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Alright, here's my thoughts: You can be friends with your workers if they are friendly. If not, just be professional. There should be no reason to either have

Alright, here's my thoughts: You can be friends with your workers if they are friendly. If not, just be professional. There should be no reason to either have to a) force employees to be friends or b) force employees to be robots. For fuck's sake, the issue here is sexual assault and harrassment, it's a far cry from misinterpretation of comments or intent, which for some reason, people think is a bigger deal than the abuse women and men have faced in the workplace. How about you respect people as people? That seems like a better prescription than forcing people to be cold to each other. I do agree some of the rules are different with bosses, as the maxim goes, with great power comes great responsibility. But your conclusion that colleagues are not your friends seems ridiculous to me. It ignores the organizations where people are friends and there are no issues. So I am being a little combative, but please tell me how this opinion is still problematic. I am genuinely open minded and want to discuss this.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
I don't mind if you're being combative, but I think, if you're being combative, then it's about something I never said- the bit about "forcing people to be cold to each other". Are you reading more than I wrote, in my comment? For what it's worth, I consider "being friendly" and "being friends" two distinct categories. You can be friendly to people (or polite, corteous, respectful etc etc) without actually being buddy-buddies with them. On a personal note, I have been lucky to have had some strong working relationships with (male) colleagues who offered me valuable mentorship. They were great teachers to me and helped make me the professional I am today. Still- we were not friends, in the sense of slapping-the-back, rude-joking, buddy-buddies. I'm not saying that sort of relation (a colleague who's your mate) can never work. All rules are made to be broken etc etc. But I do believe that unless you carefully compartmentalise your professional relationships from other kinds of relationships, you run a very significant risk of making a mess of all your relationships. Edit: as to ignoring organisations were people are friends and the sky doesn't fall- that's just the survivorship fallacy, innit. Just because you can swim with sharks without being eaten doesn't mean swimming with sharks isn't dangerous, in general.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

I don't mind if you're being combative, but I think, if you're being combative, then it's about something I never said- the bit about "forcing people to be cold to each other". Are you reading more than I wrote, in my comment? For what it's worth, I consider "being friendly" and "being friends" two distinct categories. You can be friendly to people (or polite, corteous, respectful etc etc) without actually being buddy-buddies with them. On a personal note, I have been lucky to have had some strong working relationships with (male) colleagues who offered me valuable mentorship. They were great teachers to me and helped make me the professional I am today. Still- we were not friends, in the sense of slapping-the-back, rude-joking, buddy-buddies. I'm not saying that sort of relation (a colleague who's your mate) can never work. All rules are made to be broken etc etc. But I do believe that unless you carefully compartmentalise your professional relationships from other kinds of relationships, you run a very significant risk of making a mess of all your relationships. Edit: as to ignoring organisations were people are friends and the sky doesn't fall- that's just the survivorship fallacy, innit. Just because you can swim with sharks without being eaten doesn't mean swimming with sharks isn't dangerous, in general.