Valentine's Day Special: Bye Bye Tinder, Flirting in the Support Channel
stackfield.com
stackfield.com
Thus why half the comments are saying they were speaking harshly about their customers, half are saying it's not serious enough in tone.
It seems obvious, based on the last sentence, that they think this is something that must be addressed.
So when you point out a sexist action the target of your comment interprets that comment as you saying, "You are evil. Your actions are evil and anything you say is not true."
The truth is that even well meaning people who want to treat others well and are willing to learn still do insensitive or discriminatory things but the language people use to point this out is very toxic and often assumes malice.
But I think the opposite is true. The recipient of the criticism should be less sensitive. Women know the male ego is fragile. That's why most of the time they don't say anything.
However, even if your actions are the result of larger forces (patriarchy or otherwise), and not malice, you still need to be held personally responsible at some level. I just don't think we've found what that level is, yet.
Even where blame is explicitly not placed on anyone, people tend to go on the defensive as soon as you point out that their actions have unintended or un-thought-of consequences.
As demonstrated by the fact that someone downvoted this basic tenet of human nature, because they think it might be criticizing them personally.
What's interesting to me is that people who say things like "Quit being so sensitive" are often the people who get really angry if their own sensibilities are offended.
Hitting on people at work or while they are in the performance of their work duties is not okay.
Look, my future wife and I shared an office but were on different teams and projects. We befriended each other. Neither of us embarrassed the other at work by making unwelcome passes that aren't easy to back away from in a work-related situation. We never really shared work responsibilities, but if we had, neither of us would have replied to a request for work-related help with an invitation to discuss the color of each other's eyes. Neither of us was in a position of power over the other. Our relationship developed outside of the office, in a context where it was obvious our interactions were not work related, and where if anyone wanted to back away from that, it wouldn't have impacted our jobs at all.
"Hitting on someone", in the context of writing unsolicited flirtatious messages on a support channel, prompted only by the fact the profile picture of support staff looks like a girl is unambiguously creepy. Was there any indication the girl wanted to be invited to coffee in a different country just because she, uh, looked like a female human?
1- Post says: "Sub-subtitle being "human beings utterly unable to overcome base impulses despite higher order brain functions", then?"
2- A reply says: "No, just the ones in the cherrypicked examples for this article, perhaps."
3- My post says (paraphrased for comprehension): "These aren't examples cherrypicked to show people unable to refrain from inappropriate base impulses. The only cherrypicking is for amusement. The rest of the article explains that the number of people surrendering to inappropriate base impulses was surprisingly high. So the sub-subtitle remains correct."
4- Your post.
Do you see it now? Laughter is always welcome, so feel free to continue :)
A lot of the problems in the current culture wars are due to this idea that sexual activity is just vile. This generates repression, which generates anger and misunderstanding on both sides. Maybe we should try giving a bit more respectability to these "base" impulses, and learn how to live with them openly, rather than trying to pretend they don't exist.
Sexual activity is awesome, when it's between two people who both actually want it. I think you'll find that most of the people you're vilifying agree.
How will you know if the other party desires it without showing your intentions?
Personally, as a woman, I've been friends first with almost every person I've dated - I have a suspicion that that is what's missing from the current general dating culture. The idea that every person you meet, you've got to decide whether they're "dating material" or "friend material" near-instantly (generally based on the context of where/how you met them) is bizarre.
[0] They also probably don't desire discussions about politics or your pet dog or other things unrelated to the job unless they bring it up. They're rarely in a position of power here - the customer is. You're not equals in this exchange.
The tech world, for all our declarations of being so progressive, is extremely prurient and repressed.
Btw, the most depressing call I've ever had was with this guy I had helped for weeks, solving his "enterprise" problems. At the time I worked with a female colleague, and we would share customers and tickets. Eventually she left, so when I broke the news to this guy, he went "oh, i'm sorry to hear that. To be honest, I preferred her; I always prefer ladies on the phone". That was humiliating beyond belief. When I told her a few years later (since we kept in touch), she was absolutely flattered. Because sexism is not that bad when it benefits you, so to speak.
You absolutely cannot ban a customer from your service 99.9% of the time as front-level support. You often can't even put the phone down except in certain pre-defined situations which are decided on without actually communicating with front-line support, never mind groups which might have specific issues within your front-line support team. Harassment is expected and you're expected to deal with it, whether gender-based or not. The best you can do is try to deflect them, as you say, and let them do exactly the same thing next time.
