> 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?
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.
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!
At a party: Appropriate. Support Channel for a Service: Not appropriate.
This sort of thing should never happen in a professional context.