>Obviously I'm not a witness, but I tend to believe that these events took place more or less as the author describes them.
Why, though? Because people don't lie, exaggerate, or have strange ideas of what others are doing to them?
Why, though? Because people don't lie, exaggerate, or have strange ideas of what others are doing to them?
I don't believe you can prove anything. I mean to say that's my perspective on the universe: that it is physically impossible to prove anything. At the same time, you can't live your life that way.
If I second guess the way my brain is interpreting light reflecting off objects all the time then I'd never leave my apartment. Of course I'm skeptical of how my brain interprets light sometimes, and not infrequently I was correct to be skeptical.
I view stories like this similarly. Could this story be deliberately misleading? Sure. Could it be accidentally misleading? Sure. Could it be dead-on accurate? Yep. We've each got to make a choice though, and that choice is going to be basically arbitrary despite whichever method we use to justify it. Someone might say "I know she is lying because she used this term which liars always use plus I read this story about a woman making up harassment charges to elicit sympathy." Another person might say "I know she is telling the truth because the same thing happened to my cousin."
In my case, I found myself believing the essentials of the story as I read it. My reasons for that are a black box to me. I suspect they'd become clear if I sat down and thought about it but even if I understood my own reasoning, it would still be arbitrary with regard to the events that did/did not occur. Point being: no one can faultlessly reconstruct the truth about a series of events from X number of words written about that event. And to think that you can is arrogant.
The only thing I'd try to advise is to not get dogmatic about your belief or disbelief (in this and other cases) and be ready to change your opinion if new information comes to light later.
Tons of things can be reasonably proven. A videotape of an incident can pretty much settle a dispute as to what happened for example, except if very special arrangements are involved (the camera angle hides the actual act, etc).
That said, why would you want to prove something beyond "reasonably"?
Just like someone shouldn't read this woman's story and say that everyone above her at Apple should be fired, you also shouldn't read it and say that she's obviously just too sensitive or lying.
Shouldn't that benefit extend to the other sides of the stories?
What happened to the "Auditur et altera pars" (hearing the other side) before assuming anything and awarding the benefit to just the one you've heard?
On other hand - never in my career, I have seen HR truly standing up for the Employee. The goal is always to deflect and maintain plausible deniability. I have never read a single story on Internet that highlights those HR heroes we deserve.