He may have a Canadian pipe, but I doubt he has any connections to Canada. This post of his makes me think he is Australian, and his series of posts in this thread leads me to believe he is resident in Japan. I don’t think you can blame him on Canada or Canadians.
I live in America and thought the sexual harassment scenario that inspired this was absolutely retarded.
And that the guys point, that such a thing could even be somewhat of a concern in America does NOT bode well for America, is also something I could get behind.
Just a data point.
Then let him smoke his Australian pipe or his Japanese pipe as the case may be.
It’s not retarded. The problem is not sexual harassment. The problem is that someone in an office wants to cause problems for their own benefit, and are abusing rules towards that goal. As a result, you can’t try to solve it rationally, without making a scene, because the goal of the person causing the problem is to make a scene.
If it wasn’t sexual harassment, she’d accuse them of stealing office supplies or selling the company work to someone.
So you are going to give China a pass on their bullshit but we get so many things right?
Do this make sense in bizzro world or something?
Yes, Australian living in Japan for the last decade+. My pipe is French though (Chacom) and that might explain my general disagreeability.
China, and a few other places, as countries (i.e. systems of of rules to organize their citizens) are the slow kids of the world’s classroom. They can sit in the back and color, eat the paste, whatever, and I won’t care so much. I’m not going to get upset with them when they get another pencil stuck up their nose - there’s no point. Japan has its own hurdles to overcome. But they’re not a hopeless case. And I do get mad and write about it when they fuck up.
Ah. You might want to try a different pipe; I find that smoking a Stanwell usually makes all right with the world. 
America may be fucked…but at least we aren’t Canada.
Isamu’s assessment of the US doesn’t follow from Skald’s story.
Gothmog is obviously a petty, evil person who delights in causing trouble for others and/or is willing to do anything, however ruthless or ill-considered, to secure her own position.
She is taking advantage of a particular feature of the American workplace, which most Dopers would probably agree has its origins in a noble idea but which has gone amok to the point where it can produce situations like the one Skald described.
So what can we conclude about America from Skald’s story? Two things:
- In America, there are some assholes.
- In America, noble ideas sometimes go astray, occasionally on an epic scale.
The above two sentences are true of just about every country, so if Isamu’s view holds, I guess they’re all fucked.
I had to quote that, because it makes me so happy.