5 ms·

> That is, your first paragraph appears to be arguing that it's only OK to fire an employee for "hostile work environment" if that employee does something hosti

by imgabe 5y ago

> That is, your first paragraph appears to be arguing that it's only OK to fire an employee for "hostile work environment" if that employee does something hostile at work, and never OK to fire based on stuff an employee has written before being hired. What do you think a hostile work environment is? How do writings outside of work affect the work environment? The work environment is...things that happen at work. In order for the employee to have created a hostile work environment they would have to, you know, act hostilely at work. That is literally what it means. An employee proselytizing their religion at work might create a hostile work environment. If they go door-to-door and proselytize on the weekends, and never mention their religion at work, that does not create a hostile work environment and they shouldn't be fired for what they do in their own time. I don't see how that is hard to understand.

Beldin 5y ago
> never mention their religion at work, that does not create a hostile work environment "Never mention" is a bit vague/weak. If you wouldn't be able to pick the one colleague proselytising from amongst the others, likely(1) they're not creating a hostile work environment. E.g., a colleague that never mentions the KKK, but has their memorabilia all over his desk, is dropped off by hooded, white-dress wearing buddies etc., is poisoning the work atmosphere. (1) excepting weird cases like a colleague intentionally gaslighting others.
ayyy 5y ago
> I don't see how that is hard to understand. For a growing percentage of the workplace, knowing that a coworker has a socially unacceptable opinion is creating a hostile work environment. I completely understand where you're coming from, but you're literally wrong. If you don't want to be shunned from society, don't be identified as someone who does socially unacceptable things. I'm not super keen on how this is all shaking out either, but it's pretty obvious how to avoid problems at this point.
- roenxi 5y ago
  They aren't literally wrong; we've covered this ground when deciding the role religion plays in society and made some excellent decisions that we don't want to lose. People who claim to have superior moral principles do not get to enforce them in the workplace. Organisations that rally around moral principles don't get to decide who does and does not enjoy employment. Intransigent squeaky wheels do not get to decide what "hostile work environment" means. It has to mean hostility in the work environment. If it comes to mean "disagrees with my politics" then society is in for a world of hurt.
- SiVal 5y ago
  "Socially unacceptable" is the litmus test? So, regardless of what the majority of your coworkers think, if you express a contrary opinion that they don't agree is acceptable, you have created a hostile environment. "If you don't want to be shunned from society, don't be identified as someone who does socially unacceptable things," warned the Holy Inquisition and every Puritan minister.
  - ayyy 5y ago
    If there's a Holy Inquisition coming, it's not bad advice to become notionally Catholic for however long it lasts.
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    Now with tables turned, not few people gloat when people complain getting a taste of their own medicine. While I understand the short term gratification, I find this dangerous long term. For all the failures of the old norms and methods, at least there was a way to formally abjure your antisocial beliefs and get accepted back into society. Today not only we didn't yet develop such a code, but we also leave a permanent trace of our past blunders and misplaced allegeances which are now permanently associated with our identity. Precedents of this scenario create anxiety in a lot of moderate people, most who are even agreeing with the majority of the zeitgeist. Regular people may not be vocal about it, so we get a perception that now only KKK folks are whining about freedom of speech.
- goatlover 5y ago
  > For a growing percentage of the workplace, knowing that a coworker has a socially unacceptable opinion is creating a hostile work environment. Which is basically supporting the wrong political party at this point. Are we really sure we want to go down this road?
- imgabe 5y ago
  I understand that a growing number of people are confused about what hostile work environment means. That still does not change the meaning as the law defines it, nor should we change it to accommodate those people.
  - ayyy 5y ago