If there were actually consequences to harassing people, few would do it - but as it is, in many cases, from small companies to large ones, retaining the customer is more important than your employees.
I guess that depends on the shop and the respect it grants its workers. In my case, at one company we would keep files about offenders and would report them to their managers, who would usually put someone else in charge of communicating with us. At another company we were simply told to cut them off, because tech support fees do not pay for abuse, end of story.
In most cases, any tech support contract worth at least four digits will involve too many people to be cut simply because of an individual hothead here or there, and in any case the wear this sort of bad customers put on your people is not worth whatever money is coming in. Managers who don't understand this are not doing tech support, they are running a sweatshop and they should feel bad, and I am sorry if you met anyone like that.
> The tech world, for all our declarations of being so progressive, is extremely prurient and repressed.
I disagree. I think that it is a lot more difficult to read any kind of social cue in a text-based technical support chat, and that the instinct to assume the other party wants to keep the conversation professional is sensible and prudent, not "repressed".
Btw, when talking about being repressed, i referred more to conferences and other gatherings, including twitter. We go from "SURPRISE- PORN SLIDE!" to "OMG THAT GUY CRACKED A SEXIST JOKE LETS RUIN HIS LIFE" with nothing in between. That's repression in action: since nobody is supposed to talk about it, nobody knows how to talk about it, or how to react in ways the rest of the world would find normal.
At a party: Appropriate. Support Channel for a Service: Not appropriate.
This sort of thing should never happen in a professional context.
The thing is, the balance here is tipped to the "you probably shouldn't try it" side, and with good reason. Maybe you miss the only chance in your lifetime of hitting it off with the cute Tech Support gal who actually was receptive to your advances. However, this is not a party or a pub, this is her job, a situation where she likely isn't looking for a hookup, and she receives tons of inappropriate comments, and is tired of being considered by her customers and male coworkers as merely a pretty thing instead of as a professional. So what do you think is the chance YOU are the one customer who she is actually interested in, after wading through dozens of similarly lame flirting?
To put it another way, if she is terribly upset about flirting, she can choose not to go to parties and pubs. But this is her job!
I have a female friend who gets hit on virtually constantly. She works for AT&T, and has described lines of hopefuls outside her door when she goes into the office. (she now works mostly from home)
She never pays for lunch, never pays for dinner. Men offer her free trips to different countries. She really is that attractive. But women who aren't quite that attractive get hit on all the time too, maybe not to the same extent as my friend does, but still a lot, in places that people would consider inappropriate or unprofessional.
It's pretty much ubiquitous. So ubiquitous that even calling it 'sexism' almost seems to downplay it. Because these little flirtatious interactions are easily hid from other people, particularly other guys, it's easy for guys, who are never the recipients of similar attention, to remain unaware of, or worse, fool themselves into believing that women are not being constantly assessed for the potential for romantic or sexual liaison.
My friend started highlighting it for me, and then I started seeing it everywhere.
I know, blaming the victim. But the social game is complex, and she is definitely a part of it.
Seems like a no-win situation all round, really. If you take it, you're encouraging his behaviour (and making him feel like you're indebted to him). If you reject it you're going to find out how he deals with rejection, which, particularly in drunken scenarios, can literally be dangerous to you.
1. Cop, under mind control, tries to kill Trish Walker. 2. Cop stalks Trish to apologize. 3. Trish is frightened and tell him to leave. 4. Cop continues to stalk. 5. Cop and Trish hook up.
Step 5 should be Trish maces cop, and he loses his badge.
Is that not indicative of being the product of a sexist environment? A man that cannot accept rejection and therefor feels he has a right to behave in a dangerous way, seems to be a problem with his view of himself, and men as a whole, the world.
A large number of modern feminists strongly believe that most *ism is a result of institutional and societal force - i.e. that people oppress others because they've been taught to, their society pressures them to do so, and that not doing so can result in harm to them.
The problem is... how do you solve this? Whose fault is it? The institutional pressures are almost certainly not any individual's fault. But the fact remains that on an individual level, the man in this example is oppressing the woman, and something has to be done about that in the short term.
Yeah. A number of my female friends stay away from bars for that reason.
