Are you trying to make this into something it isn’t?
From the OP:
I don’t see anything in there that suggests a pattern of behavior, attempts by the offended person to “try everything short of outright rudeness…”, etc.
The “very often” situation you describe here is something quite different from what I understood the OP to describe. I - and I think just about everyone else in this thread, has agreed that any individual ought to be able to express a desire to not be touched in a certain way - or at all, and that that should be respected.
I’m thinking of a jewish previous cow-orker of mine who would not shake a woman’s hand. Or some of my wife’s middle eastern students, who will not accept a paper handed directly to them by a woman. Not being religious, I think those preferences stupid, but if someone doesn’t want to shake my hand, or take a piece of paper from me, that’s fine. And if a cow-orker expresses any other preference that I can comply with without greatly inconveniencing myself, I generally couldn’t care less.
No-I’m the one trying to directly address what is described in the OP without throwing in back pats, handshakes, HR going hog wild, confusing family situations with proper business practices etc.
As to the OP story, taken 100% at face value, here’s how I see it:
- “[A] man put his hand on her wrist”: fine.
- “The woman was bothered by the touching and complained to HR”: fine
- “[HR] sent the guy to counseling”: overblown.
If the story includes all relevant details, then the only person who misbehaved was HR. They should have told the man not to touch that woman.
Ann Hedonia, you asked me earlier why I’d be mortified if someone complained to HR about my tapping their shoulder. Manda Jo is in part right that I’d assume I’d missed some subtler sign–but even if I hadn’t, I put a priority on not unnecessarily discomfiting the people around me. If I’d misread the situation so badly that someone felt they had to go to HR to fix it, I’d not have handled things the way I try to handle them.
Even if I thought the person was being malicious and was out to get me, I’d be pissed at myself, because I should’ve sensed that hostility and not given them an opening.
The story cannot include all relevant details because the person who told the tale and was supposedly there cannot know if HR had other information to go on. I have asked him how he knows that only one person had filed a complaint, and have gotten nothing back from him. Too many people are taking it at face value that this was a one-time only deal.
Do you equate grabbing a woman’s bare wrist with tapping someone on the shoulder?
For one thing, why on earth are you assuming that everyone at a meeting must have been working together – in the same room yet – for years? I assure you that that’s very often not true. As filmore said, if the person who touched the woman in the original story had known her well enough, he wouldn’t have touched her, now would he? Unless, of course, he was being deliberately annoying.
For another: no, I don’t consider that I know a co-worker “well”, even if I’ve known her for years, if all we’ve had is work contact and occasional brief discussions at work about cats or even some mention of family illnesses. If I’ve got no idea what or if somebody likes to read, who among our mutual acquaintance they love and who they can’t stand, whether their kids live at home or have moved out or they haven’t got any and at least minimally how they feel about it, what their house looks like; if we wouldn’t go over to each other’s houses to eat or play scrabble, we don’t ever go to each other’s parties (work parties not included) – no, I don’t know them well, and they don’t know me well. Even if we’ve worked in the same building for years.
For a third: even if I do know the person that well, even if that’s my best friend at the next desk, or the next chair at the meeting – behavior in a professional context is different from behavior outside of work. Maybe I’d happily curl up next to and half in the lap of the person on their front porch, or on mine. I’m not going to do that at a business meeting!
For a fourth, occasionally it’s exactly because somebody does know someone else “well” that they don’t want to be touched by that person. Or they might just be busy, and not want to be poked at right then.
I will say, however, that reading this thread has given me something of a different perspective. As I’d said earlier, I’ve been to meetings, and run meetings, and told people to stop talking at meetings, and been told to stop talking at meetings. I’ve never had anybody try to stop me talking by putting their hands on me; and was at first astonished that anyone could think this was normal behavior. But apparently quite a lot of people do. So if in the future somebody does put their hands on me, either above or below the table, at a meeting: I’m a lot less likely to think ‘why is this really weird person doing this really weird thing?’ and a lot more likely to think ‘this person must have been spending time with those people who think hands are better than words’; and, instead of pulling my arm or leg away and continuing on making my point, I’ll pull my arm or leg away and stop and ask them if there’s something they wanted to say.
If those people who are so bound and determined that communicating by laying on of hands is utterly normal in every business context would similarly pause when someone objects to this and think not, ‘this person is really weird and abnormal but maybe these days we have to accommodate their handicap’ but ‘this person may think I’m the weird one, because they may be used to, and may even require for any of various reasons, a different set of behavior than I’ve gotten in the habit of’: I think that would be extremely useful. Some on this thread do seem to get that.
No. But before you ask more leading questions, I’ll ask you politely to trace back the conversation to see the antecedents to the post you’re responding to.
With due respect, I can’t give a wet fart about the events as they actually happened, because I don’t have a reliable source of information. All we have is hypotheticals, and if we’re gonna talk intelligently, we gotta recognize that.
One hypothetical is that the OP left out key details (and honestly I suspect that’s what happened, but I can’t prove it). Another hypothetical is that the OP didn’t leave out key details.
I was addressing the latter hypothetical.
I think the original situation is an unreliable narrator: the OP wasn’t the man or the woman and didn’t talk directly to HR. Everything is hearsay, and the story as presented seems unlikely to be accurate–though, as I have gone to great pains to point out, that doesn’t mean anyone is lying. It means people can have radically different perceptions of the same event. I work with a guy who raises his voice when he’s upset. By my standards, he has a hissy fit whenever he doesn’t get what he wants. I really, really hate getting yelled at when I tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear. It took me SO LONG to communicate that to him, and what it finally took was yelling back “Don’t yell at me!”. I am SURE he thinks that came out of nowhere, because all my other, more subtle attempts to explain my reaction to his yelling just went over his head. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t try.