    As a practical matter, you'd have to be insane to be espousing very unpopular views under the same name you use for employment. If I do something outside of work in a public way, and a significant percentage of coworkers find it objectionable, it will shrink my professional network and make building relationships more difficult. Nobody wants to work with someone they find morally repulsive. There's no legal recourse available for this. Also, from my coworkers' point of view, I'm the one causing the workplace to be unpleasant, and they might start a campaign to have me removed. From my employer's point of view, I've done some action outside of work that's caused a problem, and now we have a problem at work. That means I've caused a problem at work. If I can be terminated without legal risk, my employer can terminate me to satisfy the other coworkers. If I can't be terminated legally, then I can be sidelined, put on a PIP, and eventually forced out of the organization. There's unlikely to be any legal recourse available to me if this is done correctly with good documentation. Maybe employment shouldn't work this way, but it does.
    - imgabe 5y ago
      Yes, as a practical matter, there are many injustices past and present that people put up with for the sake of their own well-being. Unfortunately, the injustices only stop when we stop putting up with them.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  I think there are several problems in how things are framed and the language we use. This is important because conflict resolution depends on it. 1) "creating a hostile work environment" means different things to different people which makes it hard to pin down. 2) Person Y claims "Person X made them feel unsafe", which can't be proven since there are no outside witnesses to how people "feel". Maybe I just disliked the person for other reasons and this gave me an opportunity to get at them. 3) People will get offended easily for billions of reasons depending on what their believes are (especially in a heavily polarized society). 4) Solidarity: my friend/coworker who I like claims X makes them feel unsafe so I believe them and stand in solidarity with them because I know them better than I know X. This can easily be turned into "I don't feel safe" in order to get back at them because the moment you have an additional "witness" it will get harder to question the event with every person who says they also feel this way. It becomes safer to just stand with them or to say you weren't there but very risky to stand up for the (alleged) perpetrator. There is a saying "I can't change what people say, but I can change my reaction and how I feel about them, and whether I allow it to affect me". If the framing/language requires me to trust that the other party is truthful (but which I don't) then solving the resolving the conflict is impossible. Personally I dislike the woke movement because I come from a different time where we were told to settle things by ourselves and the person screaming or appealing to the higher authority was not applauded for doing so but considered a coward. This had also many problems but they were not better or worse than what we do today. When I see my friends bring up their children and protecting them not only from physical harm but also insulating them from the feeling of offense, telling them it's their right never to have a feeling that they don't like and blame the other party the moment they do, so they never experience outrage and how to deal with it - then it becomes clear (to me) why so many kids have turned into idiots. If we then give these people virtual/digital technology and rob them of any real type of social connections and a chance to resolve conflict IRL it's a recipe for exactly this kind of disaster.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
The fact that you keep giving these watered down examples of what people do on their own time that hardly anyone takes issue with ("going door-to-door proselytizing on the weekends") only further proves my point. I mean, suppose Chaos Monkey (again, I haven't read it, so I don't have an opinion) said "Man, the US was so much better when we had slavery" or "This country has all been downhill ever since women got the right to vote." Would you still be making this same argument? I mean this seriously: go ahead and respond with a truly egregious, offensive example and see if you still want to argue "they shouldn't be fired for what they do in their own time". Again, my whole point is that I think what you really believe is that the offense really just wasn't that bad (and, indeed, maybe it wasn't, I don't know), not that anything out of work is off limits.
- imgabe 5y ago
