The fact that I have not said anything to him is a testament to how much crap a reserved person will put up with in order to putting stress on interpersonal relations. The notion that a toucher can defend their actions with “well, they never complained, so they must not mind!” is risible on the face of it.
Is it the power differential between you that keeps you quiet? A history of oppression by your gender?
Or is it that you should really speak up for yourself instead of harboring this resentment?
Because I gotta say, seems like you could resolve this tension with a, “Hey, do you mind not leaning on my chair?” and your unwillingness to do so kind of dumps the responsibility for the unpleasantness on you, not on him.
It really depends on the people. And the occupation. My EMT partners have mostly been women. Over the years spent together, we’ve touched each other many times. Whether it’s a chuck on the shoulder to say “good job,” to holding the other person close while they cry because we couldn’t save that kid, we often spend more time together than we do with our significant others (there’s a reason that cynics in that field say that EMS stands for “Extra Marital Sex,” among other things…it happens, and it can be an open secret. In my experience, at least). When you spend that much time together, in what can be an emotional job, the boundaries can get blurred pretty quickly.
So, from that background, a wrist-grabbing doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.
Perhaps it’s because years of experience have shown that asking somebody not to do something that they don’t see as problem results in a poor attitude from that person?
“Can you not lean on my chair, please?”
“Well, I’m just trying to see the screen.”
“I know, but you are moving my chair and rattling it around and it really annoys me”
“Fine! I’ll just stop coming to you at all then!”
:rolleyes::rolleyes:
Also: see that episode of Seinfeld where he didn’t want to kiss everyone in his building when greeting them
I worked with a woman (if it matters) who, if she needed to get my attention and I didn’t respond to her calling me, would raise her arm and snap her fingers a couple of times.
Some of you might think that to be incredibly rude, (I didn’t) but if your office manager tells the entire office to do that instead of tapping a shoulder, would you be offended?
Oh for the love of pete.
No. I’d say, “Hey, do you mind not snapping at me? It makes my skin crawl a little. Just, you know, tap me on the shoulder or something if you need my attention.”
I sure as hell wouldn’t passively aggressively want to murder the snapper because I both hated it and fantasized about how they’d respond poorly to me speaking up for myself.
What? If you tell someone that you don’t like something they do, that they think is perfectly normal, they get an attitude.
As evidence, I offer this thread.
My “for the love of pete” stands. Your posts aren’t nearly so ninja-clever as you think.
I don’t think they are clever at all. Ha ha, showed you!
Not sure your “yup” actually reflects an understanding of my point.
There is no list people go down. There is no single default in real world communication. We communicate by way of a package of channels.
Your personal normal that you do not use touch as part of your communications. You do however use other communication tools than your words to complement them, sometimes even instead of them: facial expressions, body positioning, moving closer or farther, making eye contact and looking away, so on. I suspect that you are very rarely deciding that you need to move down the list from using spoken words and decide that the next item on your list is to raise an eyebrow or nod your head up/down or to the side and back. Your thought is perhaps to communicate you are skeptical and you just raise an eyebrow to do it, knowing without really thinking about it that such would communicate the thought well to most and be misunderstood by few. A man might signal settling in to a relaxed conversation with someone by leaning back and crossing one leg over hisr other knee, not really explicitly consciously deciding that the nonverbal communication was the better one to use than saying “I have as much time for you as you want right now.” Of course that one might offend a few … in some cultures exposing the bottom of your shoe is an insult! Given that there is a non-zero possibility that the other person might that should he make an effort to never lean back and cross one leg over the other knee? Is the problem in that case that he did not use his spoken words as the default?
Now if he was in an Arab country of the Middle East I’d expect him to know that the cultural norm was to not show someone the bottom of your shoe unless you intended to insult the person. That local cultural communication norm should be followed there. But routinely following it in America … to be safe … Do you think so?
Seconding this.
Not everyone in this thread, of course. But there’s a pretty strong streak of it running through the thread.
There’s also a significant streak of – how do I phrase this? ‘Somebody somewhere in the world objects to x. The person objecting to y might do x in some circumstances. Therefore nobody ought to be objecting to y in any circumstances; or, if they do, they have to admit they’re being unreasonable and we’re just being extra nice to accommodate them.’
This morning I was having some computer problems at work. Necessitated moving to different work stations and speaking with a few people.
At one point I was talking in a joking manner with one co-worker, female, probably about my same age (late 50s), with whom I’ve interacted in a somewhat informal manner in the past: joking around, discussing gardening. She is essentially the office administrative trouble-shooter. Very pleasant, very competent. I am not her direct supervisor, but my pay grade is several levels above hers. My impression is that we like, respect, and enjoy each other as co-workers. So I admit it is not what we’ve discussed, as we do have a back history.