I’m willing to reserve judgement about this situation, but I am not going to give the man in the OP’s story the absolute benefit of the doubt, because that sort of behavior is so outside my own experience. However, I do think stories like that serve as a message to women that if they can’t make themselves heard and they do eventually escalate to HR, they will likely open themselves up to criticism by outsiders who will interpret their escalation as an overreaction unless they’ve been keeping the whole office abreast of all the details the whole time.
I have also asked, both in this thread and in the other one, whether and how he knows that this was the first incident and that the woman hadn’t spoken directly to the handy person in private after some previous incident.
Crickets.
But it is comparatively quite simple to set the behavioral default to the least-problematic setting. As in, “Do not touch co-workers unless you know they’re okay with being touched.”
Exceptions can be made for exceptional circumstances, of course, but a lot of hassle and discomfort can be avoided by simply establishing and following that baseline.
Same for baselines like “Do not wear noticeable scents in the workplace unless you know everybody who’s being subjected to the scent is okay with it.” “Do not play music, or sing or whistle, audibly around people who are trying to work unless you know nobody within earshot will be bothered by it.”
Perfumes and personal music, like casual touching, have been normal parts of everyday life in most cultures for millennia. But that doesn’t mean that it’s automatically okay to inflict them on other people in your workplace whenever you feel like it, or that anybody who objects to them is just being “hypersensitive” or “interpreting things in an unusual and extreme manner”.
why do you throw in the word “bare”? :dubious: And nobody said “grabbing”.
- "…and a man put his hand on her wrist… ". *
Why do we discuss tapping on a shoulder, etc? because they are equivalent.
You went from and a man put his hand on her wrist * to grabbing a woman’s bare wrist*. See how that word “grabbing” put a whole different connotation on it?:dubious: And adding in that word "bare’? Just to add salaciousness? :dubious:
Oh god. Please please please PLEASE do not confuse me with DrDeth. I’m begging you.
As I said, I’m addressing it as a hypothetical, and one that I don’t actually believed happened. If the man was grabbing her wrist, or if she’d given any indication that she didn’t appreciate being touched, or if the man had previous complaints against him, or if HR didn’t actually send him to counseling, or if he called her Honey when he tapped her wrist, or if any of a number of other factors were in place, of course it changes the story.
I concur, we are discussing hypothetical, centering around *innocent light, non-sexual touching of the arm, etc by a known co-worker. * Not- as one poster had it- penis touching.
We have no idea. That’s why we call it a *hypothetical. *
I know, please don’t. I 'm the handsome one. 
OK - I was unaware of the OP’s unreliability. I don’t know how it got to “grabbing a bare wrist.” In my experience - and preference as a “non-toucher” - a gentle touch on the wrist to get a cow-orker’s attention and send a helpful message is acceptable. As I imagined it, it involved a light touch with the fingers the back of the forearm/wrist/hand of another. I consider that worlds different from “grabbing” someone’s wrist.
Made me think of two of the few instances when I was - um - spoken to when I ran a 60 person office. In one instance, a long-term, female employee went out of their way to do something differently than she had been expressly told, which caused a bunch of unnecessary difficulty. She ought to have known that what she was doing was wrong and would inconvenience many others. I walked quickly to her office, walked into her office (did not close the door) and told her in no uncertain terms that she had to do what she had been told and knew to be her job - and had to do it ASAP.
Yes, I was - um - not happy to have to deal with this. No, I did not cuss or yell, but I did not make an effort to hide my facial expression, or to say “pretty please.” I stepped into her office as a courtesy, as opposed to what I thought was deserved - shouting what a dumbfuck she was from the hallway for everyone to hear. At all times her desk was between us.
You know the punchline - I got a call from MY boss, telling me that the poor baby felt intimidated.
Or the other loser who complained about the tone of voice I used when I spoke loudly to wake her up THE SECOND TIME during a training session. No, I wasn’t her boss - I was her boss’ boss’ boss. Her boss had woken her the first time…
Fuck that shit.
Do you set a similar default for humor? For complaining about work situations? For talking about family members? For discussing illness? For discussing blood drives?
In all these cases, the least problematic setting is to forbid them. Some humor bothers some people, and you can certainly avoid problems by banning joking around. Some complaints about work situations undermine morale, so forbidding employees from making such complaints even in casual conversations can avoid those problems. Some people have experienced trauma around familial deaths, stillbirths, or infertility, or else may have religious views that make discussion of certain familial arrangements uncomfortable, so forbidding discussion of family can avoid those problems. Some people are super grossed out by hearing even oblique references to stomach upsets, or go faint at hearing discussions of needle sticks, so keep both out of the workplace.
I’m pretty sure that you’re not asking to forbid any of those as a default setting. What distinguishes light touch from those?
Again, I set a different standard. Pay attention to norms; pay attention to individual co-workers attitudes; be respectful; speak up about your own needs if they vary from norms or if the norms aren’t being respected; if someone speaks up to you for unwelcome behavior, apologize and accommodate their expressed wishes.
It’s a lot fuzzier, but I think it’s what we currently try for with touch and with illness discussions and with familial discussions and with complaints and with everything else, and I think it allows for a warmer, more humanized workplace.
More data points: today we had a ten-minute-long Teacher of the Year assembly. Multiple hugs between co-workers on stage, and during the assembly, a co-worker tapped me on the arm with the back of her hand to get my attention to point out a student who needed help. She did it because it was loud with a lot of cheering, and the tap on the arm was an efficient, non-intrusive way to get my attention. She’s a fine co-worker but not someone I’ve ever hung out with socially, and she’s certainly never asked me if it’s okay to touch me.
Different workplaces have different norms. I’d be annoyed if this sort of touch were forbidden at ours absent verbal consent.