  The fact that you have to come up with hyper-extreme examples to make this seem reasonable proves my point. Say Bob thinks women shouldn't have the right to vote. But Bob is also kind, courteous, respectful, and professional to every real woman he interacts with at work. What is it that you think is being gained by firing Bob? If Bob starts harassing women, sure, fire his ass. But as long as he acts civilly, Bob can think whatever he wants in his own head. He can even write it down and if someone wants to publish it, good for Bob. As long as he comes to work and does his job and gets along with everyone, what is the problem? It is absolutely insane that people here are arguing that your workplace should be able to police your thoughts. We can all disagree with opinions other people have. That's not a valid enough reason to fire someone. Suppose one of your co-workers is a die-hard vegan, should he be able to get you fired you because you think there's nothing wrong with eating meat?
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    I keep giving extreme examples because they DO prove my point: what we're really debating is what the line is regarding how offensive someone's behavior is, not whether it's done at work or not. Because again, you keep giving examples that disprove your point: > It is absolutely insane that people here are arguing that your workplace should be able to police your thoughts. I'm certainly not arguing that at all. You're free to think whatever you want. > He can even write it down and if someone wants to publish it, good for Bob. You almost make it sound like "Bob" dropped an essay on the ground and someone else happened to walk by, pick it up and publish it. Because in the real world if Bob wrote a paperback titled "Women are Bad for Democracy and They Shouldn't Be Able to Vote", did press junkets about this book, and actively encouraged people to buy it, then yes, he'd get fired by pretty much every company in this country and very few people would have an issue with that.
didibus 5y ago
So, I haven't read the linked article, I'm just going off from what you say here. Hypothetically, say someone hates you, think you're a low life, that you're not as smart, and have bad habits, a trash culture, despise the way you dress and talk, and find your life choice repulsive, might even think you're tainted and doomed to eternal condemnation. Now say you work with this person, but at work they pretend like none of it. They act normal and casual with you, and so they don't exhibit an active hostile environment. Now say you found their online blog, where they basically reveal their sentiment about you. Lets even say they don't specifically mention you by name, but they clearly describe their hate for people which you'd identify as. Now you go to work the next day with this person... Will you also just pretend like none of it? Will that knowledge now not have inherently tainted the work environment for you? What if they're your manager?
- imgabe 5y ago
  Say you are the person who doesn't like one of your co-workers. Whatever reason, maybe they remind you of someone who treated you poorly. Maybe you just don't have compatible personalities. Whatever it is, something about them irks you. Still, you're a professional, so you treat them with the same respect and courtesy you treat everyone else. You vent your feelings on your livejournal or whatever. Keeping things anonymous, but your co-worker finds it and demands that you be fired. Should you be fired?
  - didibus 5y ago
    You haven't answered my scenario. I'm just asking if in those circumstances I've described, if you'd still feel at ease and totally happy going to work pretending like none of it. Or if that knowledge of the hate your manager exhibits for people of your kind would make you resent working with them? This is the first thing I need to know, because I personally would not be able to walk in to work motivated and energetic after that, I'd be very uncomfortable from that point on working under that manager knowing what I now know is their opinion of people like me. If you'd be fine with this and have no issue going back to work for that manager. Well it'll be hard for us to agree on anything that follows. Now if this would also make you uncomfortable, we can move to the next point, which is, how should this situation be resolved? You now have a manager making their subordinate uncomfortable at work. They do so because of their publicly expressed hate, disdain, resentment and desire to oppress people of the same kind as the subordinate. As the employer, what do you think would be the right solution here? P.S.: I'm asking in good faith, I think it's a complex situation, I'm not saying that firing the manager is the best course of action, but it does seem like one way to solve the issue, so I'm actually curious to hear pros/cons and alternatives.

