Is touching co-workers OK?

[DrDeth]

@MandaJo

…

I think there’s also situation #2b:

You tell Susan. She acknowledges what you say, but nothing changes. You tell her again. She makes excuses about why THESE spiders aren’t scary–the ones in the webs are tiny, too tiny to be scary. The big one is just a big friendly cartoon spider no one could be scared of. You press. She says she will take them down. She doesn’t. You talk to her again. She tells you that she talked to everyone else in the office and no one else was bothered or offended by the spiders. She asks if you have this phobia at home, or just at work? Do you prohibit your children from having spiderman toys? But she agrees to take them down. Nothing happens. You FINALLY go to HR or your supervisor or whatever and they talk to Susan. She is genuinely flabbergasted and tells everyone in the office that you ran straight to HR and never said a word to her, and people believe her because she’s telling the truth–those early conversations didn’t even register to her because she finds the idea of being sincerely scared of plastic spiders to be just silly.

I have seen this pattern over and over again in my professional life. Much of the time, a single conversation does the trick, but in some cases people get told something is a problem and they just don’t hear it until it’s escalated.

As has been said- if a reasonable request has been made and the behavior deliberately constantly re-occurs, sure, go to HR.

But altho your scenario is plausible, why believe the worst to start?