I think the situation in the OP is HR worthy for these reasons:
He started with touching right away.
He touched a place which is sometimes seen as an intimate location, especially when it’s a man touching a woman
Rather than a short tap, he laid his hand on her wrist, where contact was extended longer than would be necessary just to get attention.
If the OP was instead that “She was talking non-stop ignoring everyone and he tapped her on her shoulder to get her attention because the next group needed the meeting room.” then I would not say it was HR worthy. So it’s not that the problem is “A coworker touched another coworker”. I see the problem as “A coworker used touch inappropriately”. If HR wants to setup a no-touching rule to avoid these situations I’d be all for it. But at a minimum they need to talk to the man from the OP to tell him his kind of touch is inappropriate in the workplace.
You didn’t notice the behavior in this thread until three different people called it to your attention; one of us in detail. Consider the possibility that such behavior may be much more common than you think, but you don’t notice it IRL either.
Different people have different experiences. Some people may have run into a whole lot of people who take it very badly if they’re asked not to touch, even if those people are a relatively small proportion of the population as a whole.
It often doesn’t take a whole lot of experiences to make somebody shy. If you get run over one day and get even moderately injured while crossing the street in the crosswalk and according to the lights, you’re very likely to be extra cautious about crossing the street for some time thereafter, even if the previous three hundred or three thousand times you crossed the street in the crosswalk and according to the lights you didn’t get hurt at all.
back in high school for a while I carried a notebook with BUT written on it in very large letters.
I have worked in offices for 35 years, and have never seen anyone place their hand on the wrist of a colleague. That sentence does NOT describe a tap for me, if he had tapped her on the wrist or shoulder I would expect the word ‘tap’ to be in there. ‘Placed’ implies to me that he put his hand on her wrist and left it there, and I think it’s really telling that the ‘I want to touch people who don’t want to be touched’ crowd keep trying to change it to taps. I also think it’s interesting that you even state that you’d find the action that I picture when I here ‘placed his hand on her wrist’ would
be odd and out of place. (Also, the taps I’ve seen in meetings average out to maybe one per decade, touching other people just isn’t necessary for running a meeting.
Incidental physical contact by people doing physical labor in an enclosed space is so vastly different than deliberate, prolonged, voluntary physical contact by someone engaging in only spoken and/or written work in an open space that I didn’t think that could be what you were referring to.
People who use non-aggressive touch don’t touch people who don’t want to be touched in the first place. Once you’re ‘getting a message across’ by touching someone who doesn’t want to be touched, you’re being aggressive regardless of whether there is a conscious thought process behind the action.
And my experience is that significant number of people will claim that the person who offers any objection to their behavior is the one stirring up drama, and will minimize that person’s complaints and do their best to retaliate in some way against the person raising the objection. For example, I offer the story that I quoted in the OP of this thread, where someone did complain, and the person retelling the story felt the need to state how out of line the complaint was, and how no one they talked to felt that the story was in any way out of line. (Apparently they didn’t talk to the offended party at all, which is pretty notable IMO).
I will note that ‘most folks’ is pretty much always a cop-out in a discussion like this; if only one person in ten is actively engaging in power plays, insensitivity, or sexual harassment, that’s more than enough to make the workday miserable, even though nine out of ten people are doing perfectly fine.
On the contrary, I responded to it early and often, before it was pointed out. Two examples:
I believe these things can happen. The social norm that should change is that people need to learn to respect it when someone speaks up about any issue that’s making them uncomfortable, and engage in reasonable and non-judgmental accommodation. Changing the norm to proactively avoid behaviors that make relatively small percentages of folks uncomfortable, even though a majority of folks don’t mind them, is not as practical in all circumstances.
As you can see, I said quite clearly that the silence is a result of a reserved person not wanting to put stress on interpersonal relationships.
There is no power differential and no difference in gender. (Also I’m male.)
And it’s not that I should really speak up for myself instead of harboring this resentment, you excluder of middles you.
What it is is, as I very explicitly said, a desire not to rock the boat. Many people go through their lives noticing that being assertive makes people think you’re pushy, that disliking things makes people think you’re oversensitive, and that being the squeaky wheel makes people look to replace the wheel. Heck, this entire thread is a battle between “please don’t poke me” and “stop being such a baby, it’s not so bad”. So yeah, a lot of us try to just get along without raising much of a stink, because guess who everyone ends up thinking is stinky?
