> The nice man from the stairwell appeared and was clearly making a beeline towards me to talk to me. Not good. Not good at all. This fool, who is still feeling all warm fuzzy over talking to me in the stairwell, is going to talk to me like I'm his best friend.
I'm completely confused. I rather enjoying making friends with people at work, male or female (and regardless of "rank"). If you've met someone before, and people are "milling about in an open space", why on earth wouldn't you give each other a warm friendly hi? Why is he suddenly "a fool" in a situation that is "not good at all"? And assuming he's still feeling "all warm fuzzy" (what does that even mean?) As a man, I almost feel insulted by all the assumptions being made here, and the idea that my own natural socialness might one day be so misinterpreted.
Maybe something's missing from the story, but I can't even begin to comprehend a place where a friendly hi between two people who met and chatted in a stairwell, or elevator, or lunch line, or any of the other 100's of places you run into coworkers at all levels, is somehow a bad thing. I mean, if the dude's some kind of a creep, then I get it, but the author says he's a nice guy.
Evidently you didn't read the part later in the post where it turns out the man was an executive and the author was an entry-level worker. That makes a big difference.
Also, the occasion was, as you are told in the post, two days after a supervisor was fired because of a sexual harassment scandal. That makes a difference too.
"I'm worried people might think something's going on between me and So and So. So I'm going to act in the most suspicious way possible around them and assume nobody has my superior observation skills, especially not those men who keep perpetuating the glass ceiling by treating women differently."
Not the OP, but I relate to the quoted comment. Maybe my experience will give you some insight.
Essentially, engaging in idle chit-chat is very stressful to me. It is far more stressful than anything else I do on a daily basis. In the past, I would feel physical fear when I saw someone I knew in a public place. Oh no, they're going to talk to me.
The reason for this is simple: I'm not good at enjoying conversation with people. I have trouble relating to people, so I have to struggle to be conversant. It becomes a game of "what should I say here", or "what do they mean by that", or whatever. I know that if I just said what I wanted I would seem antisocial, so instead I have to carefully mediate my responses. It's very tiring!
Having said that, this is really an issue with myself, not with the other person. I would never think to call someone a "fool" because they like to chat. The fool is the person who can't relax and enjoy a conversation.
You have to read the context. A different male employee had just been fired for inappropriate behavior with a female employee. Since he is much more higher-ranking than she is, she is concerned about what their coworkers will think about his interaction with her. It's not that she doesn't like the guy. She's trying to shield his reputation.
Yes it. reads like a scene from 1984 too me as well.
Actually thinking about it the zero sum competition of most big corporations is exactly like 1984 as well.
Not just that, but chance meetings with powerful people are one key way in which to advance: one makes a good impression for a brief moment in the stairwell; one makes an even better impression at the business function; one is able to answer a few key questions; one performs well when given a small piece of greater responsibility; one advances.
Or one could make a good impression for a brief moment in the stairwell, then brush the powerful person off in public, where (rest assured) other people who know how the game is played (and how the metagame is played, and how the metametagame is played...) see--and not advance.
I guess I work in a different universe where people behave themselves better.
If anyone talking to anybody in private front of a group of people is a potentially salacious event, the level of paranoia and tension in that place is out of control. At one point, all of my direct reports were women -- if they felt anxious to have a private conversation with me in my office or stairwell, that's a huge problem, and I couldn't have been effective at my job.
I agree... I don't tend to think anything of having break room or stairwell conversations with people that are far away in the organizational chart, and I don't worry that people will think there's an affair or conspiracy or something creepy going on if someone sees me talking to them. I don't really see the flaw in just taking everyone at face value, and making sure my business communications are restricted to saying exactly what I mean, no more no less. I generally expect others to take me at face value, too - if they don't, I see that as unprofessional since they could always ask me clarifying questions rather than attempt to read my tea leaves.
An extremely popular man was fired two days earlier (for either sexual harassment or an affair or both). Tensions in the department were crazy high that week. It was not a normal situation. That was a factor in my decision to not speak with him at that time.
In many companies the policy is that people in positions of power can't have relationships with their underlings. i.e. a VP having sex with their executive assistant would probably cross the line into unethical behavior on a number of fronts. Even if both parties entered it willingly and with no coercion or implied retaliation for saying "no", there may be questions of favoritism among other employees. The assistant would never be able to rise within the company without that doubt creeping in about their competence.
So, if it's not the official policy in an office, it is probably still grounds for action, since most offices expect a certain level of ethical behavior toward coworkers.
As someone who has been first working alongside and later as overseeing engineer for my fiancee (both as programmers over the last few years), this saddens me a little bit. Not to suggest that I don't see why things like this might cause problems, but that for me (and for my boss, who is a researcher along side his wife) it's been an overwhelmingly positive and productive experience.
