On your suggestion to “rip it up”: an employer who destroys a written employee complaint, even one containing inappropriate content, exposes itself to significant liability. You preserve the document, address the problematic content, and separate the legitimate concerns from the inappropriate material. That’s messy and takes time, which is roughly what happened here.
There would be some legal risk for rejecting certain kinds of complaints without any action—such as a legally protected complaint that an employee was being subjected to harassment themselves. But there is no evidence that Riley’s complaint about one or more of his co-workers fell into any legally protected category, and it is difficult for me to envision how it would be.
And even if it were necessary to maintain the original complaint on file, you redact the material that constitutes sexual and disability harassment of another employee before broader circulation. It is not “messy” to figure out what portions relate to a legally protected grounds for complaint somewhere before you expose 11 people (over 20% of the company) to the harassing content.
There would be some legal risk for rejecting certain kinds of complaints without any action—such as a legally protected complaint that an employee was being subjected to harassment themselves. But there is no evidence that Riley’s complaint about one or more of his co-workers fell into any legally protected category, and it is difficult for me to envision how it would be.
And even if it were necessary to maintain the original complaint on file, you redact the material that constitutes sexual and disability harassment of another employee before broader circulation. It is not “messy” to figure out what portions relate to a legally protected grounds for complaint somewhere before you expose 11 people (over 20% of the company) to the harassing content.