Brain Surgery & Sexual Harassment at Work

By age 21, my seizures were fully out of control. Dr. W. had sent me for an MRI and an EEG at London, Ontario's Epilepsy Unit in then known as, University Hospital, now known as London Health Sciences Centre. In March of 1990 I was in the hospital for brain surgery research to see if I qualified for epilepsy brain surgery. After a couple of weeks of research, they were able to pinpoint the area causing seizures. On March 28, 1990 at 1pm, I underwent a Right Temporal Lobectomy while awake. The surgery was only 5 years old at the time, so I am part of the research that goes with it. I couldn't go wrong with a 98% chance to be seizure-free without taking medications.
I can say that it has been at the time of writing, it has been successful for 29 years – no seizures at all, not even an aura.

I was able to get a job thanks to a wonderful friend CS I had made a church. She put in a good word for me at Sears with her boss and good friend MH. I did really good at work there, getting promotions and raises until RS came into the picture. Oh, what a character he was!

He started coming around the cashier station where I worked and just casually talking. He worked at Sears too. I started out in the Ladieswear department and I loved it there and wish I'd have been able to stay there. Everything else after that was difficult and not my style.

I was moved to Customer Service next and I liked it as well, but I didn't understand all the goings on there. There were too many aspects to remember for me. I did okay if they left me in one spot but if they kept shifting me around I had trouble. So I'd been promoted from the ladieswear to customer service. Now they moved me to electronics.

Electronics is where all hell began to break loose. RS began to come around and see me on his shifts more often. He'd have cards for me. He'd ask me out on dates. I only dated men if they were my age and especially only if they were of the Christian belief system. I was 21, he was in his 30's. He was not a Christian like I was.

He started to say really weird things to me when he came around my work station that really creeped me out. Things like “I'll be your Robinhood and you can be my Maid Marion.” or “I'll be your Prince Charming and you can be Cinderella.” And my eyes would just widen in creepiness. He used all kinds of analogies like this and it just grossed me out. It was when he followed me home that things took a turn for me.

There were days that flowers showed up at my door. The first bouquet that showed up I accepted because I didn't know where they came from. When I realized who sent them, I was ready to throw them out. Mom said not to do that so I gave the bouquet to her. In fact, my family thought I was crazy for not wanting the attention this guy was giving me. They just didn't know the undue pressure this creep was putting me under at work and what kind of stress he had me under at home.

He showed up at my door one day when I was home alone with a bouquet of red roses and a box of chocolates after I had told him to stop sending flowers and to leave me alone for the umpteenth time. I didn't want to go out with him. I wanted him to leave me alone. I wasn't interested in dating, not him, not anybody else. Yet he showed up. There he stood with a bouquet of roses and chocolates. I didn't want them. I tried to shut the door but he stuck his foot in the doorway so I couldn't close it.

In the meantime, the pizza I had ordered showed up. He tried to pay for that too, but I looked at the pizza delivery guy and told him no. He knew our family well and understood. RS kept trying to pay for my pizza and I kept saying no. I invited the pizza guy in and paid him and he left. And when he left I told RS I was going to eat and that FINALLY gave me the opportunity to get his foot out of the door and get him away. Friends say he stood there for over an hour. I don't care. He said Sears had given him my address, but when I asked them, they said no, they never give out addresses. The police say he has followed me home when I took the bus one day.

My brother and parents thought I was being crazy over all this, until my dad started to experience the RS effect. I would never have known that dad was being harassed by RS except that I was home alone one evening and the phone rang. It was a pastor looking for dad. Dad was not yet home and I asked to take a message for him. Turned out to be a pastor from the church RS said he went to. So I took the message and gave it to dad when he got home. And when he got home I gave the message to him with a few questions.

Apparently RS had been harassing dad at his work for a week, begging my dad to get me to go out with him, usually for 3 hours every morning. Suddenly I am not so crazy. Dad even called the police on him. It's not fun to deal with at work or at home.

Myself and two other female employees my age went to the management of Sears with all our evidence of cards, letters etc., but they would not let us proceed with pressing charges against him. (We should have went ahead and charged him nonetheless.) By the next year I was so stressed out and my family was so stressed out that I quit working to keep peace in the family and to save my sanity. Eventually RS would leave me alone once the police got involved – my dad would end up calling the police. Sears may have not wanted me calling, but they didn't say anything about my dad.

I find it ironic that Sears did nothing to help the 3 of us young women who were being harassed back then and now they are out of business.  Some call that karma.  I call it justice.

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