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Comment by rickmb | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with alcohol specifically.

As a European, I've always gotten the feeling that corporate America has been trying to ban almost any kind of potentially disruptive but generally perfectly normal social activity from the workplace. Take for example how uptight many American companies seem to be about people forming intimate relationships in the workplace.

Maybe this has more to do with American fear of legal liability. Whatever the case, the strict separation of social and professional settings seems to go well beyond just booze.

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At a previous company there was an office-romance happening between a manager and one of their employees. While everything seemed fine, once they broke up, all hell broke loose. The employee threatened to sue the company claiming that the manager had forced him in to a relationship to keep his job. It's ridiculous, but a sad fact of life that you have people who will react that way - so this is why a lot of companies will have policies where dating is prohibited or you must divulge your relationship to HR. This isn't enforceable but is more to prevent legal liability if something like the story above were to happen.

The US has a very sue-happy culture though, things might not escalate that quickly in other parts of the world, thus not requiring so much control of the social side of a workplace.

I think it's far less sue-happy than people think it is - but when you do hear of a ridiculous lawsuit, it will certainly be off-the-wall and for an exorbitant amount of money. Sadly we have a flawed legal system (in oh so many ways) and you will find abusers of the system - and that holds true for any kind of system that can be abused - when they can make a personal gain without much risk.

For example, the reason we have a stupid warning on coffee cups about the contents being hot, is because someone decided to sue for getting burned by coffee. This may not have escalated as quickly elsewhere in the world - not because someone wouldn't try it, but perhaps the legal system would have laughed at them instead of allowed for a case to happen. It's not the US culture at blame, and the lack of such people elsewhere in the world who would attempt to make such a lawsuit happen - it's the system that people can easily abuse - and miraculously are able to get away with it.

edit: I stand corrected by rfurmani and v0cab below - I actually did read up more about the hot coffee case in the past - and the details completely slipped my mind while posting this. It is not a good example and doesn't really fit the point I was trying to make.

Just a nitpick, the hot coffee case wasn't as frivolous as it sounds. McDonalds had been serving its coffee unreasonably hot (190F instead of 140F, which causes third degree burns almost instantly) even though they had previously been warned of the dangers. At one point you have to put a cost to it, so it doesn't just come down to them saving money on refills.

From the Wikipedia:

"A British court later rejected this argument as scientifically false, finding that 149 °F (65 °C) liquid could cause deep tissue damage in only two seconds."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonalds_Restauran...

"If this submission be right, McDonald's should not have served drinks at any temperature which would have caused a bad scalding injury. The evidence is that tea or coffee served at a temperature of 65 °C will cause a deep thickness burn if it is in contact with the skin for just two seconds. Thus, if McDonald’s were going to avoid the risk of injury by a deep thickness burn they would have had to have served tea and coffee at between 55 °C and 60 °C. But tea ought to be brewed with boiling water if it is to give its best flavour and coffee ought to be brewed at between 85 °C and 95 °C. Further, people generally like to allow a hot drink to cool to the temperature they prefer. Accordingly, I have no doubt that tea and coffee served at between 55 °C and 60 °C would not have been acceptable to McDonald's customers. Indeed, on the evidence, I find that the public want to be able to buy tea and coffee served hot, that is to say at a temperature of at least 65 °C, even though they know (as I think they must be taken to do for the purposes of answering issues (1) and (2)) that there is a risk of a scalding injury if the drink is spilled."

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/...

Still sounds pretty frivolous. Tea is generally made from a boiling kettle (210F) poured on a teabag. Still millions of us manage that without burning ourselves.

Are you familiar with the 'hot coffee' case? I mean, have you actually looked into it, beyond "someone decided to sue for getting burned by coffee"?

absorbent = exorbitant?

Thanks - that's what I get for posting at 4 in the morning.

So the office romance per se wasn't the problem but the system that allowed concretely bad things to emanate from it. If the courts take such lawsuits seriously, then that allows people to shift responsibility away from themselves and that's generally when bad things start happening.

In another culture the two would've just broken up, caused a stir in the office, and in the worst case one of them might have left the company if they wouldn't have been able to recover and speak to each other again.

What if the claims were real? Employee coersion and sexual harassment DO exist, you know...

There is at least some logic in these things, further than legal issues. Relationships are perfectly ordinary in general life, and if they end you can usually avoid seeing the other half if you want. At work that may not be possible, and can cause genuine problems if two colleagues hate each other because of a break-up.

That may be the logic behind it but, purely anecdotal, of the several people I know who have dated at work and ended it they have been socially fine afterwards. There is a period of a month or so where they feel anxiety about seeing the other person but people are adaptive and the cope with these situations. Eventually they just become colleagues again.

Anecdotal counterpoint: I've worked with three sets of people who dated in the workplace, and when they broke up it was fire and brimstone. In all three instances, one of the two quit.

What about people living in small villages? They date and break up as well and then continue seeing the other person everywhere.

And yet they can cope, even lead a socially healthy life afterwards.

Even in small villages there is more separation than small companies (or small divisions of a company), plus there's an option of one or both moving out of the village - obviously also an option with companies, but one that the company would rather avoid.

Even if only 1% end badly enough that it would impact negatively on the company, there's surely a valid argument that it's worth preventing to avoid those occasional cases.

That's essentially limiting the rights/freedoms of 99% of the population to help that 1% who don't have the emotional ability to act like adults?

I can't say that's something I find very encouraging.

"Limiting the rights/freedoms" makes it sound far bigger than it is. You could say the same for jobs that require you to start work at a certain time, or to work from an office, or to wear a tie, or not to get your penis out in meetings, or...

Well I think it's also much bigger to be told I can't fall in love and/or find someone attractive just because I work with them. And we can probably agree that office crushes are just as bad if not worse than office romances.

I don't really know, I've never had a thing for any colleague (one exception, really long story, but short version is I found out he's straight before he was ever a colleague, so irrelevant), and I've also never had a job where it wouldn't be allowed. All I was saying is that plenty of "freedoms" are restricted all the time, we just don't word it like that and they don't feel like a big thing.

I think I draw the line at the company trying to control what you do when you aren't on the clock. Unless you're in some kind of job where PR is one of the main aspects (like a political spokesperson), I'm not sure it should be their business what you do on Saturday.

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