But we were sorta making a couple of jokes, and as I was ending the conversation and walking away, and we were both laughing, I reached out and touched her upper arm. While walking away, I immediately thought about this thread.
I admit I did not think about the action before I touched her. It seemed like an entirely natural way to interact with someone GIVEN OUR HISTORY. I wonder if she even noticed that I had touched her - and am very comfortable that if she did, she didn’t think anything negative about it.
But the way it happened so naturally without my thinking gave me pause. I suppose I touched her “unthinkingly” because of our past interactions, and I would not act similarly WRT someone I had no history with, or who struck me as - very formal, private, reserved, fill-in-the-blank…
Just thought I’d post this, given the discussion.
Wow, I didn’t think anyone could actually take him seriously.
I’m not seeing a streak of it in this thread. Instead, I’m seeing this:
- Someone says, “I don’t like to be touched.”
- Folks say, “Okay, I won’t touch you.”
- The first person says, “No, I mean there should be a general policy about not touching people, not just for me, but for everybody, because you never know when you might meet someone like me.”
- Folks say, “Say what?”
That’s very very different from manson’s fantasy about people being pissed off because an individual spoke up.
There’s also a significant streak of, “Somebody somewhere in the world objects to x. Therefore, nobody should do x.” That’s not okay, either.
I’m honestly seeing both, which is kind of interesting. Both are problematic. I think it has to be recognized that this is an area fraught with potential complications, so it behooves everyone to give each other the benefit of the doubt and to accept different people can have very different reactions/experiences.
You may be right. It seems to me that DrDeth and manson are taking absurdist positions, and I’m doing a lot better at ignoring the former than the latter.
Absolutely agreed.
There’s some of that.
There’s also some of this:
-
Someone says, “I don’t like to be touched.”
-
Someone else (not everybody else, but some in the thread) say “OK, I won’t touch you. But you have to realize that you’re being utterly weird and unreasonable, and I’m just going out of the way to accommodate your oddity, which you’re going to have to explain to everyone you meet while expecting to get my reaction.”
-
First person says: “There are a whole lot of people like me”, possibly with a side of “and that reaction’s why some of us don’t bother saying so”; and/or “What I’m asking for is utterly normal behavior in every or nearly every workplace I’ve been in”, possibly with a side of “didn’t you learn that in grade school?” but possibly instead with a side of “wow, workplaces sure differ, but you ought to realize they’re not all like yours.”
-
People who did #2, or at least some of them, double down on it.
My guess would be that the touch as a touch was not noticed per se. The intent of the communication was. It signal of a friendly goodbye and that you enjoy her company. Touch used in this way, naturally, as part of the package, paying attention and responding to, even if subconsciously, to the responses of the other, help us build human connections with others. Ignoring negative reactions would impede that positive outcome.
And of course if the intent of the touch is to communicate a negative or unwanted message then the outcome is not going to be a good one. That’s an issue of the message not the channel.
Those who do not like this sort of touch should have their wishes respected. They do not have the right to impose their norm as THE norm for the culture overall.
I suspect that, just as this messageboard may attract a higher-than-usual number of people who object to all touch, it may also attract a higher-than-usual number of people who are obnoxious in response to those objections. My experience in other milieus is that most folks are just trying to get through the day without drama, and are willing to accommodate those around them.
That is it, isn’t it. Human interaction requires judgement. If you don’t know a coworker well enough to trust they won’t go to HR when you casually touch them, don’t. If you don’t know a woman well enough to know she isn’t going to accuse you of rape tomorrow, don’t have sex with her. If you don’t know someone well enough to just let yourself into their house, don’t. These are not areas for “its better to seek forgiveness than permission” They are also areas where the individuals matter and there isn’t a one size fits all individuals rule.
I’ve had friends at work that have involved trading sexual insults with each other - it was the sort of relationship we had (and we were much younger in a different time and outside of a corporate environment) and I’ve had relationships at work where I think it would be overstepping bounds to ask about their personal life. It takes some reading of individuals, erring on the side of caution, and when you do make an error in judgement, apologizing profusely and promising not to do it again - whether the correction comes from the individual or from HR.
Or do, but when you hear from HR, be cool. I think touching-within-norms is fine, in the same way that telling needlestick stories within norms is fine. I need to stand up for myself on the needlestick stories, and others need to stand up for themselves on the touching issue. If someone stands up for themselves by going to HR, then follow HR’s advice and don’t get shitty about it.