> I've talked to a few girls about this. While some are absolutely just out for all the freebies they can get, others have said that men will get increasingly aggressive when you turn down offers for stuff like that - like they insist on being "a provider" and you turning that down is an insult to their manhood.
This is really an unhealthy cycle. I don't understand why this is tolerated socially, at all [particularly] in a work environment.
Any "fix" for this will drastically reduce women's social power.
It's far from clear that women in general want this to happen. One complaint I've heard from a number of women about tech environments directly relates to this; a social butterfly who organizes parties and hackathons has lower status than the fat neckbeard who fixed all the performance problems.
In fact, activists regularly moan about this: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/acknowledging-non-coding... https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/how-tech-devalues-social...
Interesting perspective. On reflection, since I'd find any pressure to attend stuff like parties or hackathons and such kind of annoying, even if attendance isn't strictly required and especially if they're outside normal work hours and/or project schedules aren't adjusted to account for them, it likely would lower my opinion of someone if they kept advocating for or organizing that kind of thing. Even under the best circumstances I doubt it'd raise my opinion of them.
I wear a suit and tie to work every day. I didn't really understand her position until I started job hunting. I like wearing suits. I own five of them, three are custom made. Now I have to make a decision. Do I wear a suit and tie to my in-person job interviews?
Coders seem to have an irrational hatred of suits and ties for some reason. The conservative choice would be to wear a polo shirt and slacks to my interviews. But to do that would put me in a weird position. Once I get the job, am I going to start wearing my suits again? When, the very first day? Or hide them away in the closet until I feel ready to?
Appearance is political, and therefore dangerous. But it's also very personal, you wind up wanting to take the risks anyway just to "be who you are". To purposefully choose to be less attractive feels like you're doing violence to yourself. The only real choice, once people start noticing you and complimenting you and you start noticing what it's doing for your life, is to keep going with it.
You can't just turn it off. You can choose to, but it never feels good to do that, and you're just going to face the same decision tomorrow. I, and she, would rather deal with the consequences of being really attractive than to stop. That includes being accepting of other's gifts, others' attention.
When she tells me about her experiences, she's not complaining. She's noting something that she's already been dealing with for years. She's had the internal conversations with herself, should she downplay it, should she present less of herself to the world. Should she stop letting guys express their appreciation for her. Over and over again, for years.
They're hard questions to contemplate, and there's only one real answer.
I recently purchased a slim red pants designed to convey a) that I'm a moderately creative type and b) that I have a nice ass. The net result is that I get desirable attention from women I like, but also I get undesirable attention from fat chicks and gays.
I can switch that undesirable attention off anytime I want - I just need to dress like a slob and/or be less careful about having a desirable body (i.e. eat more butter, do fewer exercises aimed at aesthetics, not carefully calibrate my beard). I choose not to because that undesirable attention is a small price to pay for the desirable attention I receive.
Similarly, consider the daily annoyance of recruiters. Who among us would trade recruiters + super hot job market for no recruiters + humanities academic-like desperation for any job at all?
Disclaimer: I do understand that this is sociologically complex topic
A woman may choose to wear what someone might consider a revealing piece of clothing for no other reason than she wants to and finds it "cute" (omitting why she has gotten to that conclusion e.g. marketing, etc). To that woman, she chose to wear something that make her happy. She is NOT responsible for the actions of the people around her based on how they view that article of clothing. This ends up always with either victim blaming or claims of "common sense" when really she should be able to go around topless if she so chooses without having to fear others' actions.
In your case, you are already assuming reactions from others which is a whole other route in this conversation. When all is said and done, I find this to be a terribly interesting and complex topic.
Wearing clothes is a social act, not a personal one. That's why there are laws about it. We geeks should know, considering how we softly strong-armed entire swaths of dress-code rules to bow to practicality over other pre-existing social rules.
That does not mean one cannot stop himself from raping a woman if she wears X or Y (nobody loses control ever, and if one does he should be held accountable for it), but it's dishonest to pretend one should not feel attracted by people wearing clothes designed to make them look attractive.
in the context of the original post, a customer was attracted to the image of the fictitious support staffer. How the customer acted shows a perhaps a lack of control. In this case it was "innocent" hitting on (not flirting as one of the other comments suggested). But the fact that the customer felt compelled to is strange in the context of customer support.
