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Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

It's not the place. Don't shit where you eat. When you have these discussions at work people are forced to listen to your view, not only are they not getting paid for that, their response will have consequences. Are you looking for coworkers to reaffirm your belief or an actual discussion? Because if it is the latter the Janet from accounting might feel strongly about capital punishment for women who abort, now should Janet get fired for her political views then (which are protected)? Would this affect your ability to work with Janet reducing her value to the business? Is it fair to forcibly shove your views on others with the threat of harming their career and livelihood otherwise?

The workplace is not a social club. You can still socialize with willing coworkers after work where everyone is free to leave with no repurcursions.

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Where’s the force? Nobody is required to have lunch with me; nobody is required to respond to random off-topic messages on chat applications.

We’re taking about the thing that each of us spends 1/3 of our weekdays doing. The majority of our waking hours. It’s one of the largest aspects of all our lives, and is fundamentally derived from the outcomes of very recent political battles over the roles of individual laborers.

I believe that we owe it to ourselves and, as a basic matter of respect, to our coworkers, to have important discussions. If you don’t want that for yourself, then you can stick to sports and weather. That’s fine too!

> If you don’t want that for yourself, then you can stick to sports and weather. That’s fine too!

If I had a private office and didn't have to block out background conversation with noise-cancelling headphones and loud music that would be fine, yeah.

Happy I can mainly work from home nowadays.

> If I had a private office and didn't have to block out background conversation with noise-cancelling headphones and loud music that would be fine, yeah.

These sound like the kinds of employee privileges you’d like to negotiate for at work, ideally with multiple other coworkers backing you. The kind of thing that would ideally come from multiple discussions, some of which would ultimately boil down to your and your employer’s obligations. Let’s hope that won’t be too political for your taste, should you decide to stop working from home!

The union I was in most recently had dedicated time for discussing and voting on matters important to members, and scheduled negotiations between our chosen representatives and our employer.

I preferred that to being distracted at work.

Me too; I also don’t like to be distracted.

And I mean this genuinely: it’s wonderful that you have a Union that you can use for those purposes. Most workers in the US, particularly tech workers, don’t. The fact that you do is a testament to the effectiveness of politics in the workplace.

Everything has a place. Use personal chat systems and have lunch with people outside of work. I have been asked to participate in things I disagreed with when I joined a new company for example and I couldn't refuse because that might mess up my reputation before I could prove myself. I have also worked jobs where coworkers argued and talked about religion and racial things and I was not senior and I was new and I had no desire to participate in their discussion yet I had no choice but to sit in the same room with them and listen to deeply offending and hurtful things. I do not get paid to hear your opinions about trump or minorities or whatever.

Even after working at a place for years, it is very disheartening when people discuss bs that affects me personally yet if I even say anything it would be things that will offend them deeply.

Off work I could speak my mind and refuse to paricipate in offwork activities but during work that declined chat request might offend you or you might see it as not supporting you or your cause.

If I decline a request to chat about abortion for example, will you see it as a sign of my not supporting you? In that case it might affect how well you work with me? Then what? The person that has the upperhand in the power dynamic speaks and the other people agree?

As far i understood, this is about allowing or disallowing employees to discuss the ruling. Nobody is talking about forcing people to take part on the discussion or to pick a side —you always have the option not to participate on these things— so i'm not really getting where your point is coming from, sorry.

No you do not. Let'e bob goes on a rant about capital punishment against aborters or incarceration for gay people once that is also repealed. How will you feel as a pro choice person or a gay person? Will you not feel hurt in the slightest and will it not affect how you work and interact with bob?

People like you must have always been in positions of power and priviledge. I have been at the other end enduring all sorts of horrific remarks and being forced to keep quiet to save my career. Now I look back at those jobs and the first thing I always remeber is how horrible it felt people saying ignorant and hurtful things day in and day out and being forced to listen to that or disagree and not get my contract renewed, and affect other political power dynamics that can literally ruin my life.

So please sir/madam, don't shit where you eat. Not everyone appreciates the smell while they eat.

> People like you must have always been...

No need for these assumptions. Your argument is clear without them.

Maybe you and i would not respond the same way on the same situation, and that's OK. Personally, when i had coworkers that would say things that i consider totally indefensible, yes, it made me feel terrible and angry, but at the same time, i was at least glad to now know who i was dealing with. I knew that person couldn't be trusted, and how i should (avoid to) interact with them. This is especially true for me in the cases where such person is a superior, or when nobody else in the organization calls on their shit; those are start-to-look-for-another-job situations for me personally.

And, sincerely, i don't think banning such topics from work environments would work for these kind of cases. Those people will keep being the way they are and acting their shitty way when and where they feel they'll get away with it; you'll just may not know who they are, yet.

Disclaimer: i'm not from the USA, or a "first world" country, so it's very possible for our cultures and work environments where we've been to be quite different.

Sorry for the "people like you.." remark.

You say it would affect you do bad you might even leave a job. So essentially you are excluding people with disagreeable views from the workplace harming their ability to provide for themselves and family. That is categorically unfair and anti democratic. Instead of people changing their views peacefully you are threatening them this way and they will also need to use force in return. You only feel this way in my opinion because you have options and your views are in the majority. Many of your views at a point were unpopular.

I do not go to work to socialize or play politics. I am there to provide labor and services in exchange for money. Quite frankly, on just about any political topic my views would offend people on any end of the political spectrum because I like to think for myself instead join the hivemind and go with party propagnada. You want to take that libery away from me. You want to force me to agree with you or become unemployed, because the other end of the political spectrum will also feel the same way as you. You think what I said before about the hypotetical person bob is bad? Ok, what if Jane is a transexual working at a factory in the deep south, how do you think that person is treated? They won't hear nice things about transexuals I can assure you that and they may not be able to move either (and they shouldn't have to).

The phrase "don't shit where you eat" comes from the fact that disease spreads and wipes out civilizations when they fail to so that. In this case, the specifics of your politics are not relevant but that you are contaminating the workplace with politics and politics with the workplace. Using the power dynamics of the workplace to further your political agenda and allowing politics to decide who works where (which again, that is illegal under labor law of many countries not just US).

In the US as well I see this trend where leftists and rightists alike think it is a good idea to force people into their camp. If a person is on your side because you forced them, obviously their supposed views are fake. You get rid of bob, but his friend jack saw what happened to bob and will quietly try to get rid of people that disagree with hid and bob's views now. You brought political conflict to the workplace now.

> You want to force me to agree with you or become unemployed

What in the hell? I think i totally failed to communicate what i mean if took that from what i said.

I tried to say that it's a personal decision of mine to try to change my workplace if i learn that people i work with/for are completely immoral. Like, i don't wanna work with people like that. It's a personal decision. But i wouldn't want to force anyone to agree with me or anything of that sort. Sorry if it came out that way, i didn't mean to.

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