That’s not what I said and it seems that you are trying to be difficult just for the sake of it. Tapping someone on the shoulder to get their attention is fine. Running down the street tapping everyone on the shoulder because you think you found a loophole is not.
Again, reasonable, is the word. It is reasonable to make mild physical contact to get someone’s attention. It is reasonable if you object to that contact to tell the person. Making a legal/HR case out of it is not reasonable. Therefore she was chastised for it.
Self-defense but also be reasonable and proportionate. If a person taps me on the shoulder to get my attention, I may not knee him in the ground or elbow him to the eye, even if I previously told me that. That IS a battery.
I absolutely see how some people might think they’re similar. But a no touching policy seems like it’d encourage the leaning-over-and-whispering approach in some circumstances, unless it becomes something like a “no touching and also no approaching within 12 inches of the other person without verbal assent,” which isn’t what anyone is calling for.
Yeah, the conversation has a lot of different angles, and a lot of different issues are being discussed. I think there are two extreme positions that nobody is taking (“No touching anyone, even with permission, ever within the workplace!” “Any touching within the workplace is allowed unless the person tells you in advance not to touch them!”) but there are some folks who are disingenuously pretending that their opponents are taking one of those extreme positions.
The original hypothetical is hard to discuss because there’s a very good chance that it doesn’t accurately represent what actually happened. If you add details, folks get mad that you changed the hypothetical; if you take it at face value, even declaring you take it at face value, folks get mad that you’re treating a one-sided report as the gospel. It’s a hot mess.
We just had a staff meeting where folks could pass out goofy rewards to other teachers/staff members. One person got a glue stick because “You’re the glue that holds us together,” and the giver and recipient gave a big hug. I got a hundred grand bar because “I owe you a hundred grand for all the help and advice you’ve given me.” I thanked the giver but didn’t touch her at all when receiving it. Fifteen minutes before the meeting, there was a hand on my shoulder, as I mentioned earlier.
This is in my opinion, an ideal way for things to work. People feel comfortable hugging others that they’ve got that sort of relationship with. People don’t touch others that they don’t have that relationship with. What I don’t know, but suspect (given how outspoken our staff is about other stuff), is that folks will let someone know if they’re being touched in a way they don’t like.
I’d really rather us move toward this as a model, instead of moving toward a “no touching absent verbal assent” model that I believe others have suggested. If your workplace is so intimidating or power-imbalanced that you fear retribution for speaking up about your preferences, that is deeply fucked, and that’s what needs to change. Instituting a blanket no-touching rule, rather than fixing that much deeper problem of intimidation and fear around raising concerns, doesn’t seem to me to get at the root problem.
There are situations where touching a colleague is arguably the right thing to do - for example:
In a noisy workplace, to request the attention of someone facing away from you, where there is no practical means of getting in their line of sight, tapping or touching them on the shoulder or shoulder blade
In a situation where you notice someone stepping back into a hazard such as a stair, a trip hazard or the path of machinery, a flat hand against their back may be the safest way to stop them getting into an accident.
Apart from those sorts of situation, most other ‘necessary’ touching can be done after consent is established - a handshake offered does not have to be accepted (I have declined handshakes when either I, or the other person, has a streaming cold) - and I know of a company where hugs are the norm (it’s even written into their handbook), but nobody hugs anyone without figuring out if they are OK with it first.
At the assembly, getting my attention verbally would’ve required getting up close to my ear and talking loudly, not softly. It would’ve been uncomfortable, and would’ve increased the noise in the room even more. I suppose the person could’ve waved a hand in front of my face, but that would be pretty rude where I come from.
At the meeting, where Angie sat to my right and wanted the attention of Joanne who sat to my left, a whisper would need to be virtually silent to be acceptable, which would mean I’d need to get right up on Joanne’s ear to be heard by her and nobody else. I barely know Joanne. A gentle shoulder-tap is a lot more acceptable than an ear-whisper.
Also, while “tap” and “poke” can be synonyms, a poke doesn’t describe what you get running water from, a tap isn’t a type of weed whose young leaves are eaten in the South, and the kind of shoulder tap that I’m talking about is not correctly described as a poke. The words aren’t precise synonyms, and their overlap doesn’t include this situation.
