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In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about custom keyboards, sail racing, gym routines and upside of hiring a personal trainer, travel, 3D-printing, I ca

In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about custom keyboards, sail racing, gym routines and upside of hiring a personal trainer, travel, 3D-printing, I can go on forever. I believe it is fundamentally possible to have an interesting and relaxing conversation with coworkers and not to touch political topics.

katbyte 6y ago
it's all fun and games until you slip and your co worker finds out your gay and their entire tone and demeanor changes and they treat you different but then when you go to your manager "no politics in the workplace". Or your black and find out your co-worker is a member of the KKK and is a well known racist, but no politics at work ok
exegete 6y ago
What you described is talking about personal interests and activities, and I agree that is the kind of stuff that is easy and fun to talk (and hear) about with others. I’m starting to think many people don’t have personal activities and interests and don’t know what to fill in small talk with other than what they saw on social media or the news.
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  Or rather, an increasingly large number of people's personal hobbies essentially consist of reading, tweeting, blogging, and talking about politics.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  What about people whose personal interests and activities directly involve politics? Like people interested in political analysis or reporting, or people interested in competitive policy debate, or even people who actively do advocacy work in their free time? Is small talk about the advocacy work you did over the weekend worse than my small talk about building drones over the weekend?
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    I don't try talk about my gym routine with coworkers who aren't interested in gym workouts. It's boring to them and the conversation goes nowhere. So you should not try to talk about politics with people who aren't interested in your politics.
  - fancyfish 6y ago
    Yes, in fact those people who enjoy politics and advocacy outside of work should be actively discouraged from working in high performing organizations. I certainly filter them out during my interview process as they are more likely to be a liability than a great worker who gets the job done.
  - NationalPark 6y ago
    I think he's saying that being interested in politics is inherently inferior to being interested in other things, and people who like to read about politics are fundamentally lesser than people who don't know much about politics (and therefore we shouldn't care if banning "politics" affects them).
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    There’s a lot of things that aren’t political per-se you shouldn’t share with the broader group. For instance, maybe my family has a history of killing wild animals for food. I wouldn’t share our kill shots with my company the same way I would with friends that are interested in hunting. Because I know it’s something a good chunk of people don’t want to see and it’s unnecessary to share. Now imagine I had a few friends in the office who too supported this. And we went out of our way to not only share pictures of these killings (which are all legal) but started to intimidate people that didn’t like to see them. And then we go a step further and plan a trip to Africa to hunt lions - all legal and on the up and up. And we share these relentlessly. And we don’t stop there. We post Big-5 trophies and endless shots of venison being butchered. We also begin to loudly advocate NRA membership for colleagues and use company resources to recruit social events where we all go shooting together. We go further and decide we want THE COMPANY to support our gun rights. We walk out and protest our CEO who “doesn’t have the balls” to take a measly pheasant. Who wants this?
- protomyth 6y ago
  Sports once filled that roll. It was acceptable and with enough tribalism to make it interesting. Sadly, they are not a safe conversation anymore.
NationalPark 6y ago
You probably shouldn't bring up 3d printing - people might start talking about 3d printing gun parts, and that's of course political, and you _did_ start the conversation. Same problem with travel - as you know, many countries restrict travel because of the pandemic, and the very existence of the pandemic is a political issue among some people. As you can see, it's a ridiculous policy that can only be enforced arbitrarily. Also, sidenote: what happened to all the "free speech is bigger than the first amendment! It's an ideological hill worth dying on!" people? One mention of changing "master" to "main" and they're everywhere on hackernews, yet oddly quiet in this comment section.

katbyte 6y ago

it's all fun and games until you slip and your co worker finds out your gay and their entire tone and demeanor changes and they treat you different but then when you go to your manager "no politics in the workplace". Or your black and find out your co-worker is a member of the KKK and is a well known racist, but no politics at work ok

exegete 6y ago

What you described is talking about personal interests and activities, and I agree that is the kind of stuff that is easy and fun to talk (and hear) about with others. I’m starting to think many people don’t have personal activities and interests and don’t know what to fill in small talk with other than what they saw on social media or the news.

bart_spoon 6y ago
Or rather, an increasingly large number of people's personal hobbies essentially consist of reading, tweeting, blogging, and talking about politics.
tshaddox 6y ago
What about people whose personal interests and activities directly involve politics? Like people interested in political analysis or reporting, or people interested in competitive policy debate, or even people who actively do advocacy work in their free time? Is small talk about the advocacy work you did over the weekend worse than my small talk about building drones over the weekend?
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  I don't try talk about my gym routine with coworkers who aren't interested in gym workouts. It's boring to them and the conversation goes nowhere. So you should not try to talk about politics with people who aren't interested in your politics.
- fancyfish 6y ago
  Yes, in fact those people who enjoy politics and advocacy outside of work should be actively discouraged from working in high performing organizations. I certainly filter them out during my interview process as they are more likely to be a liability than a great worker who gets the job done.
- NationalPark 6y ago
  I think he's saying that being interested in politics is inherently inferior to being interested in other things, and people who like to read about politics are fundamentally lesser than people who don't know much about politics (and therefore we shouldn't care if banning "politics" affects them).
- nemo44x 6y ago
  There’s a lot of things that aren’t political per-se you shouldn’t share with the broader group. For instance, maybe my family has a history of killing wild animals for food. I wouldn’t share our kill shots with my company the same way I would with friends that are interested in hunting. Because I know it’s something a good chunk of people don’t want to see and it’s unnecessary to share. Now imagine I had a few friends in the office who too supported this. And we went out of our way to not only share pictures of these killings (which are all legal) but started to intimidate people that didn’t like to see them. And then we go a step further and plan a trip to Africa to hunt lions - all legal and on the up and up. And we share these relentlessly. And we don’t stop there. We post Big-5 trophies and endless shots of venison being butchered. We also begin to loudly advocate NRA membership for colleagues and use company resources to recruit social events where we all go shooting together. We go further and decide we want THE COMPANY to support our gun rights. We walk out and protest our CEO who “doesn’t have the balls” to take a measly pheasant. Who wants this?
protomyth 6y ago
Sports once filled that roll. It was acceptable and with enough tribalism to make it interesting. Sadly, they are not a safe conversation anymore.

NationalPark 6y ago

You probably shouldn't bring up 3d printing - people might start talking about 3d printing gun parts, and that's of course political, and you _did_ start the conversation. Same problem with travel - as you know, many countries restrict travel because of the pandemic, and the very existence of the pandemic is a political issue among some people. As you can see, it's a ridiculous policy that can only be enforced arbitrarily. Also, sidenote: what happened to all the "free speech is bigger than the first amendment! It's an ideological hill worth dying on!" people? One mention of changing "master" to "main" and they're everywhere on hackernews, yet oddly quiet in this comment section.