@Narf The rape thing I do not know but the mobbing is a world wide theme since people are absolute asses to each other. It's bad enough that it is extremely common in school, but a lot of people never grow up and are so insecure in themselves that they have to take it out on others.
I'm betting it was the ice. Her mom likely wouldn't have such carefully made ice, and if it was distinct enough to make the water taste different it'd change the taste of the whiskey as well.
@Narf workplace sexual assault is nowhere near as rare as statistics of how often it gets reported would leave you to believe- the majority of cases of rape as a whole go unreported due to cultural stigmatization and issues pretty much globally. Portraying it in a story does not make it a trope- when it's a trope is when it is purely used as a plot device with no more thought than that put into it and has no foreshadowing or long-term effects on the story or characters (see SAO.)