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On a scale of 1-10, how hard is it to keep your dick in your pants at work? I just don't get the mindset that results in someone thinking "yeah man, it is tota
by kchoudhu 10y ago
On a scale of 1-10, how hard is it to keep your dick in your pants at work?
I just don't get the mindset that results in someone thinking "yeah man, it is totally ok to make a pass at a coworker in a professional environment"
- paki123 10y agoThey are rockstars.
- momentmaker 10y agoVery hard apparently.
- kneel 10y agoI'm not saying it's okay to proposition a coworker but I've seen several women flirt their way into favor in the office. It's happened to me a couple times, it's really confusing. Combine that with the socially inept male dominated software environment and you can pretty much expect scandalous things to happen.
- kchoudhu 10y agoThis just feeds into my 1-10 question: just because someone propositioned me because I happen to be in a position of power doesn't mean I'm going to respond to it by bestowing favor. The socially inept thing probably accounts for a lot of the problem.
- sidlls 10y agoYeah, and when I taught I'd regularly have some female students come to office hours in revealing clothes or try to sit closer than others and so on. Two things occur to me: 1) neither of those things means those students were engaging in "flirting their way to favor": maybe, just maybe, they were dressing comfortably for them or they absorbed our discussion better by sitting closer and my biases and (mis-?)perceptions were at work; 2) even if they were "flirting," as a responsible adult male it was my responsibility to ignore it, or even raise a concern if I felt it were intentional and damaging to the student-teacher relationship.
- hackuser 10y agoOr maybe it wasn't you they were flirting with. :)
- sidlls 10y agoYes, that is another possibility. Which was my point: even at the time it never occurred to me to interpret their dress or behavior as being flirtatious with me. This should be the default consideration for adult men to have.
- hackuser 10y agoSorry if I gave the wrong impression. Clearly you have the judgment to understand that. I was just elaborating by pointing out an aspect of people in positions of power and their egos - 'obviously she's infatuated with me'.
- sidlls 10y agoNah, I wasn't clear enough in the original comment.
- btilly 10y agoBased on my memory of how I met my wife, with the right person it is a 10. That was, however, the first and probably last time for me. And given the context, we were both kidding ourselves as long as possible about the mutual attraction. By the time anything resembling a pass happened, it was obviously desired on both sides. The truth is that we are human. No matter how much people try to avoid romantic entanglements at work, it happens. Regularly. And sometimes they don't work out. The challenge is how to handle that situation. And this is a difficult challenge indeed.
- kafkaesq 10y agoThe challenge is how to handle that situation. Exactly. Like simply wait for enough (obvious) green lights before making a move. Like, you know, mature, consenting adults. A modicum of tact and subtlety couldn't hurt, either ;) No matter how much people try to avoid romantic entanglements at work, it happens. And indeed, it's silly (and borderline delusional) to pretend otherwise.
- oh_sigh 10y agoMaking a pass usually isn't considered harassment, unless you repeatedly do it. At least, for how I define making a pass(ask on a date). Maybe that is a bit more conservative than some people's definition of making a pass.
- mpeg 10y agoI don't think you're looking at it the right way. Coworker or not, consent and respect is essential. I've had sex with coworkers and never been accused of inappropriate behaviour, turns out if we're all adults it works out.
- SandB0x 10y agoIs this a wise comment to make, given that your profile displays your personal details and work history?
- mpeg 10y agoWhy not? It's not generally forbidden unless there's conflicts of interest (like sleeping with your boss) And definitely a reality of most industries, especially if you spend a lot of time in the office and little time socialising externally.
- kchoudhu 10y ago> and little time socializing Maybe that's the problem.
- mpeg 10y agoMost people I know date their coworkers, you're still missing the point.
- warcher 10y agoEverybody knows it's a bad idea, but it's a very, very, very common mistake to make in your twenties. It's survivable, sometimes even wonderful, but pretty risky. If you can get laid without needing to shit where you eat, I highly recommend it. If you can't, caveat emptor.
- kchoudhu 10y agoI don't think I've missed the point: I'm saying that a work culture that reduces your dating pool to your company's co-workers is terribly unhealthy, and promotes a lot of the problems w.r.t sexual harassment in Silicon Valley.
- mindcrime 10y agoThere's nothing inherently wrong with making a pass at a co-worker in the most general sense. Co-workers wind up dating all the time, and some even get married. What is a problem is if you keep doing it even when the other person communicates a lack of interest and a desire for you to stop. That and, of obviously, other forms of sexual harassment. Note though that "sexual harassment" has a specific legal meaning and it doesn't necessarily include every incident that sometimes gets reported as such.
- amyjess 10y agoIn addition, there's a huge difference between making a pass at a co-worker and making a pass at a subordinate. The power differential involved makes it automatically wrong.
- mindcrime 10y agoYes, that is a fair point. I probably should have been more clear that I was referring to peers in my comment above.
- zeveb 10y ago> The power differential involved makes it automatically wrong. To be fair, though, that's a relatively recent perception (one I hasten to add that I agree with!). Up until fairly recently no-one saw anything particularly wrong with a man marrying his secretary (or a professor his student, or similar situations), or just found it a bit off-colour rather than 'automatically wrong.' As a product of our generation, I have a knee-jerk, 'no no no heck no!' reaction to subordinate-superior relationships, but that's just my culture; there are others in both space & time.
- hackuser 10y ago>> The power differential involved makes it automatically wrong. > To be fair, though, that's a relatively recent perception ... That doesn't make it any less important or wrong. On the historical timescale, democracy and the evil of slavery are recent perceptions, yet we don't say that's just my culture; there are others in both space & time.
- xenihn 10y agoJust curious, do you have a similar mindset when it comes to teenagers and college students having unwanted pregnancies?
- kchoudhu 10y agoNo. Kids will be kids.
- xenihn 10y agoYou don't consider college/university to be a professional environment?
- kchoudhu 10y agoWe send our kids to college to expose them to a safe unstructured environment for the first time in their lives. That means this is where they learn to be adults and make mistakes. They will make occasional misjudgments in this context, and when they do, we should offer them an easy out. And to answer your question: sexual assault is not one of these cases. Partaking in this safe space kind of presupposes that your kid knows how to tell the difference between right and wrong.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kevinburke 10y agoHarassment isn't just making flirty comments or pursuing someone else, it could be discussing sexual themes at work, making derogatory comments about race, discussing other people's appearance.