amale said:
I'm not saying that it's not in a textbook. My point is that any textbook will let you write whatever you want. This is what textbooks do. Flat Earth was once in all the textbooks.
The textbook itself is just ludicrous.
My guess is you've never taken any sexual harassment training courses. I have worked in the corporate world for many years, and sexual harassment is a major liability for these companies, and they go to great lengths to stamp it out.
amale said:
The very idea that you must have a teacher to "allow"/"disallow" a group of adult people to talk about things is pure nonsense. Yes, adult people sometimes talk about adult things like sex, which is an important part of their adult lives.
You are mistaking this as a free speech stance when free speech has severe limits in a corporate environment. Outside the company's time, say what you want, but when it's work time, you stay away from any topic that can be considered divisive or controversial. Sex is the very last thing anyone should be discussing in a place of business, excepting the businesses who sell sex-related items, and even those businesses need to be careful about harassment.
amale said:
If you make them stop talking about their sex lives, you will make the environment uncomfortable for them, isn't this obvious?
No. You are also mistaking a work environment for a democracy where free speech is paramount. Corporations are a dictatorship. Your manager dictates how you must behave. If you don't behave in the way the managers dictates, you will be fired. Don't like it? Tough. And good luck finding an industry that does not adhere to harassment laws.
amale said:
And if the whole group is comfortable with something, and just one person is not, it makes more sense to make just one of the group uncomfortable, and not everyone but one. Making the environment perfectly comfortable for everyone isn't always possible, because it's not a perfect world.
You are using the logical fallacy known as "Argumentum ad populum," that being, if the majority agrees, then it is true or allowable. If an entire group behaves poorly, the one person who does not want to behave poorly is protected under the law, if not by company policy. Simply put, the majority does not rule if the behavior is harassing.
I don't know where you work, but you clearly are unaware of harassment laws as they pertain to companies. It may come as a shock to you that if one person is uncomfortable with the behavior of the majority, then corporations would rather side with the offended party and modify everyone else's behavior (if it is deemed that the offense falls outside company harassment policies, or it violates State harassment laws.) Harassment laws are set up to protect that one offended person, and frankly, no workplace should be creating a hostile work environment for anybody. If a group of people wish to give details about how much sex they've had, there is nothing stopping them from doing so on their own time. On corporate time, you adhere to their policies or risk unemployment.
amale said:
The OP has issues, apparently because of his messed up past experiences. The real solution is to solve those issues, not to punish everyone who triggers a painful reaction.
Whatever issues the OP has is utterly irrelevant to how he reacts to his co-workers' incessant, and inappropriate sexual talk, from a management point of view. A manager must look at the whole situation. First, sex talk in the workplace is universally understood to be verboten. Anyone who doesn't understand this is immature. If a company has no policy against this kind of immature workplace behavior, then the company is liable to be sued by the offended party, and they WILL lose because the employer failed to protect the victim from universally known behavior that is deemed inappropriate in any workplace.
amale said:
"Knowledge of the offended party is not required for harassment to exist." - this is just scary, for real.
Seriously? I suggest you read up on harassment in the workplace to understand a little more about what actually constitutes harassment. You'll be surprised what you thought you knew was acceptable and what is not. As a former manager, I have had to deal with this issue enough that I know how corporations think. They don't care about your precious free speech while you are on the clock. They only care about peace in the workplace so that everyone can get their work done with the least amount of drama. If people do not comply with policy, they get written up. If they persist in violating company policy, they are dismissed with cause. If you oppose the company's policies, you are more than welcome to quit, sue, call the local TV station, and find another job. If I was a manager in the OP's position, I would have a one-on-one sit-down with each of the women, describe the unprofessional behavior they have exhibited, explain that this talk might be okay at their home or in a bar but not at work, spell out the company policy on harassment, and call it a verbal warning. The next violation will be a written warning with a witness, and the next violation would result in immediate termination. This is the corporate philosophy on harassment. No tolerance. You either stop it, or you find other work.