by imgabe 5y ago

Beldin 5y ago

> never mention their religion at work, that does not create a hostile work environment "Never mention" is a bit vague/weak. If you wouldn't be able to pick the one colleague proselytising from amongst the others, likely(1) they're not creating a hostile work environment. E.g., a colleague that never mentions the KKK, but has their memorabilia all over his desk, is dropped off by hooded, white-dress wearing buddies etc., is poisoning the work atmosphere. (1) excepting weird cases like a colleague intentionally gaslighting others.

ayyy 5y ago

> I don't see how that is hard to understand. For a growing percentage of the workplace, knowing that a coworker has a socially unacceptable opinion is creating a hostile work environment. I completely understand where you're coming from, but you're literally wrong. If you don't want to be shunned from society, don't be identified as someone who does socially unacceptable things. I'm not super keen on how this is all shaking out either, but it's pretty obvious how to avoid problems at this point.

roenxi 5y ago
They aren't literally wrong; we've covered this ground when deciding the role religion plays in society and made some excellent decisions that we don't want to lose. People who claim to have superior moral principles do not get to enforce them in the workplace. Organisations that rally around moral principles don't get to decide who does and does not enjoy employment. Intransigent squeaky wheels do not get to decide what "hostile work environment" means. It has to mean hostility in the work environment. If it comes to mean "disagrees with my politics" then society is in for a world of hurt.
SiVal 5y ago
"Socially unacceptable" is the litmus test? So, regardless of what the majority of your coworkers think, if you express a contrary opinion that they don't agree is acceptable, you have created a hostile environment. "If you don't want to be shunned from society, don't be identified as someone who does socially unacceptable things," warned the Holy Inquisition and every Puritan minister.
- ayyy 5y ago
  If there's a Holy Inquisition coming, it's not bad advice to become notionally Catholic for however long it lasts.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  Now with tables turned, not few people gloat when people complain getting a taste of their own medicine. While I understand the short term gratification, I find this dangerous long term. For all the failures of the old norms and methods, at least there was a way to formally abjure your antisocial beliefs and get accepted back into society. Today not only we didn't yet develop such a code, but we also leave a permanent trace of our past blunders and misplaced allegeances which are now permanently associated with our identity. Precedents of this scenario create anxiety in a lot of moderate people, most who are even agreeing with the majority of the zeitgeist. Regular people may not be vocal about it, so we get a perception that now only KKK folks are whining about freedom of speech.
goatlover 5y ago
> For a growing percentage of the workplace, knowing that a coworker has a socially unacceptable opinion is creating a hostile work environment. Which is basically supporting the wrong political party at this point. Are we really sure we want to go down this road?
imgabe 5y ago
I understand that a growing number of people are confused about what hostile work environment means. That still does not change the meaning as the law defines it, nor should we change it to accommodate those people.
- ayyy 5y ago
  As a practical matter, you'd have to be insane to be espousing very unpopular views under the same name you use for employment. If I do something outside of work in a public way, and a significant percentage of coworkers find it objectionable, it will shrink my professional network and make building relationships more difficult. Nobody wants to work with someone they find morally repulsive. There's no legal recourse available for this. Also, from my coworkers' point of view, I'm the one causing the workplace to be unpleasant, and they might start a campaign to have me removed. From my employer's point of view, I've done some action outside of work that's caused a problem, and now we have a problem at work. That means I've caused a problem at work. If I can be terminated without legal risk, my employer can terminate me to satisfy the other coworkers. If I can't be terminated legally, then I can be sidelined, put on a PIP, and eventually forced out of the organization. There's unlikely to be any legal recourse available to me if this is done correctly with good documentation. Maybe employment shouldn't work this way, but it does.
  - imgabe 5y ago
    Yes, as a practical matter, there are many injustices past and present that people put up with for the sake of their own well-being. Unfortunately, the injustices only stop when we stop putting up with them.
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
I think there are several problems in how things are framed and the language we use. This is important because conflict resolution depends on it. 1) "creating a hostile work environment" means different things to different people which makes it hard to pin down. 2) Person Y claims "Person X made them feel unsafe", which can't be proven since there are no outside witnesses to how people "feel". Maybe I just disliked the person for other reasons and this gave me an opportunity to get at them. 3) People will get offended easily for billions of reasons depending on what their believes are (especially in a heavily polarized society). 4) Solidarity: my friend/coworker who I like claims X makes them feel unsafe so I believe them and stand in solidarity with them because I know them better than I know X. This can easily be turned into "I don't feel safe" in order to get back at them because the moment you have an additional "witness" it will get harder to question the event with every person who says they also feel this way. It becomes safer to just stand with them or to say you weren't there but very risky to stand up for the (alleged) perpetrator. There is a saying "I can't change what people say, but I can change my reaction and how I feel about them, and whether I allow it to affect me". If the framing/language requires me to trust that the other party is truthful (but which I don't) then solving the resolving the conflict is impossible. Personally I dislike the woke movement because I come from a different time where we were told to settle things by ourselves and the person screaming or appealing to the higher authority was not applauded for doing so but considered a coward. This had also many problems but they were not better or worse than what we do today. When I see my friends bring up their children and protecting them not only from physical harm but also insulating them from the feeling of offense, telling them it's their right never to have a feeling that they don't like and blame the other party the moment they do, so they never experience outrage and how to deal with it - then it becomes clear (to me) why so many kids have turned into idiots. If we then give these people virtual/digital technology and rob them of any real type of social connections and a chance to resolve conflict IRL it's a recipe for exactly this kind of disaster.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

