I’m not a touchy person at work but I wouldn’t think twice about tapping a coworker on their forearm to get their attention at a meeting. I’d be willing to tap the forearm of an intern, a coworker, my manager, my director, or even my vice president. It would not cross my mind that any one of them would find such behavior offensive.
If you find such behavior offensive I think you’re an outlier. But that’s okay. We all have our hangups and I respect your right to avoid being touched in any context that makes you feel uncomfortable. If you asked me to avoid touching you I would apologize and never do it again. But I wouldn’t feel the least bit bad because I didn’t do anything unreasonable.
I’m taking your point of view into consideration but I’m weighing it against nearly two decades of what I’ve observed in the workplace as well as listening to employee relations problems over the last four of those that included bullying and sexual harassment. Complaints about inappropriate physical contact usually revolve around frequent and/or prolonged contact. Not a tap on the shoulder.
Perhaps that’s because people know if they speak up about being touched in a way that to them is inappropriate, they will be labeled an “outlier” or “overly sensitive” or other such degrading terms?
Probably not. I suspect it’s because the number of people who would be offended by an innocuous tap on the shoulder or forearm are a significant minority.
Perhaps. And since we definitely shouldn’t listen to the feelings of a minority, those feelings can be appropriately discounted in our day-to-day activities.
So is not telling HR something you owe yourself or something you owe the toucher? If HR punishes both of you (which would be unwise on their part, as it’s generally illegal to retaliate against someone for reporting sexual harassment or discrimination even if the underlying complaint was frivolous), it might still be worth your while to take the hit in order to protect others from being touched. Again, if everyone reports everything that makes them uncomfortable, HR will have a pretty easy time finding the common denominator, whether that’s the toucher or the complainer.
Or, #1a, you walk into HR like a civilian and inform them that you have arachnophobia and Susan’s decorations are making you uncomfortable and ask for their help. They ask if you ever mentioned this to Susan (or anyone) and you say no, you also feel uncomfortable revealing this phobia because, at your last job, you asked people to put away the rubber spiders because of your phobia, and a co-worker thought it would be funny to drop one on your head. HR talks to Susan and explains that someone in the workplace has a phobia and asks/tells her to get rid of the rubber spiders. Susan compiles, no one gets fired, and since neither she nor Dave ever have to know it was you, you avoid getting another rubber spider dropped on your head.
I’m not a touchy person. I don’t like touchy people. I don’t like sharing or hearing people’s feelings. I definitely don’t want to be around people who are crying and making a scene. I’m fairly social, but to say I give a shit about anyone I work with would be a stretch.
Setting the pejorative “handsiness” aside, I agree. DrDeth and others are engaging in contemptible bullshit when they namecall you and imply that you’ve got some sort of mental disorder.
Which is why this is ironic:
Your implied namecalling here is also contemptible bullshit. You’re not just implying that I’m a creeper and sexist, you’re implying that about my co-worker who, at a meeting last night, tapped me on the shoulder to ask me to tap another co-worker on the shoulder so the first one could get the second one’s attention without either interrupting the speaker, leaning across my lap, or standing up in the middle of the meeting to stand in front of the second one.
She wasn’t a creeper, ferchrissakes. This isn’t gaslighting. It ain’t gaslighting to disagree with you on this subject.
If you need to assume that I’m arguing in bad faith, then I guess we’re done.
I don’t know where you’re getting this impression. I have stated several times in this thread that I respect your right not to be touched which you should note is good evidence that I am listening to you and taking your feelings into account. If someone continued to make light physical contact even after knowing it was unwanted I would come down on them pretty hard starting with a written warning at minimum.
But assuming all parties are acting in good faith, I’m not going to punish someone for tapping you on the shoulder during a meeting to get your attention. You’re not wrong for not wanting to be touched but he wasn’t wrong for tapping you on the shoulder either.
In the end, it comes down to this: It’s not about what is philosophically right or wrong, or the motivation behind the act, it’s about individuals having the right to define what is and what is not acceptable to them in terms of personal interaction. Everything else is irrelevant.
“Jasmine, so sorry to interrupt, but we’re out of time.” Easy-peasy! Unless I’m deaf, why does someone have to make physical contact?
Telling people that they are being unreasonable because the motivation behind the act was innocent and the act itself innocent is completely missing the point. The point is that every individual has a right to a defined personal space and a code of personal interaction. Virtually all the arguments defending the action as innocent and therefore okay are made irrelevant by that one basic right.
I occasionally interact with a woman who is deaf. I do not know ASL, so I always try to have paper/pen handy so we can communicate. If I need to get her attention I wave my hand in her field of view. No contact required.
Yes. I’ve not participated in these threads, but the way social questions are presented as strictly binary these days is absurd.
A friendly touch on the arm isn’t always out of place, though it might be slighty flirtatious in some contexts. But today it seems to be the equivalent of fondling a fanny, or grabbing a pussy.
I see this over and over in today’s America (which I see in large part through the SDMB lens). As another example, it’s OK to denounce corporations, or even rich WASPs, for funding political campaigns but to hint that a Jew might have donated to a political campaign will bring shrieks of outrage.
I had no expectation that my question whether ANY contact was EVER appropriate would be interpreted as approving of ALL contact in ALL instances. Does not strike me as requiring a stretch to understand that someone voting YES - allowing an occasional tap on the wrist shoulder, or maybe even a consoling arm on the shoulder, does not mean they support raping co-workers.
And I felt anything other than a binary poll would quickly lead down the rabbithole of trying to identify every possible variation/exception. Exclude handshakes. But what about impending danger? Does it make a difference if you touch clothing or bare skin? How about the sexual identity of the parties? Their familiarity with each other? …
Whether the shortcomings of the poll reflect my biases and incompetence in phrasing the question, or the agendas of those responding, I’ve quickly realized my efforts served no useful purpose.
Threads like this remind me as to why I chose a career in outside sales. I only had to deal with intra-office pettiness a few hours a week at most.
Which leads me to a related hypothetical. Suppose the woman was in a meeting with a client and the client lightly touched her wrist to let her know time was running short. And suppose that was a major client, one that made up a double digit percentage of the company’s business. How do you think HR and the company management should react in that situation?