I work remotely for a large company, and my department occasionally gets opportunities to travel to trade shows and conferences. My career path is moving toward field sales, and my management has been really supportive in helping me gain experience, so I tend to get selected for a lot of these opportunities alongside different team members each time. I’ve worked hard for it, have strong performance reviews, and have become pretty experienced at these events, to the point where my manager often doesn’t need to attend with us anymore.
Recently at one of these conferences, a group of us went to a mixer after work. It was me, another female coworker from my department, a male coworker from our department who had never attended before, another female coworker from a different department that I’m close with, and another male colleague from a different department that we had all just met for the first time.
We were all joking around and talking about the event. One of the male coworkers mentioned how fun the experience was and asked how people get chosen for more trade shows, kind of jokingly asking how I get picked so often. My female coworker immediately said something along the lines of, “Oh, you just have to flash your boobs.”
I was honestly caught off guard. Two people at the table had literally just met us, and I was also the only person there whose direct manager is male and the only one who attends almost all of these events, so it felt pretty pointed. I immediately shut it down and said something like, “Whoa, let me stop that right there. That’s absolutely not true, and let’s not start that rumor.”
Everyone awkwardly laughed it off, but the next day the female coworker from the other department checked on me privately and said she thought the comment was really unprofessional.
I decided to move on, but then a few days later while we were leaving the hotel, we were joking around about hotel amenities. A male coworker mentioned he had to pay for something, and I said I didn’t. The same female coworker immediately said, “Well, that’s because you have boobs.”
At that point I was annoyed. One comment maybe could have been brushed off as a bad joke, but twice started feeling really disrespectful, especially because I work hard and genuinely earned these opportunities. I told her directly that the comments were inappropriate and unprofessional and that I didn’t appreciate them. She immediately started crying and apologizing, which honestly made me feel bad.
I eventually brought it up to my boss because it kept bothering me more the longer I sat with it. He felt awful and told me it was up to me whether I wanted to escalate it or not. I told him I really don’t want some huge HR investigation or drama, but I also kind of want it documented somewhere because the comments were inappropriate.
I reached out to the ombudsman to talk things through, but I’m hesitant because this coworker and the ombudsman are longtime family friends. I’d probably keep details vague if I even spoke to them.
So I guess my question is: is there a way to put something like this on record informally without opening a full complaint or investigation? Or do I just let it go?