The fact that you keep giving these watered down examples of what people do on their own time that hardly anyone takes issue with ("going door-to-door proselytizing on the weekends") only further proves my point. I mean, suppose Chaos Monkey (again, I haven't read it, so I don't have an opinion) said "Man, the US was so much better when we had slavery" or "This country has all been downhill ever since women got the right to vote." Would you still be making this same argument? I mean this seriously: go ahead and respond with a truly egregious, offensive example and see if you still want to argue "they shouldn't be fired for what they do in their own time". Again, my whole point is that I think what you really believe is that the offense really just wasn't that bad (and, indeed, maybe it wasn't, I don't know), not that anything out of work is off limits.

imgabe 5y ago
The fact that you have to come up with hyper-extreme examples to make this seem reasonable proves my point. Say Bob thinks women shouldn't have the right to vote. But Bob is also kind, courteous, respectful, and professional to every real woman he interacts with at work. What is it that you think is being gained by firing Bob? If Bob starts harassing women, sure, fire his ass. But as long as he acts civilly, Bob can think whatever he wants in his own head. He can even write it down and if someone wants to publish it, good for Bob. As long as he comes to work and does his job and gets along with everyone, what is the problem? It is absolutely insane that people here are arguing that your workplace should be able to police your thoughts. We can all disagree with opinions other people have. That's not a valid enough reason to fire someone. Suppose one of your co-workers is a die-hard vegan, should he be able to get you fired you because you think there's nothing wrong with eating meat?
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I keep giving extreme examples because they DO prove my point: what we're really debating is what the line is regarding how offensive someone's behavior is, not whether it's done at work or not. Because again, you keep giving examples that disprove your point: > It is absolutely insane that people here are arguing that your workplace should be able to police your thoughts. I'm certainly not arguing that at all. You're free to think whatever you want. > He can even write it down and if someone wants to publish it, good for Bob. You almost make it sound like "Bob" dropped an essay on the ground and someone else happened to walk by, pick it up and publish it. Because in the real world if Bob wrote a paperback titled "Women are Bad for Democracy and They Shouldn't Be Able to Vote", did press junkets about this book, and actively encouraged people to buy it, then yes, he'd get fired by pretty much every company in this country and very few people would have an issue with that.

didibus 5y ago

So, I haven't read the linked article, I'm just going off from what you say here. Hypothetically, say someone hates you, think you're a low life, that you're not as smart, and have bad habits, a trash culture, despise the way you dress and talk, and find your life choice repulsive, might even think you're tainted and doomed to eternal condemnation. Now say you work with this person, but at work they pretend like none of it. They act normal and casual with you, and so they don't exhibit an active hostile environment. Now say you found their online blog, where they basically reveal their sentiment about you. Lets even say they don't specifically mention you by name, but they clearly describe their hate for people which you'd identify as. Now you go to work the next day with this person... Will you also just pretend like none of it? Will that knowledge now not have inherently tainted the work environment for you? What if they're your manager?

imgabe 5y ago
Say you are the person who doesn't like one of your co-workers. Whatever reason, maybe they remind you of someone who treated you poorly. Maybe you just don't have compatible personalities. Whatever it is, something about them irks you. Still, you're a professional, so you treat them with the same respect and courtesy you treat everyone else. You vent your feelings on your livejournal or whatever. Keeping things anonymous, but your co-worker finds it and demands that you be fired. Should you be fired?
- didibus 5y ago
  You haven't answered my scenario. I'm just asking if in those circumstances I've described, if you'd still feel at ease and totally happy going to work pretending like none of it. Or if that knowledge of the hate your manager exhibits for people of your kind would make you resent working with them? This is the first thing I need to know, because I personally would not be able to walk in to work motivated and energetic after that, I'd be very uncomfortable from that point on working under that manager knowing what I now know is their opinion of people like me. If you'd be fine with this and have no issue going back to work for that manager. Well it'll be hard for us to agree on anything that follows. Now if this would also make you uncomfortable, we can move to the next point, which is, how should this situation be resolved? You now have a manager making their subordinate uncomfortable at work. They do so because of their publicly expressed hate, disdain, resentment and desire to oppress people of the same kind as the subordinate. As the employer, what do you think would be the right solution here? P.S.: I'm asking in good faith, I think it's a complex situation, I'm not saying that firing the manager is the best course of action, but it does seem like one way to solve the issue, so I'm actually curious to hear pros/cons and alternatives.