No, you keep arguing against the position. If you agreed with the position that people get to decide who touches them and how, then you would agree that touching them without knowing whether it’s OK with them is wrong. Which means you would have no issue with the idea that you need their consent to touch them, and wouldn’t find the idea that you might need to politely ask a question to avoid making a grieving person feel worse so highly objectionable that you keep arguing against it for multiple pages.
Your policy is explicitly that you get to decide whether touching someone is good for them, and that you’ll touch them when you feel like it regardless of their wishes. You’ve said this repeatedly. Yes, if they’re bothered enough and the situation is non-risky enough that they can verbally object then after you’ve already touched them you’ll offer some words of apology and not do it TO THEM again, but you’ll continue to touch everyone else however strikes your fancy without regards to what they actually want or whether it’s actually beneficial to them.
It would be 100% unreasonable, as long as we remember that “punch” in this context consists of “tap lightly on the arm with a fist,” as I earlier described. A punch hard enough to leave a bruise should be, in most (but not all) work environments, a firing offense. A punch that hurts should be a warnable offense in most but not all work environments. A light tap on the arm that doesn’t hurt? No way should that be a warnable offense.
I’ve been watching touches today. This afternoon,
-A co-worker told me and another co-worker of her pregnancy. She was standing between us, and she laid a hand on each of our shoulders when she told us.
-Two co-workers were talking about one of them having a rough day. They were clasping wrists as they talked.
-One of them went to another co-worker whose arms were outstretched for a giant hug.
I had a meeting with adults this morning, and didn’t see any touching during the meeting. Otherwise I was around kids most of the day.
Certainly this may be an environment, both generally (elementary school) and specifically (my school), where there’s more touching amongst co-workers. I’m pretty sure it’s not sexual, since most of them are straight women; I’m pretty sure it’s not dominance displays, since all the touches I saw were between people on the same pay scale and were done between friends.
The same rules might not apply to other workspaces, for sure. I don’t think in any way the cultural norms of mine should be universalized. But conversely, cultural norms of other workspaces–in which someone could apparently receive a formal reprimand for a light tap on the arm with a fist in response to a funny story–should not be universalized to mine.
Touching another employee in a way that they object to is inappropriate work behavior, and in a non-dysfunctional work environment the company should deal with inappropriate behavior by warning, then escalating consequences if it’s actually bothering someone. You’re asserting that someone should be able to put what they (not the recipient, I’ll note) decide is a “light” tap on the arm as often as they want against the other person’s wishes in a workplace environment, and that the company should never do anything to actually stop that behavior no matter what. Even the “I should be able to touch anyone I want” crowd thinks that you should absolutely stop touching someone if they vocally tell you not to, but you seem to be abandoning even that!
I also want to point out that your “tap lightly on the arm with a fist” can easily fall into your own ‘warnable’ categories. I have a friend who has a nerve condition in one arm that renders that arm extremely sensitive to touch, such that a play-punch on that arm would actually hurt. There are also people with skin conditions where even light contact will cause bruising. So, even if we adopt your standards, the person would STILL face the possibility of a reprimand, because the recipient’s body might not
If someone cannot receive a formal reprimand for punching another employee against their wishes, however lightly, then your place of employment is just a lawsuit waiting to happen.
When I call you on it, you mock me as hypersensitive.
When I point out the shadow that casts on your alleged principles, you post a long screed rationalizing your poor behavior.
Forgive me if I don’t jump through your hoop; it seems to me you’re looking to win, not for a real conversation. You want clarification, you need to do better at apologizing for your poor behavior and assuring me you’re done engaging in it.
Or, of course, you can choose the last word in this exchange, up to you.
So that’s where I stopped reading. Either you’re deliberately misrepresenting what I’m saying, or you’re recklessly disregarding what I’m saying, since this paraphrase is completely incorrect. Do better, Pantastic.
Again with the “looking to win” trope. Why is everyone always fixated on “winning”? How do you “win” on an anonymous message board?
I’m not looking for you to jump through hoops. I posted an honest recollection of what I thought when reading your posts, and asked if that was not accurate, please let me know so I can understand where you are coming from.
Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “poor behavior” so maybe you can clarify that too?
And no offense, but now there are two people who you claim are misrepresenting what you are saying. I thought it was a pretty good representation of what you are saying. So, maybe, perhaps, you should be examining your posts to see if they are actually saying what you mean.