Some companies simply require relationships to be reported to HR. There are tons of different ways to deal with the problem. But, it definitely is an ethical dilemma. I tend to recommend to friends that they avoid office romances unless the romance is more important than the job to them, especially in situations where there is a power imbalance.
Working alongside your gf or wife is one thing. But if she reports to you, do you get to decide her annual review rating? Do you decide her raises? If she's not doing her fair share of work, do you warn her and then fire her?
There are reasons why managers can't generally have relationships with a direct report. HR at my company forbids it.
There may be some truth in to that. I do contribute to her annual review and am responsible for making sure she's completing work effectively, but I don't decide raises or determine firing, which are probably the most powerful capabilities one can have.
That being said, perhaps this is a way to work around the normal pitfalls, where if there is a potential conflict, the person in question can be a "practical" manager, but perhaps not a "supervisory" manager. Those are horrible words for it, but I mean in that one manager would be actively overseeing the work, and the other would be a lower level of involvement check/balance against the former. It may be more manpower to do this, but it's generally how the engineering teams here work out anyway; that there are the engineers who have been here longer overseeing the new hires in the work, with a more uninvolved formal supervisory structure as well.
(This has other problems, I'll openly add, but has allowed for a situation like mine to exist, so it does make me look twice.)
Sorry for the essay, this ended up being a lot longer than I had originally intended.
I've seen various statistics, but I think up to 20% of marriages are between people who met at work. That's why I also tend to remain skeptic about that approach to the issue (to simply forbid relationships between employees).
Some companies have explicit "no fraternization" policies which forbid sexual relations between employees. Also some allow it, but it has be publicly disclosed and the two can't be, for example, in the same department or one can't be a supervisor of the other. If he was high up in the chain (depending on the organization), it can be assumed/argued having an affair would be unwanted because he becomes a target for blackmail and becomes a reason for termination. You also generally are disallowed to have sexual relations with a customer.
Also certain organizations forbid higher ranking and lower ranking people to even hang out outside of work, develop close personal relationships, or even have about personal/non-work conversations. Many militaries operate this way. My sister also worked for an organization that had this policy.
So that's reason to treat employees like lepers and impose your paranoia on them? You weren't taking his feelings into a count, you simply declared them as something to be managed, and you as the authority. Did it ever occur to you that you might've been wrong?
I think the problem being discussed is fairly start-up specific. And moreover, I think it kind of involves an assumption that start-up organization structures are the direction in which organizations in general should be going. As far as I can tell, start-up organization structure is as informal as possible. The aim is to leverage trust and flexibility that can be found in a group of close friends.
I would point out that moving in this direction is moving in a sort-of opposite direction to the direction that society went when we human made the transition to a modern capitalist/bureaucratic society. The reason you have bureaucracy, human resource, job descriptions and all the rest is that this allows a person to be separated from a job. There's lots of inveigling against "being a cog in a machine" but it should be remembered that a cog has clear obligations and clear rewards. And the cog is essentially a compartment - a person's social life, relationship involvement, cultural values and whatnot are kept at arms length. And it is a bit clunky, bureaucracy implies people aren't using these factors as means to make quicker decisions.
So in a sense, "chucking all the bureaucracy" sort of guarantees that you will have a situation where a monoculture of something will dominate. Because someone similar to the existing group can most easily "fit right in". And the aim is quick, unmediated action rather than any formal processes. (Edit: and the easiest monoculture is young white men but that would just be an example, not a PC inveigling again this particular group).
In the bureaucratic paradigm, a chat with a boss shouldn't involve implication of friendship and from there relationship interest - and in a well-function bureaucracy, it doesn't. In a start-up, the implications of a chat are totally informal and thus the implication of friend would be there and so the implication of relationship interest can easily appear - the bad part of "no walls" is clearest.
That's bizarre to me. I guess I haven't had startup experience, so I don't get it. That sounds like high school cliquish ness to me -- the opposite of trust and flexibility.
I must admit I don't understand why that guy couldn't be seen to be your friend in front of an audience.
If that is not possible (for whatever reason), how does it help women? Presumably men can be friends without problems, even in front of an audience. So there would still be an unsolved issue and disadvantage for women.
I plan to write more about this. Part of the problem was that two days earlier, another man in the department was fired over something having to do with an inappropriate relationship to a woman. The entire department was walking on eggshells. I felt it was just extremely bad timing. Another part of the problem is that I had an entry level job and he was very high in the department. So we had very little opportunity to work together, thus it would read as "social relationship" -- again, two days after another man was fired for his behavior towards women.
There were other factors. I plan to go into more details in future articles. In this case, I just wanted to talk about the fact that the glass walls of the stairwell fostered a sense of conversational privacy with zero fear of sexual or romantic intimacy occurring. You need conversational privacy to establish trust and do business. But you need a lot more than conversational privacy to pursue romance or sex. The lack of visual privacy mattered to our comfort levels. This man became someone who trusted me and likely would have done a lot for my career had I stayed with the company. That opportunity to talk freely (in the stairwell) without fear that one of us might misinterpret or misbehave was a key moment in the establishment of that trust.