Like I said, this is an interesting topic.
But the difference in media and consequences matter. When the consequences involve a stampede of people, you best believe it's a different situation than if the consequences amounted to revving up insecure guys.
> Wearing clothes is a social act, not a personal one.
It's both. Until society tells you how you have to dress all the time, then there's a social component and a personal one.
"I, and she, would rather deal with the consequences of being really attractive than to stop."
There should be no consequences to how you look, in general, but especially not the kind of consequences that women have to deal with.
Some people (probably most people) don't wear clothes just to get a reaction from others. They wear clothes because they just like them, and don't expect, and should not be forced to comply with, unwanted attention from anyone, simply because of how they choose to dress. vinceguidry stated as much, but then seemed to just go "oh well, that's how things are I guess."
The "real answer" of "what should I do" about being treated this way is to fight this misconception that unwanted behavior is simply expected and has to be either accepted or you have to change your looks. Nobody should have to change how they look to prevent being mistreated. This is not an acceptable choice, and you should not put up with it, nor should anyone.
And as far as comparing yourselves to women's experiences, yes, you may both get "undesireable attention" for the clothes you both choose to wear. But this treatment is not even remotely like the abuse women receive just for wearing a skirt, or having the audacity to have big breasts or a nice butt or a pretty face.
While you are welcome to have your own opinion, lumping your own experiences in with theirs and expressing an opinion about both as if they were one experience is not only factually inaccurate, it prevents discussion about the issue at hand, which is women receive unfair and undesireable treatment from men.
The clothes people choose to wear becomes a part of their identity. They are choosing for a reason, that reason comes from them. Unless you're a kid and your parents are picking out your clothes for you, what you wear is a reflection of who you are.
Nobody deserves to receive negative attention from others based on how they dress, but it's a bit of wishful thinking to claim that there should be no consequences to how you look. People get what they work towards, not what they deserve. And two people can receive the same attention, one person can receive it positively, the other negatively. Without reading a person's mind, it's impossible to know how to 'safely' interact with them.
> he "real answer" of "what should I do" about being treated this way is to fight this misconception
Need to stop you right there. You can't demand that someone get political just to change their personal situation. Fighting for social justice is a privilege afforded to those who have managed to reach a point in their lives where they can afford to spend great deals of their time persuading others to change the way they think.
You and I have this privilege, most people do not. Many people, if they start trying to fight the "way things are", it will get them fired.
> While you are welcome to have your own opinion, lumping your own experiences in with theirs and expressing an opinion about both as if they were one experience is not only factually inaccurate, it prevents discussion about the issue at hand, which is women receive unfair and undesireable treatment from men.
Nobody is doing this. I expressed an experience I had that I felt had parallels to her experience. Both experiences had parallels to the ordinary one. I shared them because I felt they'd help illustrate what goes on under their noses. It's not quite as overt as in my case, but it still happens, more subtly.
I'm not trying to conflate, but to raise awareness.
I know at least two women who sometimes complain about unwanted attention from men at tech conferences and similar circumstances. On the other hand, they both slept with me within a few hours of meeting me under the exact same circumstances as a result of exactly the same type of attention. They just happened to find me attractive but other folks unattractive. This doesn't make the unattractive folks hitting on them sexist villains. It just makes me a guy blessed with virtues like being tall and having a symmetric face.
The fact that women receive more attention is solely proportional to the convention that men must approach women. Feel free to try to change that - I'm sure nerds with approach anxiety everywhere will thank you if you succeed.
Attention, wanted or unwanted, is of course always proportional to how desirable a person is. That's the cost of being beautiful. Similarly, being a hot commodity in the job market has some costs like unwanted recruiter attention, in addition to benefits like six figure salaries.
Is it really a worthwhile use of our time and attention to make life marginally better for people who are already at the top of the heap? (Not that you've actually provided any mechanism for separating wanted and unwanted attention.) Why not focus your time and attention on the folks who are really suffering - e.g., low skill workers who are barred from working in the US, or unattractive men who get laid once a year at best? Why is increasing social inequality such a priority of yours?
"But I'm polite and I'll back off if Cute Tech Support Gal isn't uninterested" isn't enough. When multiple customers decide to hit on her, this is probably upsetting to her regardless of whether you in particular were willing to back off. Even if everyone backs off it's still upsetting. It negatively impacts her work experience. Especially if her coworker, Tech Support Guy, is not constantly flirted with and customers treat him more professionally instead.
