After a dozen roundtable discussions with city employees, Mayor Diane Delaware said “horseplay and teasing” were the most reoccurring subjects in every meeting.
“This topic came up in every roundtable, and it was about horseplay,” Delaware said, during the most recent city council meeting. “It was about teasing. It was about making jokes. It was talking about the size of people’s organs and things of this nature.”
Delaware topic may make some people uncomfortable, but the city needs to set clear guidelines on what is and isn’t considered appropriate behavior for city employees.
“I am quoting employees when they said, ‘men think it is OK to do this,’” Delaware said. “So, it is important to bring it up in public. Horseplay is not appropriate in the workplace. Teasing is not appropriate in the workplace.”
Delaware said the problem is not acceptable and can prove to be costly to the city in the future.
“This is a violation of the terms and agreements of your employment to each and every one of us,” Delaware said. “We come to work to do our jobs. And this will be dealt with accordingly.”
Delaware said the roundtable discussions were very informative, open, honest and needed.
“This was a practice I don’t believe was in place prior to me becoming mayor,” she said. “In fact, when I became mayor, people told me that I should not even talk to employees at all. I found that to be a bizarre comment. I don’t want to go backwards. We are moving forward.”
Delaware said that other than the horseplay and teasing subject, safety and training were other popular topics.
“If it was low hanging fruit and something I had the power to address then, and I did at that very moment,” Delaware said. “There were some situations of magnitude that made it impossible to address immediately. There were some things that will never be addressed. Just as management can be wrong in their assessment, employees can be wrong in their assessment.”
