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Comment by oceanghost | Hacker News Reader

Yep. I was once advised by HR to "try not to offend anyone." I asked the HR woman, "How do I know what offends any particular person?"

She looked genuinely stumped.

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HR is always going to say "don't make waves". They don't care about the source of the waves, and never have. If you worked in Saudi Arabia, they would say eating pork and uncovering female faces was unprofessional. If you worked in the Vatican in 1850, they'd say eating flesh on Fridays was unprofessional. So if you work for an American corporation today, don't be surprised when HR expects you to drink the unwritten Kool-Aid about what is or is not sacred.

This is yet another hurdle for folks with any kind of social handicap or phobia. If you were already awkward or shy around people, now you have to be even more conscious about what you do, say, and your body language.

I've absolutely had my introversion be interpreted as low key racism before. It was not a fun experience.

Yes, trying not to offend people is fundamentally important to working together.

"How do I know what offends a particular person?" Basic cultural competency will dictate that there are words or stereotypes that are considered offensive to certain people. Outside of that, yes, you will probably make mistakes and aggrieve people from time to time. Again, making an occasional social blunder is a basic part of human relationships. When that happens, listen to why the person is offended. Often they will have real, good reasons that center on them feeling disrespected, and having that disrespect hurt their career or life. Then, apologize sincerely. Then, don't continue making the same mistake, that would be extremely disrespectful. If you wholesale disagree and think the offended person is being trivial or absurd, just don't bring it up or find a new place to work.

You know, from all the companies I've worked at, I've never seen a man working in HR.

I have seen a man working in HR.

If this is going to work you need to tell us what prompted this conversation so we can see how plausible it is to pretend you didn't know it was offensive.

I have had the exact same conversation with HR. Someone takes offense at something and they use it as leverage to suppress any further potential offenses, despite the fact that trying to avoid offending others is completely futile. Because once you accept that kind of policy, you become a target of abuse from others willing to claim offense at just about anything.

Dumb idea... what if you play the game yourself? They can't proof you are just pretending to be offended.

It's the first mover's advantage. When someone reports you everyone becomes suspicious and if you try to use the same tactics you get scoffed at and ignored.

So what did you say though??

I can't even remember. Certainly, nothing intended to cause offense. And that's where things go off the rails. Intent matters. This is how comedians can get away with saying things that a normal person cannot, because a "performance" puts things in a different context. And this gets to my point: it is easy to take offense at most anything people say, if you twist it out of context and put your own spin on it.

As mentioned in another comment, the "first mover advantage" matters when it comes to these matters. The person that initially frames the issue will be given more credence in most cases, because we as a culture have pretty much taken a shit upon the whole notion of "innocent until proven guilty".

> The person that initially frames the issue will be given more credence in most cases, because we as a culture have pretty much taken a shit upon the whole notion of "innocent until proven guilty".

That's a legal precept, not a cultural one.

We've culturally never adhered to it as a nation, nor really pretended to.

We've really not done that great a job of it even in the legal realm, at the level of policing. The courts are a better story.

I figured out how to offend a manager at work: express concerns about Elon Musk. I was reprimanded for being "inconsiderate".

EDIT: No, I do not work somewhere that has Elon Musk in a direct or indirect supervisory position, including the board. The manager (whom I don't even report to in the chain) just didn't care for the lack of unconditional praise for Elon Musk in a slack thread.

do you work at Tesla?

Nope. Just another average tech company.

Hmm... sounds like you got the short end of the stick. Off-topic conversations at work can be tricky, can't they.

I have the feeling "express concerns" here is a much softened description of what actually happened? Could it be that whatever you said would be inconsiderate regardless of the target?

What I said was actually just linking to his "pedophile diver" twitter comment, and a NPR article about his ongoing spat with the SEC. Definitely not the smoothest presentation, but I figured it'd be best to let more neutral sources speak than express an opinion in my own words.

And sure, if a person unconditionally worship someone, that person would probably consider anything that tarnishes the image of that someone as inconsiderate.

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