In my experience, just bringing the playboy to work would often be grounds for discipline, up to and including termination. That in and of itself is simply inappropriate at work, especially in the paranoid climate of harassment that exists in many organizations today.
This week one of the supervisors who reports to me was accused of harassment. He was talking to his group about neew changes in the SOP for their job and one of the ladies got all bent out of shape that we are changing it because she liked the supervisor who set it up the old (and more flawed) way. So she spoke up and called him an idiot for changing it. He told her to talk to him afterward if she had an issue with it, but that they had their chance to disagree with the new process and she didn't say anything. She went straight to HR and said he called her out and talked down to her because she is a woman, she even threw in a few remarks he supposedly made about her appearance and proclivities. Not one of the 30 other people in the meeting corroborated her story, including all of the 15+ women in the group.
So I got to spend a good chunk of 3 days interviewing folks, investigating, we even looked at the camera that covers the area to see if anything looked out of whack. And she didn't even claim that any of it happened behind closed doors. All in that meeting supposedly. But in the end? Nothing came out that supports her story. She finally backpedaled and said she was mad at him. Sigh, this gets so old. Don't get your way, cry harassment, get results of some kind, rinse, repeat.
I am not by any stretch saying it does not happen, but it has become the default action if you don't like something your supervisor did or just don't like your supervisor. If nothing else, it gets attention. I deal with the same general type of issue (harassment, sexual harassment, hostile workplace, etc.) probably 2-4 times per year (I have 200+ hourly employees reporting to me, up to as many as 300 at some times). Easily 4 out of 5 cases have little or no merit. Sometimes it is a supervsior who got mad at someone in public so we have to talk to him about not calling folks out in front of others, sometimes it is an off-color remark or something similar that does need to be dealt with. Very very rarely it is a "movie-style" (or "politics-style" I suppose) harassment issue. I have seen 3 or 4 people fired for harassment with cause over my 20 year career. Most often it is someone mad they didn't get what they wanted, someone who just doesn't like their boss or job, or someone who is under-performing trying to distract from their own poor performance.
My personal opinion is that the false claims that come up so often can tend to dilute public opinion about the issue in general, and can make it harder to maintain objectivity in an investigation and ensure the real claims are handled correctly. It also makes people jaded, "oh this again". Crying wolf can and does have a real affect on perceptions of the real issues.
