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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

So hitting on someone at work is ok as long as they're interested, otherwise you get fired?

Isn't this longstanding policy nearly everywhere? SNL's words of wisdom on "how to avoid committing sexual harassment at work":

1. Be handsome

2. Be attractive

3. Don't be unattractive

No one said love was without risks!

Joking aside, I think you are misunderstanding me.

I don't suggest anybody should be fired for asking someone for a date. I'm saying that company policy can give you an easy way to say "no" to a date: "Sorry, I don't want to jeopardize my career, you know company policy.". Ideally, the person asking you out will accept your rejection, and there's no need to fire anyone.

That excuse becomes unusable quickly as the number of office couples grows. A policy on the books won't let you off the hook when everyone knows it's not an actual policy.

Not just "ideally"; I would go so far as to say that the situation where the rejected person does not gracefully accept it is the point at which anyone in that situation has first done something "bad". (We have a term for further retribution against the rejector in a professional context: "sexual harassment". In an ordinary personal context, we would simply say it makes the person an asshole.)

If the woman is attracted to you then she expects you to make a romantic gesture. If you don't she's hurt. If she's not attracted then such a gesture could hurt her. Policies like no dating is a lot to do with protecting women in the workplace from having to go out of their way expressing themselves. A much better policy could be everyone has to make their intentions clear.

> A much better policy could be everyone has to make their intentions clear.

Easily said, but impossible to put into practice. Have you ever tried to get a woman to make her intentions clear? Apart from being seen as insulting, it's an impossible condition to place on social interactions between men and women, where a woman's inalienable right to be vague and ambiguous is an essential component of the dating game.

I thought you were going to go a different direction with that. All joking aside I really feel like the policies outlined in the op wreak of "apparently nobody in this company is mature enough to engage in what all adults engage in and we selfishly don't want to have to let people go due to their emotional unpreparedness."

Which is possible given that a lot of the most promising developers are young, I still don't agree with it. People need to be able to make mistakes and corporate culture is strangling them.

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