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Comment by BlanketApple | Hacker News Reader

I'd heard rumors about this at Vice. Glad to see it getting some air.

Stories like this are important, because I think the traditional view of sexual harassment is that it happens at JP Morgan, or Exxon, or "stodgy" old companies.

People don't think that it can happen at their cool, hip workplace where everyone's woke. But, power is power.

Incidentally, and totally based off of a gut reaction and not data: I wonder if this is the death knell of "company outings." More and more it feels like people are content to let work be work, and avoiding things like holiday parties and after-work gatherings.

I wonder if it's partially because of situations like this: You might be inappropriately propositioned. Or, you might have too much to drink and make an inappropriate advance - I don't even mean anything grossly egregious here necessarily, but a superior making an advance on their subordinate is pretty inappropriate even if the advance itself is tame.

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As a general rule for life I've always made sure to keep anything romantic out of my work life. If there was someone important enough to me that I worked with who I wanted to approach in that sense I'd wait until one of us moved onto another job. I'm not willing to say the vast majority of work related flings and relationships end up in disaster but I'm sure a lot of other people won't say that the majority wind up as fairy tale endings, either.

I'm surprised more people don't live and die by this rule. It's something I decided on as a teen to avoid drama, purely, in my life. It wasn't something constructed from advice from elders or lessons learned through other people's nightmare stories. This idea wasn't constructed for a lifetime of self preservation or to protect something important to me. It was a fairly simple concept about reading the situation and showing respect for everyone involved including co-workers.

With you 100%. Sure, meeting people at work happens— in America people spend 8-12 hours a day there. But best to not act on anything until one or both parties don’t work at the same place.

My dad had a slightly gross phrase for this: ‘don’t shit where you eat’.

As in there’s no sense in potentially poisoning workplace relations if a romantic overture or relationship doesn’t go well.

I've worked at places that imported 1000s of college grads per year. In environments like this, there's no way to avoid office romance. The best you can do is put "No dating subordinates" in the company plan, and avoid serving excess amounts of alcohol at company events. (At one of the place I worked, the reason they stopped hard alcohol had to do with a DUI rather than harassment)

Where I grew up it was: Don’t fish off of the company pier

I think, in general, that it is totally fine to have company outings, but propositions of any sort should be avoided. You're certainly asking each individual to have self discipline, but in my mind this is a very reasonable expectation.

As a rule, everyone should probably avoid relationships at work. If you do decide to have a relationship, do it right and start extremely slowly (i.e. coffee shop date, etc). Feel things out, not up :) and make sure that both people have the same ideas before moving to the next level. Relationships between superiors and subordinates should generally be forbidden.

On the other hand, think about how much time you spend at work. How close your interactions are with others. We - human beings - are jammed into little 4-walled boxes for the majority of our days with a bunch of people we already have something huge in common with...and told not to get too close with them. It's pretty wild, the whole scenario.

As a married guy I find this line of thinking hard to understand. “How are we supposed to work so closely with these people without getting ‘too close?’” Uh, I’m not allowed to solicit a date in any context: work, the grocery store, cafes, etc. Somehow I manage, and so do most married people.

It's not that point I read from the parent. It's that they're prime candidates so it's unfortunate to waste that connection. Not that it in any way is hard to resist urges.

As a married guy, if your marriage is truly fulfilling, this problem is irrelevant to you.

Given that proximity is the single largest determining factor in romantic partnership, if you work the majority of your time then coworkers will be your most promising dating pool. If you don't work much, you're probably stressed from unemployment. The number of people that have free time to enjoy close proximity with non-coworkers is certainly a minority.

> told not to get too close with them

Well, I don't think that's true really. Nobody cares if you're close friends with your co-workers. Many co-workers are close friends.

But, I get that you meant romantic relationships.

The problem of course being that there's so much negative baggage that often accompanies unsuccessful or unrequited romantic interest, all of it detrimental to the company. For example: If a subordinate rejects a superior's advances, and there's even a whiff of unfair treatment (being passed over for promotion, for example), the subordinate has a legitimate grievance that they didn't before.

The woman in the article, for example, that rejected her boss's advances and then was later let go for "poor performance": Maybe she really was performing extremely poorly! And maybe the boss really was totally over it immediately. But she now has a pretty solid case that it was retaliation, forever.

