficult,
and it makes a lot more sense to attempt to force Oracle to tell
the truth, once and for all, and settle this publically.
Not only do I believe that I cannot afford to allow Oracle to
continue to defame me ... but I also believe I have an obligation,
to myself and everyone else, to see the truth told, and to see that
Oracle accepts responsibility for wide-scale corporate carelessness
and contempt for laws and procedures.
So, no, I don't believe that Oracle had or has cause to terminate
me as they did ... and I will continue to represent the other side
of the story, for the rest of my life, to all whom will listen.
page 98
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
page A1
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
A.01 Not The First Time - Religious Harrassment At Oracle
The following story is first-hand, and is offered for an insight
into the decision-making procedures at the Oracle Corporation.
-=8=-
In September of 1991, a group of teenagers with some adult help,
up in Oregon, started posting articles to the Internet, which
were rather controversial.
They described themselves as "Anti-Revisionists", and were busy
posting excerpts, from books by people sympathetic to the Third
Reich, suggesting, through documentary analysis, that numbers
of Jewish people killed in concentration camps, had been inflated
subsequently.
As can be imagined, some people were strongly opposed to this,
and called for them to stop.
A few called for stronger action.
Specifically, a gentleman named Barry Shein, located on the East
Coast, and employed as a writer for computer newspapers, posted
a call, publically, for everyone to "bombard" the offending site
with multi-megabyte-sized files, to force their disks to fill up,
their modems to be tied up, their neighbors to reject them, and,
subsequently, to disconnect from them.
Another gentleman, on the West Coast, one Jeff Frane, was a little
more civilized, and instead chose to compel these people to come
forward and bask in the limelight of publicity, instead of hiding
behind assumed names and BBS handles.
I had no problem with Jeff Frane's approach. However, I regarded
Barry Shein's behavior as the moral equivalent of terrorism ...
a full-scale "denial of service" attack, quite unprovoked, with
the deliberate intention being interference with the freedom of
speech of these misguided youth.
I feared for the example this would set for others. Would the Net
become subject to a thousand little Hitlers, each self-appointed,
each permitted to use their understanding of technology to deny
use of the Internet to any but their approved topics ?
Would the Internet become deluged with multi-megabyte-sized files,
meaningless data randomly assembled, repetitively propogated to
the same machines, over and over, while conventional users all
struggled to make normal use of a suddenly useless Internet ?
These were my concerns ... and they were also valid concerns for
my employer, and many other corporations whom relied upon the Net
to communicate and exchange data and information.
page A2
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
I communicated my concerns to Barry, through metaphor, by sending
him pretty much what he'd called for, publically - a concatenation
of his own email, a dozen or so copies.
He accused me of being a Nazi sympathizer, and swore he would get
me fired, through his friends there at Oracle. I, he said, did not
know with whom I was dealing.
-=8=-
It was a few days later that I learned that my job was on the line.
Apparently, Barry had used _something_ to infuriate several dozen
people into believing that I was a militant Nazi, a white suprema-
-cist, and an all-around scumbag.
Whatever the case, the director wanted to see me and my manager.
I explained the situation, and showed them copies of Barry's email.
This changed their attitude rapidly.
I also pointed out that it sounded an awful lot like Barry was
engaging in a conspiracy with members of the Oracle Corporation,
to defraud me of my freedom of speech and other civil rights.
Having given the director of the Data Center what he sought - a
way out of this mess - I was told to return to work, and to not
engage in communications with Barry, publically or privately.
-=8=-
A few weeks later, the director asked me if I had sent Barry email.
It appeared that Barry had tried a second time to get me fired, by
forging some email allegedly from me at Oracle. I pointed out that
the system logs should show that I had sent him nothing ... and it
became generally understood that Barry was a shameless liar.
From that time on, Barry's complaints were ignored. At least, they
were ignored officially.
-=8=-
But when I told this story to someone who knew one of the VPs at
Oracle, personally, they told me something I had not known.
Oracle is a company staffed, owned, and controlled by Jewish people.
This becomes less controversial, and more meaningful, if one takes
into account the recent furor raised in San Francisco newspapers,
over the monitoring of "anti-Israeli" groups in the Bay Area by an
employee of the San Francisco Police Department, who was also a
double agent in the intelligence business, and sold this informa-
-tion to representatives ( agents ? operatives ? ) of the Jewish
Anti-Defamation League ( if memory serves me correctly ).
page A3
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
... for, what I am describing, here, has many facets which suggest
a similarly covert operation ...
-=8=-
( My acquaintance knew of Oracle, as he was Jewish, himself. For what
it is worth, so was the director of the department ... and so were
other, later managers. This was and is not an issue with me ... as
various friends can attest. The house of Judaism is hardly a mono-
-lithic organization ... it is as riddled with schisms, infighting,
and power politics, as is any organization.
( It was, and remains, clear that Barry Shein was not, here, repre-
-senting "Judaism", per se, or even "American Jewish people", but
only his own, personal sociopolitical agenda, as represented by he
and a few other hotheads, intent upon reliving fantasies of Resis-
-ting Evil - fantasies based upon the acts of a few adolescents.
