I read @UnapologizingBlack’s comment as meaning intimate touch. Obviously it’s a fine line, but in this context, I believe he or she was referring to the probably more than friendly touching between Lamont and her male coworker, and in particular his decision to kiss her in the cab ride home when things had grown strained between them.
I don’t entirely 100% agree with the view that workplace romance always invariably ends badly. And I say this as someone who’s never dated a coworker but who has dealt with the headaches of managing employees that did engage in ill-advised office romances, but who’s also watched a couple who worked for me get married and eventually leave the company to start their own business offering affordable sailing lessons around the world to people who could not normally afford them, and who’s hired spouses of employees that already worked for us. However, those are markedly the exceptions. Most office romances do end badly and the fallout damages careers and morale throughout the workplace. Then I end up on damage control duty, so you can imagine I’d personally rather such romances didn’t happen.
Banning them is a futile battle. But I did actively discourage them as much as possible. My advice to anyone considering hitting on or going out with a co-worker is don’t unless you’re 99.99% certain it won’t end badly, and chances are less than one in 10,000 that you are, so just don’t.
I think it’s crystal clear that the situation at Squarespace was deeply into the Don’t Do It category.
On a personal note, there are people who are not comfortable with people they don’t know very well touching them. I know because I was one such person as a child. I eventually grew out of it at college and now I’m fine with it, but I remember being that way and I always watch for signals that someone does not like being casually touched. And yes, I realize there are psychologists and studies that might say that’s unhealthy, but in the end people deserve to have their personal space respected and their boundaries need to be on their terms.
We had a lot of such marriages at my job. I don’t know much details except that I had to change names in emails in a significant number of cases.
…and they denied me even casual touch. Felt less lonely to work from home.
And the weak signalling people use is quite often hard to interpret correctly. Communicating in less ambiguous and more readable ways would help everybody.
The truth is that most people aren’t nearly as good at reading those signals as they like to believe. A lot of them think they’re Frank Abagnale when they’re actually more Rain Man. I know you’ve talked about your difficulty reading body-language and facial expressions. For what little it’s worth, even those of us who don’t face that challenge must still systematically study people and break those subtle complexities down to reach the point of being able to avoid inaccurate interpretation, and even then we make mistakes. Plenty of people never study people and just rely on pure intuition, which leads to a lot of awkward situations. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life. But you demonstrate a capable analytical mind. You may even have an advantage in that the rest of us must identify and remove the biases of intuition in order to study people objectively. People watching was one of the great pass-times of my youth.
That’s why I am suggesting people should signal more clearly. As such they are prone to being misinterpreted and then getting upset about it. If the receivers aren’t highly sensitive, the transmitter must be stronger - or not complain it is not received clearly.
I never got pleasure from watching people. It requires extreme focus to catch the little nuances, I miss most of them anyway, and it just leaves me exhausted.
I worked with Kelly for seven years. Of course she is my friend, and of course I would be upset if I found out she was racist. (I’d also be disappointed in myself for not recognizing such an awful thing sooner.)
The fact of the matter is Boing Boing copied a post from Medium, did nothing to validate it’s accuracy, and added credibility to a factually incorrect story.
Don’t see how it’s escalated when you’ve basically just agreed with everything I just said. The racist comment incident it sounds like actually has digital documentation (Lamont mentions having sent an email with the details to make sure of that fact). Not sure how you can cover that up and say it’s factually incorrect.
No, it is the best. Never fish off the company pier. Leaving aside the potential that you’re engaging in sexual harassment of uninterested coworkers, it will just bite people in the ass. Most people don’t meet someone and date forever. If you aren’t dating forever, then you’re going to be working with an ex. Not a good scene for anyone. Keep it to your private time and not at the company.
So this is the first thing you go to in response to someone saying “I know this person”? Accusing them of being a shill?
So we have a “None of us know what really happened because we’re reading one person’s account” and then someone who has some insight which goes against people’s preferred narratives and they’re immediately accused of being a shill.
Having been on the other end of accusations before (not racial ones, thank the gods) from a coworker, I know how easily the peanut gallery can spin things into an immediate witch hunt, even if HR looks into it and says that there is nothing there. So I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt when they say “This is one person’s take or spin on this.”
Let’s take a different tack at this then. Is the original poster defending Kelly just going off what they personally know about said woman (Ie," Oh she’s my friend, i know her better than that, she’d NEVER do that") or do they have concrete proof that the situation did not play out as Amelie claims? (I’m speaking specifically of the black chair incident). @krystynheide If you’ve heard from Kelly her side of events it would be nice to hear them if nothing else.
Are you saying that Kelly did not say she couldn’t see Lamont because she was the same color as a black chair, when Lamont was wearing a blue shirt? Because that is the crux of Lamont’s racism allegation against Kelly. If it did happen, in what context is that not racism? I can imagine no context where I would not terminate an employee for saying such a thing to their minority subordinate, no matter how wonderful a person they were. There are very few fire-able offenses in and of themselves. Most often termination is a matter of ongoing behavior. And not simply for ethical reasons. Termination for cause requires documentation if you don’t want to end up paying unemployment or a court-ordered fine. So I don’t say that lightly.
“My” corporate culture avoids things like you and your coworkers hating each other but still being required to work together or them having a new partner, also at the work, that dislikes you because you used to date their partner.
Of course, my wife and I both work at the same company and a longterm partner of mine, before my wife, worked at Microsoft with me in the same department. The difference is, in both cases, I was already partnered and living with each before they even got a job at the same company. My old partner actually had joined a completely different internal organization and department that, a year later, was merged with my own.
That kind of thing is just a shrug and move on but actively looking for love and/or sexual partners at work? There be dragons.
Unfortunately what works for the masses does not work for Black Women of color in the workplace. The “no touching” rule is best followed at all costs in this f-cked up still racist USA.
If you want to keep your job, and it’s an interracial work place where the majority of the workers are white male, where there may be a minority of females (White/Hispanic?Latino, Asian, Black) the “personal” number one rule for the black woman is “No touching!, No touching!” No hanging out after work drinking (unless you have an alliance of women/gay man/friend who will have your back) The best rule is: no socializing after work unless it’s about work. If you choose to go, have one drink; don’t drink it, hold your glass and go home at normal hour. If the party is at a coffee house, no alcohol; consider going, but even then; really know who you’re dealing with. My suggestion is to keep it simple; work is work, socializing with work people can end up disastrous. Chances are something bad happens, the black chick is blamed.
I’ve seen workplace romance work out. The subordinate little blond marries her well to do executive level boss. However it’s best to keep that stuff out of the office if you are a Black Woman. Unfortunately, everything is not equal. When interracial situations of attraction occur (and they will), the statistics of them going wrong are higher than normal. The black woman who will be assumed to have been loose, open and promiscuous.
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