4 ms·

What is professional? What sexual taboos are/aren't acceptable? What is acceptable workplace banter? I feel like it makes more sense to defer to the least restr

What is professional? What sexual taboos are/aren't acceptable? What is acceptable workplace banter? I feel like it makes more sense to defer to the least restrictive system...

saalweachter 9y ago
No banter is professional. Not sports, not politics, not art, not the weather.
- neveroffensive 9y ago
  Honestly, this makes perfect sense. I don't know if this is practical in the real world, but there is logic to it that I can agree with.
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    Oh, it's almost completely impractical in the real world. First and foremost, it would make at least a heavy minority if not a majority of people rather unhappy. Because of a wagon-load of reasons (excessive work hours, moving to a new city for work separating you from most of your pre-existing social network, general difficulty of making new friends as an adult), work friends are the core of most people's social networks nowadays. If you eliminate work friends, you'd leave a lot of us more-or-less friendless, isolated, and sad. It also becomes complicated when you consider that some work inherently involves discussing your personal opinions. What business practices are ethical, aesthetics of design, editorial choices. Finally, employees must be able to discuss matters of common interest directly, to organize against management in both traditional matters of worker interest (conditions, pay, benefits) and to express a collective opinion about the direction of the company (eg, when the company takes actions the employees believe are unethical). This also requires employees be able to express potentially objectionable opinions to each other. But as a model of professional behavior, it would make everything so much simpler if you never said one extra word to or treated the person in the next desk/cube/office in the slightest way different, inside the workplace, regardless of whether they're your best friend, your spouse, your kidney donor, your childhood bully, your crush, your worst enemy, or your closest relative. If you work with your best friend, finish your work, leave the office, and then talk to them about sports or your porn collections.
- matt4077 9y ago
  That's a terrible caricature of the truth. Professionalism doesn't exclude being a human being. Read some transcript of, for example, Supreme Court deliberations (hardly suspect of being unprofessional), and you'll see plenty of banter/jokes etc. If you read actual examples it's pretty clear what people object to. It's not even that these are actual attempts to flirt or anything like that. Telling someone that you have an erection and concentrate because of her isn't flirting. It's a passive-agressive attempt to demean and hurt the other person.
CarbonJ 9y ago
If you read the full filing[0] you can see that there's plenty of gross stuff in there. Telling a female co-worker that you have a hard on because of her, that you can't concentrate and are going to go "rub one out" to clear your head isn't appropriate in a work environment. I sure wouldn't like something like that directed at me. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/15/uploadvr-sued-over-rampant-sexual-behavior-in-the-workplace-and-wrongful-termination/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/15/uploadvr-sued-over-rampant...
- neveroffensive 9y ago
  I understand you wouldn't want that, but I would. I find it endlessly hilarious honestly. Even if the person directing it at me was serious. My point is there is no common ground here. What is/isn't acceptable to me clearly differs from you. It will be thousands of years before society has any chance of finding common ground on what is/isn't offensive. What do we do in the mean time? Set arbitrary standards, or learn to live without them?

What is professional? What sexual taboos are/aren't acceptable? What is acceptable workplace banter? I feel like it makes more sense to defer to the least restrictive system...

saalweachter 9y ago

No banter is professional. Not sports, not politics, not art, not the weather.

neveroffensive 9y ago
Honestly, this makes perfect sense. I don't know if this is practical in the real world, but there is logic to it that I can agree with.
- saalweachter 9y ago
  Oh, it's almost completely impractical in the real world. First and foremost, it would make at least a heavy minority if not a majority of people rather unhappy. Because of a wagon-load of reasons (excessive work hours, moving to a new city for work separating you from most of your pre-existing social network, general difficulty of making new friends as an adult), work friends are the core of most people's social networks nowadays. If you eliminate work friends, you'd leave a lot of us more-or-less friendless, isolated, and sad. It also becomes complicated when you consider that some work inherently involves discussing your personal opinions. What business practices are ethical, aesthetics of design, editorial choices. Finally, employees must be able to discuss matters of common interest directly, to organize against management in both traditional matters of worker interest (conditions, pay, benefits) and to express a collective opinion about the direction of the company (eg, when the company takes actions the employees believe are unethical). This also requires employees be able to express potentially objectionable opinions to each other. But as a model of professional behavior, it would make everything so much simpler if you never said one extra word to or treated the person in the next desk/cube/office in the slightest way different, inside the workplace, regardless of whether they're your best friend, your spouse, your kidney donor, your childhood bully, your crush, your worst enemy, or your closest relative. If you work with your best friend, finish your work, leave the office, and then talk to them about sports or your porn collections.
matt4077 9y ago
That's a terrible caricature of the truth. Professionalism doesn't exclude being a human being. Read some transcript of, for example, Supreme Court deliberations (hardly suspect of being unprofessional), and you'll see plenty of banter/jokes etc. If you read actual examples it's pretty clear what people object to. It's not even that these are actual attempts to flirt or anything like that. Telling someone that you have an erection and concentrate because of her isn't flirting. It's a passive-agressive attempt to demean and hurt the other person.

CarbonJ 9y ago

If you read the full filing[0] you can see that there's plenty of gross stuff in there. Telling a female co-worker that you have a hard on because of her, that you can't concentrate and are going to go "rub one out" to clear your head isn't appropriate in a work environment. I sure wouldn't like something like that directed at me. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/15/uploadvr-sued-over-rampant-sexual-behavior-in-the-workplace-and-wrongful-termination/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/15/uploadvr-sued-over-rampant...

neveroffensive 9y ago
I understand you wouldn't want that, but I would. I find it endlessly hilarious honestly. Even if the person directing it at me was serious. My point is there is no common ground here. What is/isn't acceptable to me clearly differs from you. It will be thousands of years before society has any chance of finding common ground on what is/isn't offensive. What do we do in the mean time? Set arbitrary standards, or learn to live without them?