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jpatokal

So the "black chair" stuff is inexcusable, but regarding the end:

> No matter who you are,

> You deserve to feel loved and appreciated.

> You deserve to be valued.

> You deserve to feel free.

> You deserve the chance to shine.

Actually, you don't. You might "deserve" these from your parents, but in the workplace, these all need to be earned.

It's also really not the company's problem if you get panic attacks at the thought of running into the ex-boyfriend that you slapped -- even if you worked at the same company.

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>It's also really not the company's problem if you get panic attacks...

because of the way the company completely destroyed your sense of self-worth and promoted a toxic culture of abuse?

Actually, it might be. I wish it was. Maybe we'd value each other a bit more.

Saying your company is at fault for how you feel is the exact same reasoning as "You made me do it", ie, not assuming any agency at all. Same thing with "toxic culture of abuse."

People who are being sexually trafficked and child soldiers are in a toxic culture of abuse that they can't escape from. We're talking about an adult with a lower management job at a tech company, not the wretched of the earth.

I'm not sure I understand your reasoning here. If a child is bullied by her classmates, your reasoning would suggest that her negative feelings are her fault and not her tormentors? Sure, she might not be locked up in a medieval dungeon (a literal place she can't escape from), in fact, I suppose she can switch schools... Are you saying the student should be tougher or not provoke her classmates or...

You're comparing a child to an adult as if they're the same. That's a pretty leaky abstraction and somewhat disturbing if you can't see the critical distinction.

This is the kind of self-indulgent thinking that tries certain (usually poor or minority) 12 year olds as adults, while treating certain (usually wealthy and white) adults as children who should be forgiven for "youthful indiscretions." Similarly, it focuses on the comparatively well-off but unhappy while completely effacing the experiences of the genuinely exploited.

It isn't "no agency at all" or "full agency", that is a misleading false dichotomy.

The truth is somewhere between those two extremes. Everyone is HEAVILY influenced by the environment immediately around them.

Please don't construct strawmen. She specifically pointed to the idea of seeing her ex-boyfriend as the trigger, not (say) the company logo or office.

To be fair, it doesn't seem like they gave her the chance to "earn it"

I can't believe you're defending someone who physically beats someone because they're seeing someone else.

Look, what she did there was past the line. He clearly wasn't a saint here either, but physical attacks are a different level of wrong. I think just as in any real life story no one is perfect and there are no clear bad guys or good guys.

Still, you can determine whether someone, as wrong and evil as they might be in this instance, were wronged other instances. Did she experience a terrible workspace at squarespace? It does seem so. Was what she did to "The Guy" terrible? It was. Does either what she did that night make what happened to her irrelevant or does it seem to suggest what her employers did to her was "okay"? That probably isn't fair.

Office politics and verbal racism are terrible.

But actually beating someone? Using violence against them and deliberately inflicting physical pain to get revenge? That's a whole different world of moral wrong, so much so that it's not really worth considering anything else.

>But actually beating someone? Using violence against them and deliberately inflicting physical pain to get revenge? That's a whole different world of moral wrong, so much so that it's not really worth considering anything else.

That isn't quite what happened. She saw the guy (who had recently told her that he loved her) kissing someone else. She slapped him out of shock/betrayal/disbelief. In the circumstances, her slap seems entirely reasonable. The guy was clearly a lying, manipulative bastard. I'm not sure what you're talking about regarding "inflicting physical pain" and "get revenge". Did you actually read the article?

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