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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

The concept of "base" impulses and a hierarchy of value in body functions (intellect is "high", reproduction and digestion are "low") is a terrible remain of late Victorian / early Fascism periods. We are not holy souls trapped in a dirty world of temptation for the benefit of some higher power: we are (social) animals who evolved to be smarter and more flexible than all other animals.

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.

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Forcing your sexuality on somebody else in a context other than one where they desire it is terrible, whether or not sex is a good thing in general.

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.

> Forcing your sexuality on somebody else in a context other than one where they desire it is terrible

How will you know if the other party desires it without showing your intentions?

Generally speaking, if a person is required to talk to you as their job, they probably don't desire it.[0] They're not in the right headspace and they get it plenty enough as it is. Similarly, if you have no idea who they are and they're not in a location (physically or online) which implies they're interested in receiving random attention, they're probably not going to be interested. Aside from that, testing boundaries is something most people seem to learn to do.

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.

That contrasts with recent findings that some of the happiest workers are hairdressers. Guess what hairdressers do all day, while cutting hair? Chat about random stuff their customers bring up. And yes, a lot of it will be saucy, so to speak, because that's what most people are interested in. Is that customers forcing their sexuality on hairdressers? No, that's just being social "old school". Like you learn to find boundaries, you learn how to actually talk of the stuff. In tech, that is simply frowned upon.

The tech world, for all our declarations of being so progressive, is extremely prurient and repressed.

Those hairdressers have chosen that job. Tech support people have chosen a job that is not like a hairdressing job. So I'm not sure why the rules of one would apply to another.

> 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".

As an ex-support guy, lemme tell ya: like most low-paying low-skills jobs, it's very rarely a vocation. It is also eminently a "people skills" job, not unlike hairdressing or waiting tables. Of course supporting developers is different from supporting Joe Sixpack, but any random bugzilla record will show how tech support without people skills is a huge bag of fail.

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.

I've been working support for total 5+ years now... I think I could draw a lot of parallels with hairdressing actually.

On the other hand, a hairdresser can usually fire their customer if they're creepy - at least in my country, they're independent workers. A tech support worker can't.

Have you ever worked in generalist tech support? One of the first things you learn is how to draw a line when the situation is beyond mutual respect, because nothing good can happen there and you have already lost. A lot of people like to blow off steam by abusing a random voice on the phone, so you are entitled to quickly apologize and cut them off. Same applies (or should apply, in respectable support shops) in other situations the support worker would deem socially unacceptable. So yeah, you can fire the customer, your mental health comes first.

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.

> So yeah, you can fire the customer

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.

> You absolutely cannot ban a customer from your service

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.

I'm not defending the customers, I'm pointing out that "don't do things people won't want" doesn't really work unless you first establish that they won't want them, and it doesn't work at all when it becomes "don't try to gauge if someone wants X unless you know they want X".

As you correctly state, it is difficult to know exactly what someone does and doesn't want even at the best of times, but in a professional context it is a safe assumption that the person you are talking to wants to be treated professionally.

I agree, and I agree that it's lecherous and creepy to be hitting on support people (because, what, are they supposed to drop what they're doing and go out with you?) but that's about it. It's not sexist or terrible or anything, just very poor taste.

Lecherous and creepy doesn't fall under terrible behavior?

You don't.

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!

Because there are contexts where bringing that up is appropriate and contexts where it isn't?

At a party: Appropriate. Support Channel for a Service: Not appropriate.

This sort of thing should never happen in a professional context.

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