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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

I think you can warn people about their performance without using abuse.

Abuse? Really? Is a single email where someone vents frustration for 2 lines actually abuse?

Yes name calling - 'dumb'.

Say a couple has a good relationship. One day, Partner A has a bad day at work. A comes home and screams at Partner B: "you're dumb! you're slow! why isn't dinner ready? you're a dolphin!"

Partner A was just venting frustration after having a terrible day. Is that abuse? YES! Unequivocally, yes.

There is no excuse for insulting, yelling, or otherwise treating other human beings as lesser than. It's abuse, always, even one time. And frankly if it happens once, it's very unlikely it isn't a repeated pattern of behavior.

Yes, in my opinion it is. Think about abuse in other contexts to put it in perspective. If a teacher in the middle of giving a homework assignment had said the same thing, would that be okay? What about a police officer who pulled someone over during a traffic stop? What about a customer at a drive thru saying this into the speaker?

This is not a random person on the street corner shouting at other random passers by. This guy is in a position of power over the people he is communicating with.

Absolutely right. You can smash a good relationship in a few seconds, even if it was one that took years to build.

> Think about abuse in other contexts to put it in perspective. If a teacher in the middle of giving a homework assignment had said the same thing, would that be okay? What about a police officer who pulled someone over during a traffic stop? What about a customer at a drive thru saying this into the speaker?

Calling a group of people "DUMB DOLPHINS" on an email chain ... Inappropriate, un professional, dis-respectful all seem like a better way to characterize it.

Its like the reverse of when Prince Andrew described Jeffrey Epstein behavior as "Un-Becoming". There is probably a better way to characterize it.

I dunno. Seems clearly abusive to me from someone in a position of power. This wasn't said among friends at a bar or by or about someone unrelated to the people in question. It was their boss, or bosses boss.

my heart goes out to all the victims of abuse, but not the ones that one time were on an email chain and their bosses-boss called the team they were on a bunch of "dumb dolphins"

I didn't know verbal/emotional abuse requires a minimum word count! Please tell, what is the magic number that serves as the threshold?

I knew you would get downvoted. HN is a weird mixture of professionalism and childishness. Getting angry at two lines without context/relationship with manager is all I could expect from here.

In what context would it be OK for a CEO to send ENTHUSIASTICALLY YELLING e-mails to employees telling them they are SLOW DUMB DOLPHINS and to STOP EMBARRASSING ME STOP IT STOP IT RIGHT NOW...?

Also how would our knowing more about the CEO/employee relationship here improve our perception? The most "positive" thing I can think of is, the employees are so used to it they would tell us something like "oh, that's just CEO, he communicates really passionately". That's not actually positive, though. It's Stockholm Syndrome. [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

> I knew you would get downvoted

Hold on though. You don't have the full context/relationship between GP and the people who downvoted them. It would be irresponsible for you to jump to conclusions about Hackernews or those commenters based on just a one-line grayed out comment.

If you think allowing someone with a massive power differential to call you dumb and degrade you is not abuse then you have been working and some pretty terrible places and I hope you find somewhere better.

Agreed, to characterize it as such is a dis-service to people who have suffered abuse in the workplace.

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