I can see how it would make feel women slightly safer as it would reduce the risk of touching. But it seems to me romantic feelings could still develop easily. On the stairwell, you could ask the other person if they want to go for a coffee or meet after work.
Actually the glass walls these days seem to be more necessary for the men who have to insure against accusations of sexual harassment. I've heard for example that professors at universities always leave their door open or try to have other people present when they meet students, to avoid any such accusations.
Of course that might help a little, if men need not be afraid of sexual harassment claims there is less need to avoid women in a professional context.
The one thing most emphasized to me by my university regarding teaching was to always keep my door open during office hours, for precisely these reasons. An open door (or glass wall) avoids any he-said she-said situations.
One of the reasons I advocate that achieving an even mix of men and women in a workplace at all levels of the hierarchy is valuable for its own sake is because it diffuses the Gray Zone to a great degree. My hunch is that if there wasn't a pink collar ghetto and a systematic power dynamic favoring men, the awkwardness of having an unmonitored interaction would be diminished.
> At some point, I felt kind of stupid standing in the hall talking for so long and asked if he wanted to come sit at the table in my room. He wisely declined.
WTF? worked at Sun where we had offices and never had any issues coming into women's office or with women coming into my office. Would close the door on many occasions, especially if were talking in general (read - critical about Sun) instead of specific work topic. Never heard other people, managers as well, being afraid of doing it. Some people of different sexes shared offices. Following the logic of the article it was Sodom and Gomorrah.
I mean, some hear man and woman laughing from behind closed door and think "they are at it again", and somebody, like article suggests, would think "they are doing _IT_"... Why would we allow the later people to rule our lives?
">It fostered a sense of being able to talk without worrying that it might be misinterpreted as romantic intimacy."
I'd never considered this in detail before, but I'm nearly certain that this is why I prefer those stylish glass-walled conference rooms wherever possible.
Though, I'm not particularly concerned about romance, rather the kind of paranoid / narcissistic managers who can't bear not to impose themselves on any (opaque) closed-door meeting.
I think that opaque glass walls are the best. My office has opaque glass walls on two sides which, in addition to making good writing surfaces for dry-erase markers, allow me to see the fuzzy outline of people as they walk by my office and allow me to see when other people are in their offices (as the glass walls will light up.)
The opaque glass walls provide a sort of literal privacy that cubicles or open office spaces don't (such that I don't have to guard my screen when working on some projects, I don't need to excuse myself to the bathroom if I need to adjust my belt, and I can stretch out after sitting for too long without feeling self-conscious), but retain much of the general air or atmosphere of a more open work environment.
This kind of story freaks me out because I know that not in a million years would I be able to navigate these kinds of inter-personal situations. Knowing from eye contact and a shrug that somebody didn't want me talking to them but that we were cool and it wasn't personal. Wow.
I've had many jobs and I've always just talked to whoever of whatever gender or place on the org chart. I've had to make an intentional study of how to deal with people and still in 35 years I learn there's so much more to figure out.
Thanks Michele! As I was reading the Gray Zone post in order to see what the pretext for this post was, I kept thinking that something like google glass would prevent some of the problems. A less techy solution is the glass walls, as you discuss in this post.
I can't help but think of the law of unintended consequences.
I imagine entrepreneurs reading this and wondering "can I postpone hiring our first woman so I can avoid this source of awkward situations and liability for as long as possible?"
I find the notion of different kinds of workplace privacy an incredibly perceptive observation on Michele's part; I think the glass walls theory would solve a lot of problems by removing environments where bad behavior is enabled due to lack of observation.
I hadn't wondered about the reasons, but in most recently built office buildings I've seen that almost all the small intra-office "meetingrooms" have glass walls. They insulate sound, so the meeting contents are private but it's very public about who is meeting whom and if anything other than talk is happening - say, escalated conflicts would also be visible.
I'm completely confused. I rather enjoying making friends with people at work, male or female (and regardless of "rank"). If you've met someone before, and people are "milling about in an open space", why on earth wouldn't you give each other a warm friendly hi? Why is he suddenly "a fool" in a situation that is "not good at all"? And assuming he's still feeling "all warm fuzzy" (what does that even mean?) As a man, I almost feel insulted by all the assumptions being made here, and the idea that my own natural socialness might one day be so misinterpreted.
Maybe something's missing from the story, but I can't even begin to comprehend a place where a friendly hi between two people who met and chatted in a stairwell, or elevator, or lunch line, or any of the other 100's of places you run into coworkers at all levels, is somehow a bad thing. I mean, if the dude's some kind of a creep, then I get it, but the author says he's a nice guy.
Total confusion.