It just puts the company in a position where they have to be hyper-vigilant about monitoring things like this, and it's a huge waste of resources. Regardless of how valuable you are to the company, you're almost certainly not worth the huge headache that you just caused.

> For example: If a subordinate rejects a superior's advances, and there's even a whiff of unfair treatment (being passed over for promotion, for example), the subordinate has a legitimate grievance that they didn't before

The damage happens the minute the superior makes the advance. Maybe the superior is enlightened and won’t hold a rejection against the subordinate. But how is the subordinate supposed to know that? It puts the subordinate person in an incredibly stressful situation.

And even if the superior thinks they can be objective, is that true? Will the superior continue to treat the subordinate exactly the same, try to mentor and help the subordinate move up in the company? Or will the superior try to decrease contact with the subordinate in order to avoid awkwardness? That robs the subordinate of career opportunities, just because they attracted the eye of a superior. That’s incredibly fucked up.

All very true. I was more thinking from the company's perspective (who often are the ones overtly discouraging inter-office relationships).

> I think, in general, that it is totally fine to have company outings, but propositions of any sort should be avoided.

It's more that I wonder if this is just another nail in the coffin. Again, totally not based on data of any sort, but it seems like people are less and less enthused about company outings and this might just be one more easy justification for not attending the holiday party.

> everyone should probably avoid relationships at work

That's pretty unrealistic. I recall a statistic that 40% of marriages evolve from office romances. People get into relationships with people they are around.

I don’t know about marriages, but this source says 10% of heterosexual couples met at work (dropping sharply): http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122412448050

I certainly didn't mean to foreclose the option entirely, but I'd start my search for a serious relationship somewhere other than the office. Remember that office romances can also cause major workplace strife if they don't end well. In any case, I also provided a brief description of how an office relationship (or any one, for that matter) might be done safely.

The problem will be solved by having company outings, but simply declare them privat and no longer invite colleagues with 'trouble' potential. You cant lawsuit people for there private lifes. Works for politicians already. Result of this will be a even more closed club.

> but a superior making an advance on their subordinate is pretty inappropriate even if the advance itself is tame.

My thoughts have tended to arrive at the same conclusion. But, this idea seems to be a lot less popular than I'd expect. While the problem might be abuse of power, the popular conversation at the moment, oddly, is not. I wish I understood better why that is.

I agree it is helpful that the contradictions (often around cultural image) get air time. I wonder if this kind of thing can lead the popular conversation to a point of discourse that confronts the similarities in so many of the outcries, such as abuse of power.

i've never understood those who think work is an appropriate place to seek romantic relationships. There's an old saying, "You don't shit where you eat"

Those whose attractions to people and whose relationships with them are more akin to shitting will have an easier time remembering and applying that one. Though people for whom that's the case, probably don't care.

Meanwhile those with good intentions and good relationships (even ones that eventually turn to shit) will see nothing at the outset to remind them of the old saw. They don't intend to shit, anywhere.

Also, if we're trying to decide here which primitive need to prioritize (sex vs. food) then sex is going to win every time, because at least for males, it's far more valuable to the species (in the evolutionary selection sense) than his procurement of food. If a male starves to death after passing his genes on, those genes march on, downward through time. (Not that a hapless office drudge and would-be harasser or uncomfortable-maker will necessarily end up passing any genes on, but his sex drive doesn't know that. That drive is pretty dumb in general.)

Still, I agree with your point. Maybe better & more instructive is just to "keep work professional" and leave it at that. Sounds a little dry perhaps. But work should be dry. All these companies that keep demanding "passion" and try to be your mom and best friend and social life all wrapped into one, are asking for trouble. Your life doesn't need to be a Greek myth. Get back to work.

i've never understood those who think work is an appropriate place to seek romantic relationships.

Like Barack and Michelle Obama? People are human. Put a bunch of single people with similar backgrounds in an office for a third or more of their waking lives, and there are going to be relationships happening unless you institute draconian policies, and probably even then.

It's true.

Very easy to have a couple drinks on the rooftop for X event, see women as sexy then go back downstairs for mischief.

Of course, that's both sides wanting it.

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