The reality of the situation is that when you lean on somebody’s chair, or poke somebody’s shoulder, or slap them companionably on the back, or give them a friendly pat on the knee, the fact that they’re silent about it doesn’t necessarily mean that they like it. They may just be silently bearing it because as long as they do there’s not going to be any trouble.
If you have a choice of “do I touch this person or not” then DON’T. Make the assumption that any person you choose to lay hands on might choose to fuck your life up forever over it and you’ll never be surprised by the unplanned meeting with HR. Touching coworkers without explicit permission is just not okay and no matter how much the dinosaurs want to twist and squirm over it that’s just how it is. Maybe YOUR workplace is different. Then again, maybe only YOU think your workplace is different and you’re actually running the risk of losing your job over your misapprehension and failure to read the actual climate of your workplace and how that climate can change over time and with circumstances.
Any time you are intentionally reaching out with the goal of touching another person you’re running a risk that it will not go well for you. How not well it goes is a function of what kind of touch, where on the other person’s body and how much they don’t like being touched. If you are not completely 100% certain sure of all these variables then I’m not going to be overly sympathetic when you get yourself into trouble. “Keep your hands to yourself” is not a difficult concept for most people, but it doesn’t surprise me when the people who simply cannot and will not comprehend this simple dictum turn out to be the same people over and over and over.
Should I also make the choice never to make direct eye contact? Or speak to another coworker? or Decorate for the holidays? Or put up that cute kitten calendar?
And no HR dept is going to ruin MY life over tapping someone on the shoulder. The complainers life at that company will be rather short, otoh.
Sure, go for it. I think you’ll find that nobody is saddened by your choice to refrain from any of these.
Though I will note that it’s really, really dumb to equate “speaking to a co-worker” with “touching a co-worker” when the former is very likely required by your job, and the latter is only required if your office is a football field.
What are you going to do, kill them?
Look, we get it, you feel entitled to assume that you have the right to ignore what other people want. Many people think that way. Just don’t expect us to endorse your entitlement.
See how simple it is? Do. Not. Touch. People. Keep your hands to yourself. Don’t touch. Get it? Don’t…touch… Do Not Touch. Why do you have such a hard time pretending you don’t understand this? Do you even see how ridiculously you’re pretzeling over this?
I understand you think that’s the rule. Given the choice between taking the word of some random Internet personality, and the word of my actual co-workers, I know which way I’ll go.
I find myself curious about how you’re going to poll your co-workers for their feelings on the matter.
“Hey you guys, do you feel that me touching you whenever I feel like it is important for you to feel comfortable in the office?”
“Hey, I’ve been on this message board and these whimpy douches are all whining about people touching them. Seriously they should all be fired; I’d recommend to their bosses they should be fired in a heartbeat if I had the chance. So, what do you think about me tapping your shoulder?”
“Hey ladies, I wanna feel some love. Do you wanna feel some love? How about we get it on?”
Oh wait, you weren’t going to ask their opinions at all, were you? You were just going to assume that they already agree with your idea of what’s appropriate behavior.
Well, I don’t want to go around poking anybody. So I don’t really have a reason to ask about it.
ETA: Though it occurs to me to mention that “pardon me” is pretty much my automatic thing to say when encountering unfamiliar people. So you could say that I solicit permission for further interaction!
Among my immediate coworkers nobody tries to touch anybody. Ever.
But yeah, I’ll be all surprised that you don’t feel it’s necessary to make certain of what your co-workers want before carrying on as you are.
…if your boss were to institute the rule “no touching” tomorrow, would you protest? Do you feel you would be able to adapt the way you work, or is touching others such an intrinsic part of your workplace that its something you can’t do without?
I was a supervisor in a call center. In a goodly number of jobs that absolutely IS the rule and I’ve seen people ushered out the door because they refused to keep their hands to themselves. I was actually responding to someone else, which I think you know, but nonetheless my point stands, which is that if you intentionally touch people at work you’re running a risk. Maybe at YOUR place of work, for YOU, it’s not much of a risk but in general the rule is you keep your hands to yourself. Which I’m also sure you know but are being intentionally obtuse for reasons known only to yourself.
I’m a 67-year old, white, retired, middle manager. I can’t believe anyone in America gets “don’t touch people you don’t have a social relationship with,” less than I do.
Back in the 1990s when I saw my office manager hunched over her keyboard, I’d sometimes walk up behind her and rub her shoulders. We liked each other, and she was grateful. Once she said, “Will you marry me?” My administrative assistant and I also liked each other, but when she was at her keyboard and anyone, male or female, got within two feet of her unannounced, she wouldn’t even turn around, but said over her shoulder, “You’re in my bubble.”
