The issue in EEOC v. V & J Foods Inc. was whether a teenage employee’s sexual-harassment case could proceed even if she hadn’t followed the employee handbook’s harassment reporting procedure. The Seventh Circuit held that the handbook was written in such a way that it was not clear to the average teenager and allowed the case to proceed.

THE HARASSMENT BEGINS

Burger King hired a 16-year-old high-school student to work part time. The restaurant’s 35-year-old general manager — who had had sexual relations with several of his female employees — began to make suggestive comments to her, rubbing up against her and trying to kiss her.

The manager told her he wanted “a young girl” and offered her $600 to go to a hotel with him. When she said she wasn’t interested and had a boyfriend, he told her that “he was tired of doing things” for her, and he wasn’t “going to do anything else” for her because she was “giving her body away for free” when he “was trying to pay” her. Then he turned hostile to her.

After the student’s mother complained to a shift supervisor about the harassment, the manager fired the employee on the ground that she had involved her mother rather than handling it “like a lady.”

The employee filed a sexual harassment charge with the EEOC, and it sued Burger King on her behalf. Without ruling on whether the employee had been harassed, the trial court dismissed the suit for failing to follow the harassment-complaint procedure.

THE EEOC APPEALS

Under Title VII, an employer can avoid harassment liability by showing that it had in place a reasonable mechanism by which harassment victims could complain and get relief. The complaint mechanism’s reasonableness depends on the “employment circumstances” and the capabilities of the class of employees.

The Seventh Circuit found that, in this case, the employees who needed to activate the complaint procedure were teenagers. Burger King — knowing it had many teenage employees — was obligated to adapt its procedures to the average teenager’s understanding. Instead, Burger King adopted a harassment complaint procedure that the Seventh Circuit found was confusing even to adults.

The employee handbook’s brief harassment section directed employees to lodge complaints with the “district manager” without giving that manager’s name or how to communicate with the manager. The list of corporate officers and managers at the beginning of the handbook didn’t list a “district manager” — or for that matter a “general manager” — but instead listed a “restaurant manager.”

And evidence showed that employees confused “district manager” with “restaurant [or general] manager,” who would be — in this case — the harasser himself. Moreover, if an employee complained to a shift supervisor or assistant manager, that person was supposed to forward the complaint to the general manager (here, the harasser) even if the complaint was about the general manager. After receiving a complaint, the general manager was supposed to “turn himself in,” which of course the general manager here didn’t do.

So the Seventh Circuit concluded that an anti-harassment policy that includes no assurance of bypassing a harassing supervisor in the complaint process is unreasonable as a matter of law. The court reinstated the suit for trial.

ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL

This case demonstrates the importance of adopting employment policies and procedures that are tailored to an individual company. Carefully review and revise “boilerplate” policies to be sure they are appropriately worded for your work force. The policies should be easily understood by the average employee.

Burger King had adopted a harassment complaint procedure that the Seventh Circuit found was confusing even to adults, and it therefore provided no protection in a subsequent harassment claim.