( Incidentally, I use "Judaism" loosely, here. Not all of these were
"practicing" Jewish people ... most were Liberal, as opposed to
Orthodox, Jewish, and many disapprove of the Jewish Defense League
and its tactics almost as strongly as they deplore the anti-Jewish
acts of terrorism, which the JDL alleges to stand against.
( Exactly what "Judaism" is, is not easy to define. It is not just
a genetic definition, as all of the tribes of the Arabian desert
can be described as "Semitic", and the traces of a common language
bridging Arabic and Hebrew are no farther than the similarities
between the Arabic word for peace - "salaam" - and the Hebrew word
for peace - "shalom". So, I will let everyone define it for them-
-selves, secure that no one can misunderstand me, without effort. )
-=8=-
Now, "Jewish" is many things, to many people. It is a race, but
it is also a religion, and a culture, and a nation, as well.
I, personally, have nothing against any of these facets of Judaism,
and, as a member of the San Francisco Unitarian Church, I have
celebrated several Thanksgivings at local synogogues, besides.
However, with respect to death camps, and similar unspeakable
topics, let's face it. Lots of people died in concentration camps.
Unitarians, gypsies, homosexuals, Jews, anyone who didn't fit into
the Master Plan, for that matter.
I suppose I could understand the pain of someone whose family was
killed in a concentration camp. But when it's a grandfather, or
a greatgrandfather, or a distant second cousin, the moral outrage
stretches a little thin.
After all, I am Hungarian. I lost family in the Hungarian Uprising,
in the late 1950s. But do I hate Russians ?
page A4
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
And which Russians should I hate, anyway ? Should I hate their
children, and grand-children, ad infinitum ?
Where does the moral outrage end, and where does the responsible
steps towards a peaceful future, begin ?
And did Barry Shein have any real claim to moral outrage ... or
was he only a fanatic, provoking his listeners to the cybernetic
equivalent of a riot, or a lynching ?
And where does the Bill of Rights fit into this ? Barry, or his
forebears, had come here in search of freedom of speech, freedom
of religion, freedom of beliefs. Now, here was Barry, actively
working to repress others' rights.
-=8=-
So, perhaps it is understandable, if I ask :
- Did one of those whom contacted the Data Center director, and
demand that I be fired ( there were many, I was told ), also
contact people s/he knew in Human Resources, and attempt to
force the same consequences to me, there ?
- Did this influence the thinking of those handling my case in
Human Resources, over a year later ... specifically, Michael
Satterwhite's otherwise totally irrational behavior ?
- And, although this is well past the time limit for reporting
religious harrassment ... does this not evaluate to religious
discrimination, on a corporate scale ?
- Is this religious discrimination visible in the statistics of
people employed ( or not employed ) by Oracle ? For instance,
I don't recall meeting many black or Middle-Eastern people in
my year-and-a-half at Oracle ... do they discriminate against
people whom might be Arabic, or practicing Moslems ?
I have no conclusions, at this time ... but I feel that this is
not totally irrelevant, in understanding the bizarre circumstances
which surround this complaint.
page A5
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
A.02 Log Of Relevant Events
1992
Mar
17 Personal email, re: 'Que pasa ?'
replied to.
18 Personal email, re: 'Hello!'
replied to.
21 Personal email, re: 'reflections on ... meltdown'
23 Personal email, re: 'voice mail'
replied to.
25 Personal email, re:
April
May
15 Personal email, re: 'that pesky curiosity'
replied to.
16 Personal email, re: 'beads, macrame, etc'
18 Personal email, re: 'in retrospect'
replied to.
19 Personal email, re: 'Re: in retrospect'
June
July
22 Personal email, re: 'for your information'
August
13 Personal email, re: 'ancillary fallout'
27 Personal email, re: 'women, technology & careers'
September
October
21 departmental email, re: 'happy birthday'
replied to. Coworker demands that I cease email
on anything but company business.
22 departmental email, re: 'work-related comments'
22 Lisa Cussary accuses me of harrassing one of her
personnel - I deny this, and become quite upset.
23 Notify manager Scott Macmahan of accusations.
25 Personal email, re: 'followup to Betsy Guala's
complaint(s)' - I provide a detailed response to
Lisa's accusations, via email. I make copies for
my future reference.
page A6
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
November
12 Meet with M Satterwhite, 1030-1100, & EEO person,
believed to be one Milana Solganik, to discuss the
charges of harrassment levelled at me by another
member of Data Center staff. I provide them with a
copy, each, of the letter I provided in my original
response to Lisa Cussary's accusation that I was
harrassing one of her people.
12 Email to Michael Satterwhite of HR, re: 'recent
meeting' - request resolution to accusations.
12 Email to S Mcmahan, re: 'Betsy Guala's Allegations',
briefing him on accusations and providing him with
a copy of letter given to Lisa Cussary, M Satterwhite
and M Solganik.
