I agree based on your link that skepticism is in order. I'm sympathetic to the idea that certain topics should be 100% forbidden in a work environment, but then I catch myself and realize that ultimately a lot of what is deemed appropriate vs inappropriate has to do with the tastes of the people involved.
Even in cases where there isn't "org chart" status at play in a company, there are other forms of status, and so any kind of inappropriate talk could be abusive in some way.
This is not to say we should accept these problems without trying to make the world better, just that work culture is a hard thing to understand. Maybe when a customer calls up angry, the team refers to the person as an asshole. To some this would be highly offensive, to others it would not. Maybe someone who worked there went along with it but did so resentfully and then they find another job and write a blog post outing the team for being vulgar.
The point I'm trying articulate is that the bigger issue is that we (humans) are bad at understanding how status dynamics impact our own willingness to engage in certain topics of conversation, banter, humor, even flirtatious behavior. I've seen one sales guy who would go into the main office and kiss each of the secretaries on the cheek as part of a sort of greeting ceremony, full of high fives, etc. They all seemed like great friends who did that little ritual willingly, but it's possible one or more of the secretaries hated it and dreaded his arrival at the office. It was confusing to me at the time because I thought how I really wouldn't want to be touched by him, but I figured it wasn't really my place to judge since they all seemed to be enjoying it.
Probably the best way to handle it is for firms to establish a code of conduct for workplace interaction that forbids certain problematic topic areas explicitly, but such things are hard to enforce and seem to me to be better handled by positive examples being set by leaders and clear, zero tolerance policy toward any form of abuse of power (regardless of whether it's harassing, sexual, etc.)
Even in cases where there isn't "org chart" status at play in a company, there are other forms of status, and so any kind of inappropriate talk could be abusive in some way.
This is not to say we should accept these problems without trying to make the world better, just that work culture is a hard thing to understand. Maybe when a customer calls up angry, the team refers to the person as an asshole. To some this would be highly offensive, to others it would not. Maybe someone who worked there went along with it but did so resentfully and then they find another job and write a blog post outing the team for being vulgar.
The point I'm trying articulate is that the bigger issue is that we (humans) are bad at understanding how status dynamics impact our own willingness to engage in certain topics of conversation, banter, humor, even flirtatious behavior. I've seen one sales guy who would go into the main office and kiss each of the secretaries on the cheek as part of a sort of greeting ceremony, full of high fives, etc. They all seemed like great friends who did that little ritual willingly, but it's possible one or more of the secretaries hated it and dreaded his arrival at the office. It was confusing to me at the time because I thought how I really wouldn't want to be touched by him, but I figured it wasn't really my place to judge since they all seemed to be enjoying it.
Probably the best way to handle it is for firms to establish a code of conduct for workplace interaction that forbids certain problematic topic areas explicitly, but such things are hard to enforce and seem to me to be better handled by positive examples being set by leaders and clear, zero tolerance policy toward any form of abuse of power (regardless of whether it's harassing, sexual, etc.)