In response to my post, "A John Bonnell moment," another reader writes with the harrowing tale of how he found himself accused of sexual harassment after leaving an annoyed message on his company's help hotline:

Here's another silly story, this one from outside academia: I was working as a software tester at a very large software company. When we found critical bugs we were supposed to call a hotline and leave voicemail to get special attention. I had an important bug that I'd been calling in every day for a week, with no response. Finally, I called the hotline and asked who I had to sleep with to get somebody to call me back about this bug.

As it turns out, an (anonymous) female was monitoring the voicemail. Next thing I know, my job is being threatened, and, I am, of course, denied the right to know who my accuser was or to confront her about being such an idiot. At least I knew what I said that was so offensive, unlike your previous reader.

Fine, it was unprofessional for me to say that. But keep in mind, this is in a software company in the early '90's, almost entirely male-geek, and what I said wasn't culture shocking. It didn't even occur to me that it would offend anyone. I thought they'd get a laugh and it would make them more likely to triage my bug.

At first, I didn't take it seriously. I told HR I'd apologize for offending her delicate sensibilities if they'd get her to do her damn job. I thought it was Catch-22 absurd that I could be accused of sexually harassing someone I didn't know and had never seen. My attitude didn't go over very well. The Victim wanted a written apology for sexually harassing her, not just for offending her, and then she might let the matter drop. This put me in a moral dilemma. I didn't want to lose a sweet gig, but I was not about to assume the position.

So I lifted a bunch of stuff from some ridiculous essay by Catherine Mckinnon, and gave them the mother of all written apologies. It had footnotes. It was more than a dozen pages. I ramped the rhetoric up from McKinnon-nuts to Dworkin-nuts, proclaiming that I realized that all of Western civilization was at risk if baboons like me didn't knock it off with thinking they could offer sexual favors in exchange for code fixes. The powers that be were very impressed by the depth and scholarship of my contrition, and that was the end of it. I hope at least some of them knew I was making fun of the whole situation and were as amused as I was.

So, that's the end of the storyÖexcept forÖ.I'm very aware now of how much power a neurotic woman has in the workplace. And I act accordingly. I discriminate against women. Not in a big way. Not in a way that I even have moral qualms about. I've hired women, I work with women every day. I have several close female friends at work. I'm not paranoid, but I'm careful.

I avoid personal interaction with any woman who gives me the slightest hint that she's got a free-floating resentment problem with men, or who has crackpot feminist notions, or who is even a little strange. Men can be half a french fry short of a happy meal, and I make allowances. But not for women.

Iím not rude. I don't freeze such women out. I don't dislike them. I know that I'm jumping to conclusions and literally not giving them half a chance. I won't try to hurt their careers, even by acts of omission. But I'm all business with them: customer-service level courtesy, but not warmth or personal interest. I won't have a personal conversation. I won't even ask, How was your weekend? None of these women will be included in my personal network. None of them can call on me for favors, and I would never ask them for a favor.

I know this attitude of mine, to some extent, makes the "glass ceiling" thicker. It's not fair to the majority of women who would never stoop to such tactics. That's unfortunate. I didn't set up these rules.

Thanks for writing.