Upload: Lurid Lawsuit’s Quiet End Leaves Startup Barely Dented

Is it the verbal nature of it, that leads you to believe people have no right to be free of it?

As a counter example, consider that verbal intimidation is just as illegal as any other kind.

First and foremost, it would make at least a heavy minority if not a majority of people rather unhappy. Because of a wagon-load of reasons (excessive work hours, moving to a new city for work separating you from most of your pre-existing social network, general difficulty of making new friends as an adult), work friends are the core of most people's social networks nowadays. If you eliminate work friends, you'd leave a lot of us more-or-less friendless, isolated, and sad.

It also becomes complicated when you consider that some work inherently involves discussing your personal opinions. What business practices are ethical, aesthetics of design, editorial choices.

Finally, employees must be able to discuss matters of common interest directly, to organize against management in both traditional matters of worker interest (conditions, pay, benefits) and to express a collective opinion about the direction of the company (eg, when the company takes actions the employees believe are unethical). This also requires employees be able to express potentially objectionable opinions to each other.

But as a model of professional behavior, it would make everything so much simpler if you never said one extra word to or treated the person in the next desk/cube/office in the slightest way different, inside the workplace, regardless of whether they're your best friend, your spouse, your kidney donor, your childhood bully, your crush, your worst enemy, or your closest relative. If you work with your best friend, finish your work, leave the office, and then talk to them about sports or your porn collections.