9 ms·

What do people here think about Susan's way of doing things? While I think most of her behaviour is valid and I'm impressed by her professionalism, I think she

by erikb 10y ago

What do people here think about Susan's way of doing things? While I think most of her behaviour is valid and I'm impressed by her professionalism, I think she starts too fast to report people, which costs her political power to achieve her goals and makes people in HR more pissed off than necessary. E.g., being hit on by colleagues is a common thing that happens to women. But some can deescalate it without much problems. She didn't even try to deescalate it, just report it and be done with it. It's a minor thing compared to all that which happened to her and I'm mostly thinking about it in terms of own career strategy.

ndh2 10y ago
"Being hit on by colleagues" and being asked for sex by your direct superior are two vastly different things. Pretty sure what you're doing is called victim blaming.
tomp 10y ago
I don't what what she was really doing, but from her blog post, it didn't seem like she was "hit on by colleagues". In general, while I think it would be beneficial for companies to employ only asexual (and otherwise perfectly rational) people, realistically employees are going to fall in love, and there's nothing wrong with that. So if she had been politely propositioned by a coworker to go on a date, in a way that would allow both of them to save face (usually, this is done by making the request ambiguous, "I only meant as friends"), then I'd agree that reporting that to HR would be unnecessary and inappropriate. But I don't think that her boss essentially emailing her "I can't get all the sex that I want" on her first day of work quite falls under the above scenario. While there's nothing wrong with no-strings-attached sex between fully-informed partners, I do think that employees should avoid that - you can't really help falling in love with someone, but please "keep it in your pants" (and the equivalent for women) at your workplace. In addition, if there's something wrong and you need to be mindful of your "political power" before reporting it, then there's much more wrong.
dejawu 10y ago
No, because being propositioned for sex with a manager is absolutely out of line no matter when it happened. If anything, I think she was too patient with management and gave them way too many chances to get it remotely right because she seemed to really like the work she was doing.
- erikb 10y ago
  You're lucky if you live a life where you can always enforce your rights. But at least her blog post shows that is not always the case. Maybe you've also heard other stories. For instance, I remember a story where a western female tourist got raped, went to the police and immediately was sent to jail, because her "crime" of having extramarital affairs was way worse to the autorities than raping a woman. A simpler example that much more people experience at least once in their life: A customer comes to you and treats you like sh*t. You can go to your boss and complain about the customer, but for the boss the money the customer brings is more important than your well being. So you get an angry boss instead of getting rid of the customer. The moral situation is indisputable, but enforcing your rights is a luxury you don't always have. Therefore low power tactics is an important survival skill: Avoiding conflict without the necessity to give them what they want.

by erikb 10y ago

ndh2 10y ago

"Being hit on by colleagues" and being asked for sex by your direct superior are two vastly different things. Pretty sure what you're doing is called victim blaming.

tomp 10y ago

I don't what what she was really doing, but from her blog post, it didn't seem like she was "hit on by colleagues". In general, while I think it would be beneficial for companies to employ only asexual (and otherwise perfectly rational) people, realistically employees are going to fall in love, and there's nothing wrong with that. So if she had been politely propositioned by a coworker to go on a date, in a way that would allow both of them to save face (usually, this is done by making the request ambiguous, "I only meant as friends"), then I'd agree that reporting that to HR would be unnecessary and inappropriate. But I don't think that her boss essentially emailing her "I can't get all the sex that I want" on her first day of work quite falls under the above scenario. While there's nothing wrong with no-strings-attached sex between fully-informed partners, I do think that employees should avoid that - you can't really help falling in love with someone, but please "keep it in your pants" (and the equivalent for women) at your workplace. In addition, if there's something wrong and you need to be mindful of your "political power" before reporting it, then there's much more wrong.

dejawu 10y ago

No, because being propositioned for sex with a manager is absolutely out of line no matter when it happened. If anything, I think she was too patient with management and gave them way too many chances to get it remotely right because she seemed to really like the work she was doing.

erikb 10y ago
You're lucky if you live a life where you can always enforce your rights. But at least her blog post shows that is not always the case. Maybe you've also heard other stories. For instance, I remember a story where a western female tourist got raped, went to the police and immediately was sent to jail, because her "crime" of having extramarital affairs was way worse to the autorities than raping a woman. A simpler example that much more people experience at least once in their life: A customer comes to you and treats you like sh*t. You can go to your boss and complain about the customer, but for the boss the money the customer brings is more important than your well being. So you get an angry boss instead of getting rid of the customer. The moral situation is indisputable, but enforcing your rights is a luxury you don't always have. Therefore low power tactics is an important survival skill: Avoiding conflict without the necessity to give them what they want.