You stated clearly and unequivocably that a light tap on the arm should not be a ‘warnable’ offense according to HR. In general if a company can’t even formally warn you not to engage in behavior, then they can take no effective action to stop the behavior. If my paraphrase really is completely incorrect, then explain how a company could stop someone who ‘lightly punches’ people who object to it from doing so without making ‘a light tap on the arm that doesn’t hurt’ into ‘a warnable offense’ while still following normal business practices.
I’m not misrepresenting anything that you’re saying, or disregarding anything that you’re saying, I’m simply discussing your proposal and the implications of it for the workplace. You have, plain and simple, failed to show that my paraphrase was completely incorrect as you claim. If anyone is engaging in poor behavior to try to ‘win’ the thread, it’s the person making a bold ‘you’re misrepresenting what I said’ claim without backing it up.
For the benefit of people that think I’m making up the concept that you need consent to touch people out of whole cloth, it’s already a part of the legal system in many areas. What generally matters for battery is not whether someone suffered injury or whether the person touching intended anything bad, but whether they intended to touch the victim and whether they had consent for the touch.
Interestingly, the site contains a specific example that goes right to LHOD’s comment:
So if the ‘light punch on the arm’ results in an injury because the person has a condition that makes them more vulnerable to damage than the puncher expects, they’re still liable for the tort and criminal charges based on the result of the ‘light punch’, even if they didn’t expect it to hurt the person. LHOD’s contention that something that can result in criminal charges and civil liability should not be a ‘warnable offsense’ at a job is… rather unusual.
I missed the part in LHoD’s example where his humerus snapped like a dry twig when his co-worker touched him. Can you point that out to me? 'Cause otherwise, I’m genuinely not seeing the relevance of this cite.
I missed the part where I said that LHOD’s example included anything about his “humorous” snapping like a dry twig. Asking me to point out a thing that doesn’t exist and that I didn’t claim doesn’t make much sense, and if it was just an attempt to make a word play on “humorous” vs “humerus” I don’t think the joke works all that well.
On the assumption that you’re trying to ask a real question and not just being deliberately obtuse or trying to make a joke, the relevance of the example in cite is that hitting someone ‘lightly’ even with no intent to cause injury, will often technically be a criminal offense, and if it causes injury open you to a civil tort even if the reason for the injury is that the person had a medical condition. LHOD asserted that such an action should not be against company policy (or at least not meaningfully against company policy) , and it’s odd on the face that a criminal act would not be against company policy. It’s even more of a problem because it opens the employer to civil liability, since the typical way for an employer to limit their liability for an employees action is to say ‘we don’t condone what he did, it’s against our policy’, and deciding that an action is within company policy (ie “not warnable”) will likely make the company liable if the employee causes injury.
No, that was just autocorrect fucking my post over.
I asked, because you cited a bit of caselaw that covers completely unexpected injuries from otherwise innocuous actions. You understand that if I tap someone in the head, and their skull doesn’t collapse like an eggshell, I’m not going to be charged with attempted murder, right? Trying to link that to what LHoD’s describing is ludicrous.
“Often?” I don’t see any support for “often” in your cite.
So, just to be clear - are you arguing that LHoD, after taking a single “playful” punch in the shoulder that caused no actual harm, and without him establishing ahead of time in anyway that he doesn’t want that sort of interaction, should be able to go directly to HR and have them act against his co-worker?
I’m a charter member of the Mitts Off Club, but out of curiosity, I’m going to observe my coworkers tomorrow in the halls and breakrooms to see if this casual and friendly touching is really as common as some make it out to be. Gonna gather a little data.
I find it easy to laugh, joke, cut up, and clown around without touching, but maybe I am the weirdo. I make it a point never to lightly poke or punch someone in the arm. Experience with my ex sob husband taught me how easy that line can get blurred.
Really. It’s not funny or cute. Some day you may find yourself in the uncomfortable position of watching a co-worker flinch in involuntary horror because they remember a time when the light punch crossed the line. I can’t give you statistics or articles, but I really wish you wouldn’t do it.
To be clear, I know that my workplace is on one end of the spectrum: my staff is pretty close, and people regularly babysit one another’s kids, go to parties at each others’ houses, even go on vacations together. As I said earlier, I’m not arguing for universalizing my workplace’s norms, just for recognizing that different norms can exist without necessarily being about dominance games or sexual predation.
I assume the “you” is the impersonal “you” in the last sentence, since I received, didn’t deal, the “punch” (I put it in quotes because, although I used the word, it was a “punch” in the same way that putting a hand on someone’s arm is a “slap.”)
As for pantastic’s nonsense about brittle bone syndrome, at this point we’re veering into arguments along the lines of “handshake is like rape,” and I’ve realized I should take them just as seriously.