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Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

>So, I am female.

Yes, but here's the way I read it: "I am [a] female" and you provided one anecdote for us to consider. (E.g. Working relationship turned out fine for you in the end.)

Nonetheless, I don't read it as "I represent females". My experience behind closed doors with HR about harassing males is to err on the side of termination.

Sure, if a man makes 2 offers for a "drinks after work?" and the woman refuses... it's reasonable to take him aside and say, "dude, cool your jets, she's not interested. Pursuing it is not good for your career. Are you getting what I'm saying??? Great! Now get back to work. (smile.)"

However, sending a comment with MILF Mother I'd Like to Fornicate is a totally valid trigger for the company to go nuclear and fire you.

I guess we have different thresholds for what is hapless romantic ineptness and what is bad behavior. I respect Mz's perspective but I disagree with it.

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"Sure, if a man makes 2 offers for a "drinks after work?" and the woman refuses"

Turn that around ... if the woman is making the offer and the man refuses, he's likely to still feel flattered but the woman is likely to get the signal and move on.

But ... many men are absolutely clueless and will never get that signal. On the other hand, if the man asks every day but goes no further, is that really sexual harassment or is it just an expression of interest? I can't speak as a woman, but I'd imagine she's thinking "this guy is truly clueless". Does she also get irritated by it over time? Probably?

So I think part of this discussion needs to acknowledge that you can't write HR policy that will satisfy everyone. What you can do is put absolute limits in place, and provide a way for positive feedback - my favorite part of the story is that the woman and man eventually rebuilt trust and had a good working relationship. In my experience, this will never work with some people - it becomes an obsession for them and policy is irrelevant.

> if the woman is making the offer and the man refuses, he's likely to still feel flattered but the woman is likely to get the signal and move on.

I've had the opposite experience. I didn't feel flattered and she didn't get the hint.

>But ... many men are absolutely clueless and will never get that signal.

Weasel words. We're in Anecdote City right now.

>So I think part of this discussion needs to acknowledge that you can't write HR policy that will satisfy everyone.

The HR policies exist to prevent sexual harassment and to optimize for "safe against lawsuits." They're not supposed to make people satisfied or happy, they're there to protect the company.

"Weasel words"? - I don't agree. My observations are based on 35 years in the workforce and I've seen all sorts of weird male-female interaction.

"Broad generalizations"? - Certainly. I'm not surprised at all that you've experienced exactly the opposite interaction (and I've seen extreme cases of that twice). But I also worded my post carefully to convey really loose values - "the woman is likely" and "many men are".

I haven't collected statistics, my experience is that men are more attuned to what's appropriate than "in my distant path" and that women are less tolerant of it (both good things IMHO). So you can disregard my opinions, but if we're going to require double-blind studies to post in HN comments, this place is going to get very quiet.

I do agree with your paragraph about HR policies and lawsuits. Isn't it nice on those occasions when HR is better than that?

> But ... many men are absolutely clueless and will never get that signal.

Which is irrelevant to the existence of sexual harassment, a hostile work environment, or the employer's tort liability for failing to address those things, and so not particularly relevant to what the employer rationally should do in the situation.

> So I think part of this discussion needs to acknowledge that you can't write HR policy that will satisfy everyone.

HR policy isn't intended to satisfy everyone, its intended to maximize benefits and minimize costs to the employer of its relation with its (current, past, and potential future) employees, and an important area of cost minimization it deals with is costs of litigation and ensuing legal liabilities.

I think firing someone is a valid reaction to some things, but also the fired person is unlikely to change in the process. This is just pushing the problem on other people in another company. Again, you might not want to personally sacrifice anything for the betterment of the industry, but it's a good argument to have.

Also, if you suggest only females are getting harassed at work, you are wrong :)

> I think firing someone is a valid reaction to some things, but also the fired person is unlikely to change in the process. This is just pushing the problem on other people in another company.

Firing someone is generally not something that is done to help the person change, help the industry, or anything other than limit costs to the firing firm resulting from continuing to employ the fired person.

> I guess we have different thresholds for what is hapless romantic ineptness and what is bad behavior.

There is a fairly clear legal standard; any coworker who isn't in a position of higher power is allowed one bite of the apple. IANAL, but this situation is unlikely to qualify as protected speech under that standard.

Out of context I agree that is a valid trigger to fire someone. Let us consider for a moment, what if the alleged sexual harasser was a single dad in this case and the woman called him a DILF a few moments before his comment? Would that change your view given now that it's now reciprocal or at least somewhat aggravated? I'm not arguing that is the case but a zero tolerance view is often not an ideal solution. More information then is available is required to make a determination, thats why it makes sense to have HR look into the matter.

That said given the guy is getting sexual harassment complaints his first week there one could argue he is far from an ideal hire and simply fire him on that basis. "I'm sorry Bob, you just don't mesh well with the team"

To preface this, I am not excusing the guy's behavior. However, I think I understand why he may have thought it was alright to call her a MILF.

MILF became a really popular term in the early 00s. Back then, it was obviously vulgar. I think the term has been thrown around so casually, that to most people, it has lost its bite. Hell, morning zoo shows will drop MILF (even though the "F" is blatantly vulgar) without batting an eyes. To a lot of people, I don't think MILF generates the same reaction as outwardly saying, "She looks good. I'd like to fuck her." To him, it was probably analogous to saying, "You look good. Really good. We should go out sometime," with the subtext of sex after the date.

Again, I don't think he was right. Just trying to provide a rationale.

> To him, it was probably analogous to saying, "You look good. Really good. We should go out sometime,"

Holy fuck don't say that to people at work, especially if when you ask for private communications they say "sure, so long as it's work related".

> To him, it was probably analogous to saying, "You look good. Really good. We should go out sometime," with the subtext of sex after the date.

I think its kind of odd to see this as a defense of the acceptability (even subjective from the POV of the speaker) of a comment after a rejection, in a conversation between coworkers, that originated in a work-related forum even if it had an intervening change of venue.

That's, at best, only marginally less problematic in context than the original statement. So, yeah, it is basically analogous to saying that -- which is exactly the problem.

I'm not defending him. When someone makes a transgression, especially such a blatant one, I always try to reason why would the person do that in the first place. If someone kills another person, it's very likely that they didn't do it just for fun.

So if an action is so egregious, why risk your career over it? I figure it's because he didn't equate MILF with crossing any line. Otherwise, why would he bother to regroup and try again after getting rejected? I cannot fathom why someone would act in such a way that they'd get fired if they knew beforehand that they were in the wrong . Which, as you said, is the issue: he (not me) didn't think that there was anything wrong with what he said.

And for the umpteenth time, his words and actions were NOT acceptable. I just want to reason through something that seems so obviously wrong to me.

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