About a year ago, I filed a formal HR complaint against my supervisor after a work trip with my team. We’re remote, so this was the first time we were all together in person.
Monday was just travel, but by Tuesday things had started feeling off. At first, it was subtle, but by that afternoon I knew something wasn’t right, and I could tell from my coworkers’ reactions I wasn’t imagining it.
Over the next couple days there were multiple situations that I felt crossed professional lines. Some involved comments that were sexual in nature or at least inappropriate for a supervisor. There were also situations where I was singled out or put in uncomfortable positions in front of others.
I’m not someone who stays quiet when something feels off, so I addressed things in the moment as professionally as I could and set boundaries where I needed to. One of my coworkers stepped in a few times, and later in the week he refused to go along with something she was asking him to do to me because it clearly wasn’t appropriate.
After each incident, I documented what was said or done immediately while it was still fresh so the details would be accurate.
I didn’t originally plan to file a complaint, but that changed after my supervisor messaged me directly after the trip and the tone shifted into what felt like intimidation and an attempt to control the narrative of what happened.
At that point, I organized everything into a formal complaint. It ended up being around 40 to 45 pages, with 8 specific incidents from the trip plus the follow-up chat messages. I know that sounds like a lot, but I used a very spaced-out format, so each incident was easy to follow and not just a wall of text. I also did not randomly choose 8 incidents. Those were the specific incidents that came up in the conversation with my supervisor, so I included the context for each one.
Soon after that chat, she also reframed one of my group chat messages as inappropriate, even though it was written plainly and without any hostile tone. She then arranged a meeting between me and the Chief of HR for the following Monday. That meeting is when I submitted the formal complaint.
During the investigation, another situation came up where I was excluded from communication and given a different process than the rest of the team. I submitted that as an addendum. The investigator called me and told me he wouldn’t accept it, saying that situation was based on his direction and not my supervisor’s.
When the findings meeting happened, HR opened by saying they had done their due diligence. At the same time, it was explained that only some of the incidents were actually investigated, not all of them. The ones that were reviewed were not the ones I considered the most serious.
My supervisor was placed on a 90-day probation.
Shortly after that, there was another situation where after about 45 minutes, my supervisor placed a call to my personal phone during work hours. No text message was sent and no voicemail was left. One minute later, before I had realistically been given time to even see the missed call and respond, she escalated the situation to the head of HR. This was something she had never done before with anyone else on the team and has not done since.
The situation was framed as me being unreachable for 45 minutes and not answering calls from my supervisor. After my manager initiated what had now been escalated into an emergency-level response, HR contacted my phone and left a voicemail stating my supervisor had been trying to reach me. Two minutes later, before I had a reasonable opportunity to return the call, HR began contacting the people listed on my emergency contact form, eventually calling all seven contacts listed.
The voicemail left for them stated that I had not shown up for work, was unreachable by phone, and asked whether they knew my whereabouts.
That felt extremely excessive to me, especially given the context and the fact that no similar response had ever been initiated for anyone else on the team.
Since the probation period ended a few months ago, things haven’t gone back to normal. If anything, it feels more targeted.
I’ve been documenting things like increased scrutiny on my availability, normal questions or clarification from me being interpreted as attitude, being left out of communications others receive, processes being applied differently to me, and items showing up in my review that don’t reflect what actually happened.
For context, I’m diagnosed with ASD level 1, and I communicate very literally and directly. If the words aren’t there, I didn’t say it. My team is aware of that, but it still seems to get reframed at times.
The emotional, mental, and physical toll has built over the past year, especially because the behavior did not stop after the original complaint. I work remotely from home, and I now dread work almost every day. I am trying to stay professional, but the ongoing pattern has made even normal communication feel tense and unsafe.
At this point, I’m trying to understand if what I experienced during the investigation and complaint process is within normal HR practices, or if I should be more concerned about how this was handled and what’s happening now.
Questions:
- Is it normal for HR to investigate only selected incidents from a formal complaint instead of reviewing everything, especially when witnesses were identified and some of the more serious incidents involved inappropriate or sexually charged comments?
- If a manager says something was done based on HR direction, does that remove responsibility from them, or could it still be considered part of retaliation?
- Does the fact that my manager said HR directed an action, such as calling my emergency contacts after roughly an hour of non-response, automatically make it appropriate and non-retaliatory, or would HR still consider the context and my manager’s role in initiating it?
- Did I make a mistake filing the original complaint if the outcome is that similar behavior is continuing, but now feels more like I am being set up for future disciplinary action, or is that exactly why this should be treated as a potential retaliation claim instead of a brand-new complaint?
I trusted the process the first time. I’m trying to figure out if trusting it again would actually help or just make things worse.