And a third example (and I apologize for multiposting, I’ll make this my last for awhile): this afternoon, when Z. the fourth grader was showing me her writing journal and I was listening to her talk about what she’d written, the hand on the shoulder from our art teacher let me glance up and see that the door was about to close on me, so I could sidestep out of the way, without interrupting Z’s chatter. A low voice interruption would’ve meant I’d need to stop Z and turn my full attention to a different conversation before turning it back to Z. By the time I turned back, she might’ve gotten distracted by something else.
Maybe it’s different for desk jobs in places with a fairly steady noise volume, where folks remain in the same position a lot of the time and where your field of vision is pretty predictable? When I go to the front office or the workroom, I barely ever give or receive shoulder touches. They’re much more common in areas with students, where noise can be very loud.
Although, like I said, there was that time last night at the meeting…
FWIW, I’m not suggesting a blanket no-touching rule.
What I’m suggesting is that touching should not be the automatic default; except of course in situations in which the specific workplace actually requires it to function, or in situations such as Mangetout describes (note that Mangetout specifies, for tapping, that the other person can’t hear or see you and you can’t reasonably get in their line of sight.) If you’ve clarified with other workers – whether verbally or non-verbally but clearly, as in holding out your hand for a shake or your arms for a hug but allowing the other person to take you up on it or not – that they want touching in that circumstance, then no problem. – and, I think, if you come at it in that fashion, you won’t wind up touching filmore.
Again, I don’t think whispering is generally called for. If you can whisper, why can’t you talk quietly? If you can’t talk, even quietly, should you really be whispering? There might be rare occasions when whispering makes sense; but I wouldn’t think of that as the default, either.
I honestly don’t know what I would do in this situation. The clear solution is a strict “No Meetings” policy
If you feel like it, can you explain what happened after you got Joanne’s attention? I’m trying to figure out what they did afterward - did they whisper to each other? pass a note? I mean, they were on opposite sides of you, right? What did Angie do once she had Joanne’s attention?
I’m glad we’re on to shoulder taps now rather than wrist touches, because wrist touches seem really creepy to me in a way that the average shoulder touch doesn’t so much. I dunno if it’s the uninvited skin contact, or the fact that it makes so little sense to target the wrist, or what, but a shoulder touch seems much less creepy, and all the bizarre defense of going for the wrist made everyone present seem a little off.
I’m not gunning for a rule banning all physical contact; I’m just proposing that people not interpret a lack of such a rule as an open invitation. You should not assume that people want to feel you.
This may be weird, but I have no memory of that. My job, in passing along the shoulder-touch, was done, so I focused back on whatever was going on. (I also am paying special attention to touches due to this thread and therefore remember them more than other details).
I’d guess that Angie mouthed some message at Joanne, or showed her a paper, or something like that. But I’m not sure.
Waving the whole hand in front of the face, with a large gesture, would probably be rude here too.
Try holding the hand out, cupped upward, in a sort of asking gesture; not fully in front of the face, but just high enough to be noticed; and not waving, but just reaching. I, at least, wouldn’t perceive that as rude at all (though if it’s done by a friend in a movie theater, I might think they were asking for the popcorn. That doesn’t seem a likely misinterpretation in the situation you’re describing, however.)
Of course, as you already know these people, if they’re fine with tapping, then go ahead and tap.
If I’d been Angie, I might have leaned behind you and tapped the back of Joanne’s chair.
– come to think of it, you could have tapped the back of Joanne’s chair. And Angie could have tapped the back of yours.
I agree that, if speaking quietly’s not acceptable, tapping would be better than whispering in that circumstance.
Of course not. I was looking at the relevantly similar definitions.
The impact would be the same, to me. Both words describe a sudden brief contact made with the fingers. Both, to me and to significant numbers of others, startling and annoying.
“Poke” sometimes has the context of “jab”, which “tap” doesn’t. But I don’t think “poke” only means “jab”.