12 Departmental email to relevant managers, noting that
I am experiencing considerable stress and that I am
willing to take a polygraph if we cannot come to any
other conclusion.
12 Request vacation.
13 Email to S Mcmahan and M Satterwhite making it clear
I will not settle for anything less than complete
resolution of these accusations.
15 As an act of good faith, I download a thesis by a
woman at MIT on the topic of the perceptions of women
in a male-dominated technological work environement,
and notify managers of its availablility, going so
far as to come in to work, print it out, and leave
copies outside my door for people to read during my
weeks-long absence on vacation.
16 On vacation in Oregon.
17 On vacation in Oregon.
18 On vacation in Oregon.
18 Mickey Satterwhite notifies me via email that we need
to discuss the contents of my email of 13 November.
19 On vacation in Oregon.
20 On vacation in Oregon.
page A7
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
December
03 I complain that this is taking too long to resolve,
sending copies to multiple managers, via email.
08 Mickey Satterwhite requests a meeting, but I am
out sick.
09 I notify Mickey Satterwhite that I am available
to meet.
09 After no reply from Mickey Satterwhite ( whose
voice mailbox is full ), I call Kirsten D Lee,
the Data Center's liason with HR. I brief her
on the situation, learning in the process that
the accusations of harassment have been stated
to the HR group in a recent meeting, and that I
am filling in the missing pieces for Kirsten.
I forward to her my original email to Lisa Cussary,
and ask her to put me in touch with Mickey
Satterwhite as soon as possible.
( Later, I learn that she has been ordered to
remain uninvolved with the matter and does not
want to know anything about it. )
15 I make it explicit I am unsatisfied with HR's
failure to close the issue in writing, after I
am told that, as far as Oracle is concerned,
nothing is in writing and it never happened.
I note that six weeks have now passed.
18 I repeat myself, noting specifically HR's refusal
to acknowledge that I have been accused of harass-
-ment, CC:ing VPs of HR and the Data Center.
23 After mysterious comments from Data Center VP during
departmental Christmas party, I email VP directly
regarding my innocence and request for intervention.
24-27 Responsible for Oracle's entire West Coast, and
actually on site repairing a broken Sequent for a
large part of the four days.
28-31 Determine the necessity of providing my own analysis
of events. Identify three points needing attention:
(1) demonstration of plaintiff's bad faith
(2) demonstration of oracle hr's failure(s)
(3) TBD
page A8
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
1993
January
?? Receive bonus for past six months.
4-10 Develop analysis of events to date and identify a
pattern of bad will on the part of plaintiff, then
send copies to all relevant managers.
11-12 Develop an analysis of the consequences of Oracle's
failure, as improvement was badly needed, and then
send copies to all relevant managers. ( Title: 'He
kept sending her email'
14 Left Oracle around 10 AM, on two weeks medical leave.
19 Leon struck by truck and taken to SF General Hospital
around 9 AM. At hospital by 11 AM.
21 Meet with Dr Brewer, psychiatrist, regarding problem
at work.
22 Decision is made to disconnect Leon from life support.
23 Decision is implemented, Leon dies.
26 Meet with Sr Brewer, again, and get note certifying
me as stable enough to return to work.
February
8 Return to work. 1870 messages waiting to be read. I
read defamatory message but take a day to think over
response.
9 Complete reading messages, compose and send reply
to defamatory message, addressing subset of those
whom received defamatory message.
10 Work from home - problem with alternator mount that
requires machine shop. Handle several TARs from home
including one involving VP of Human Resources.
TAR # 177247, DNS down on stealth
TAR # 177281, unknown, fixed
TAR # 177421, WWHITE @ Bethesda, Sun W/S
TAR # 177456, CFINKELS, Sun W/S
TAR # 177514, PWILSON, NeXT workstation
TAR # 177710, MBERTNIC, O*Mail question
TAR # 177712, MSTUHMER, kermit @ Denver ?
TAR # 177786, SKRAUS, NCD term windows
TAR # 172810, VNATARAJ, NCD dead
TAR # 177818, MKLEIN, Sun boot prob
TAR # 177822, JLIANG, Sun NIS prob
page A9
Harrassment At The Oracle Corporation
=====================================
TAR # 177842, AMEYER, Sparc10 keyboard
TAR # 177940, MCKELLY, wrseq:/home full
TAR # 178045, SBUXTON, process table prob
read rootmail, 138 messages
11 Terminated for "being unproductive" around 4 PM.
March
1 EDD representative "B B Cherry" calls manager Burt
Demchick at Oracle, asks for clarification, is told
"definitely not wilfull misconduct" ( interviewer's
words ).
April
May
June
July
August
2 Mailed letter of understanding regarding reasons for
termination - "lack of productivity and creating a
disruption in the work environment" - to S Mcmahan
and A Tottle, separately, via USPS certified mail.
($Id: dfeh.shtml,v 1.1 1998/06/26 15:51:33 childers Exp childers $)