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Clifford v. American Drug Stores8/22/2005
priate behavior toward her. The first occurrence was a bear hug in front of her staff. It lasted a full minute, and she could feel his body pressed against her. When she pulled away and told him that it was not proper to touch her like that, he simply smiled and said nothing. Although she was shocked and highly offended, Clifford did not think to report him at that time.
Market managers usually make inspection visits to their stores once a week, but after the bear hug, Doose began coming into Clifford's store twice a week, progressing to four times per week, and then almost every day. During these visits, he would put his hand on Clifford's waist, leaving it there for a few minutes and refusing her demands to stop. After a few such incidents, his hand would brush her buttocks as he took it off her waist, and then he started putting his hand on her buttocks. Clifford demanded that he stop, told him that it was not appropriate and that she was offended by it, but he refused and she would have to pull away from him. Since Doose usually engaged in the inappropriate behavior while they were alone, Clifford tried to deal with the problem by having Charles Huskins, her assistant manager, stand between them.
Sometime in 1995, after Clifford had been in the Buena Park store about three months, she spoke to Adrian Monreal, her store's loss prevention supervisor, about the sexual harassment. Company policy required reporting instances of sexual harassment to Sav-On's loss prevention department, which bore the responsibility to address such issues as safety, sanitation, security, and internal investigations, including claims of sexual harassment. Monreal suggested that she speak to Bill Thompson.
Clifford agreed to call Thompson because she had had a good working relationship with him for six or seven years and he was very "high up" in the company. She telephoned him while Monreal listened, and was very specific about what Doose had been doing to her. Thompson's response was to tell her that although she was very well thought of in the main office, she would be blackballed if she reported Doose, and could kiss her career good-bye.
Clifford felt helpless, did not know what to do, but thought that the most appropriate thing was to tell Doose to stop his advances toward her, even though that had not done any good before. She told Doose that she felt very uncomfortable about the way he was touching her, that she was very disturbed by it, that it was affecting her work performance, because she would hide from him every time he came in, and she was unable to sleep at night. His response was to assure her that she liked it.
In the meantime, Monreal also reported the sexual harassment to his supervisor, Louis Escarsega, the loss prevention manager for the district. Monreal told him that Clifford had been sexually harassed, and asked him to verify that this was a loss prevention matter. Althou
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