To me it's self-evident that hitting on someone using a tech support form or chat is especially lame. We're not talking about a couple who are coworkers, go to lunch frequently, talk every day, and then something blossoms between them. I've no problem with that. Instead, this is creepy male customer behavior, which decide to abruptly hitting on a staff member just because she was a girl and they liked their tiny profile picture. This really screams "inappropriate".
It is totally possible to know in many different circumstances. Let's take the_af's example: sexual attention in the workplace.
IT IS NEVER APPROPRIATE TO GIVE SOMEONE SEXUAL ATTENTION IN THE WORKPLACE. So, right there we've got at least one way to tell when someone wants attention or not.
Another way to tell is if you are engaged in any kind of business transaction. Paying money at the toll booth, getting your strawberry power boost at Smoothie King, getting an adjustment in yoga class, getting help from tech support. Do not hit on people during a business transaction.
Yet another big hint is any time you're interacting with people you don't know in a situation where they would neither expect nor look for attention. Ask yourself if they came there to get hit on - coffee shop? Nope, they came for coffee. Farmer's market? Nope, came for vegetables. At a tech conference? They came to listen to tech talks. They did not attend so you could hit on them.
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On a more personal note: you, sir, are basically the stereotype of a misogynist womanizer. You go to tech conferences and hit on women, and even as they complain to your face about guys who pull the same shit you do, you completely ignore the fact that they're telling you they do not want that kind of attention there. The fact that you can convince them to sleep with you does not justify this behavior.
You say women receive more attention because of a social convention about hitting on people, completely missing the fact that most women do not want to fuck everyone they meet, like most men seem to. Women actually receive more attention because of a different social convention - that men believe they have the right to objectify and pursue sex from every woman they find attractive.
Finally, men who don't get laid are not suffering. Except maybe by suffering under the delusion that they are owed sex.
That's exactly my point. But note that women don't really have this option. Men will hit on them no matter how much they downplay.
It is nice to be appreciated (especially since happens less and less often as you age :-))
In a way, getting the interest from the undesirable people makes it even worse, because you're seeing the difference. If everyone ignored you, it wouldn't seem as bad I think. But if you're a straight dude, and you can't get a date to save your life, but gay men are constantly hitting on you, that's not going to do much for your self-esteem, it's going to make you question why you only seem to appeal to them.
Want to hear a funny thing regarding this? From _The Big Short_ by Michael Lewis:
> The guys who ran money dressed as if they were going to a Yankees game. Their financial performance was supposed to be all that mattered about them, and so it caused suspicion if they dressed too well. If you saw a buy-side guy in a suit, it usually meant that he was in trouble, or scheduled to meet someone who had given him money, or both.
Then she's playing along at least on some level. Accepting gifts while calling them unwanted is disingenuous at best.
Edit: Especially since the product focusses on being "end-to-end-encrypted" and privacy minded, and they just purposely "leak" their customer conversations like that.
Gross.
EG.
If the customer compliments your looks then reply with "??". Do not encourage them with a "Thank you."
Edit: To expand upon this a bit, I've noticed it with salesfolks that come to my office. It's always more "traditional" salesfolk that do it, say people trying to sell you a copier.
Though I'd say with regards to men selling things to women it is probably more common to have them 'talk down' to them. My mom was just complaining about how a car salesman wouldn't even talk to her about what she wanted and kept saying for her to bring my dad with her. I've had salesmen do it at the Apple store when I'm with someone who's buying a computer. They ask me what the woman should get.
If your stride even hesitated, they were on you like vultures - and for good reason (from a sales POV). I had many 18-20 y/o acquaintances fall prey to the aggressive, attractive saleswoman.
Did they need to switch plans or carriers? Nope. She wasn't some scummy suit; she was a beautiful siren definitely attracted to him. It just so happened that she could give him the "best discount" on mobile plans and devices. It was coincidence that they never left with any of the girls' phone numbers.
Sex definitely sells.
https://medium.com/@narsimham/on-web-authorship-trends-828bf...
It was hard to believe how many people wanted to chat, get a walk through of our product or have a call until they got handed off to a male in sales or support. So many no shows for meetings.