In any case, I think it’s been determined that if your soulful caress cannot be convincingly characterized as sexual harassment, then the law will not take umbrage with you. (Actually I’m not certain how much they care about mere harassment either, though certainly the average HR department’s ears will perk up.) So you can indeed play “Stop touching me! Mommy, Billy’s touching me again!” with your co-workers add day without Johnny Law getting involved.
People keep making this claim, but it’s unsupported and I would like to see a cite that such touch has been a mainstay of human experience for people that are not socially close to each other, especially touch towards equals or superiors. The fact that there were places where a commoner would be executed for touching a noble person speaks to the fact that touch was not nearly so common or accepted as people here claim. Touching a guy you don’t know with a pat on the back or especially a fondle… er, ‘atta boy’ tap on the thigh is the kind of thing that I’d expect to start a fight if you do it to a stranger in a bar. Touching people close to you, and higher status people touching lower status people (for example, most men touching most women in a typical 1960s office) has always been common, but touching strangers and people of equal or higher status has always been more limited.
Completely disagree. If someone has clearly shown that they don’t respect your boundaries, then you need to prepare to force them to respect them. In a case like the example, that means documenting it, and making sure that they hear ‘don’t do this’ from someone they have to listen to. Wasting time asking them nicely to stop something they should already know is unacceptable simply increases your personal cost and risk. To use a stronger example, if someone came to a party at my house and decided to feel up another one of my guests who wasn’t up to it, I would tell them they’re not welcome any more, and call the cops on them for trespassing if they turned up again. There’s no need to discuss or explain anything to them, or to listen to their inevitable claim that they didn’t really mean it or they thought it was OK or whatever.
Discussion is only warranted if there’s a reason to expect the other person to be reasonable and if there’s something to be discussed, and it’s pretty clear that the person in the example above didn’t expect the offender to be reasonable - and that she was correct, as shown by the fact that the person who relayed the story dismissed that what happened was a problem.
I completely disagree. Reasonable adults simply do not direct clearly gendered power-plays at fellow employees, they treat their coworkers with respect. Try lightly touching the wrist of a larger guy you don’t know at a bar to try to get him to be quiet and see where it gets you, but make sure your dental insurance is paid up first. I categorically reject this idea that Mr. touchy-Mcfeely is behaving as a reasonable adult when he lightly touches a woman’s wrist to take control of a situation.
I guess this needs an elementary school answer ‘use your words’. The idea that you’d even need to ask is bizarre; I see people talk in meetings all the time, typically that’s the purpose of a meeting. Since I’m a man, I would expect that no guy is going to put a delicate touch on my hand, because (as I’ve said) that’s not a move I’ve ever seen a guy pull on an unfamialr guy. If I was a woman, my preferred method would definitely not be for someone to make weird overly-intimate contact with me in a way that they wouldn’t do to a man in the same circumstance. Instead I think… I’d go right back to ‘use your words’.
That’s an opinion on hugs. I think there’s a scale of workplace touch, going something like this:
Taps on shoulders
Wrist touches and/or gentle pokes on shoulder/arm
Arm punches/back pats
Hugs
Hair touches
Head kissing
Ass slapping
Coitus
I don’t know that anyone is arguing in favor of anything past #3 absent clear assent. Me, I’m not arguing for anything past #1.
But I argue that taps on shoulders are milder than anything else, and are forbidden by some of the proposals here absent clear prior assent, and that that’s not a reasonable norm.
I went looking for an article on the subject, googling “Shoulder taps workplace touching”. Miss Manners didn’t come up, but there’s this pro-touch Psychology Today piece, and there’s this 2010 CNN piece that literally includes advice like “The No. 1 rule is to keep your hands off your own or anyone else’s private parts in an office.” How far we’ve come.
I find this advice all pretty on-point, and more cautious than that in the other article I linked to. (Well, okay, the number one rule really IS don’t grab junk, I agree with that, Christ Almighty).
But the end section is interesting to me:
I think this author may not realize that there are people who really want there to be no touch at the workplace. Men who ask these questions may genuinely be trying to figure out how to be respectful, and recognizing that the “no touching” contingent is real is part of that process.
