how to make friends and influence ppl (without being a creep)

Alright, it’s definitely not ok to talk about someone’s ”bombadoms” much less call them “nuclear”

cheerfully withdrawn

Accepted. The complaint’s been removed from your file.

I'm not saying this is the correct way of parsing your discussion – it's a lot more complicated than that, obviously – but looking at it through the lens of, say, mainstream French culture, makes for a mildly surreal experience. Not that cultural relativism resolves or even explains the issue at hand by any stretch of the imagination. It's just that it's hard not to notice that absolutist puritanism is a more readily accepted position in the English-speaking world and that part of it has to do with historically ingrained attitudes towards sexuality in general (incidentally, two pieces – one an open letter cosigned by 100 women, the other written by a woman writer – were just published in Le Monde this morning, alerting to the pitfalls of puritanism even as they acknowledge and welcome the necessity of a libération de la parole post-Weinstein). Make of this admittedly simplistic take what you will.

Thread twenty thousand four hundred and twelve. Take a ticket.

If one feels obligated to give praise at work, make it work related. Tell them they finished a project faster than expected and well executed, tell them you've received very good feedback on their performance, that they've done a very good job learning a new activity. There are so many compliments to be given that has nothing to do with a person's appearance. Women want to succeed at their job, no matter what the job is.

TBH that advice reads quite patronisingly.

Does it? I am trying to make advice that men who seem to have trouble with this can follow. Like, I don't wear my wedding ring to work and don't discuss my personal life unless I am outside friends with a person. I literally do not want to be bothered with any non work related compliments a man decides to bestow on me (it's strange and awkward) and I don't want to feel like I can't be friendly in fear of sending wrong signals. Work is work.

I'm with whoever said that the women posting their experiences and reactions to this thread are providing the closest anyone will ever have to 'the rules'

I think men can take some patronizing from a woman. They’ve been giving it for awhile, they can deal with getting it.

Ah yeah, men

Thread into th

I think work related praise is one area where that distinction Cardamon was making between career jobs and paying-the-bills jobs might be significant? I've been in workplaces where I'm pretty confident that absolutely no-one, male or female, was taking "pride" in their work and congratulating a colleague on their work would seem condescending

Indeed if anything in the shit jobs I'm thinking of the correct thing to do is to commiserate and laugh off the work with your colleague/mate rather than praise

I don't know. I've worked in some service related grunt jobs on the side and for some people that is their career job. Like older women who entered the work force late or support their entire family. They definitely take pride in their work. But again, there are so many variables on this. Just don't treat women as if they don't have these complicated internal lives that we are all getting off on someone telling us that our hair looks pretty is going to brighten our day.

This also

I've had terrible jobs where it was perfectly reasonable to compliment someone on being able to cope with the drudgery of it. Congratulations on surviving this shithole with most of your sanity intact. Wow, I'm impressed with your equilibrium. Your tolerance of stupidity and abuse is impressive.

Even without going there, there should be plenty of innocuous banter to be had. "Hey, those fake flowers on your cubicle are nice and cheery" or "That's a fun Chthulhu bobblehead you have there" or "I like your Ghost World figurine" or "Hey, a Minor Threat button! Been a while since I've seen one of those." Honestly even "Hey, I also like that type of yogurt."

But this is irrelevant to the larger discussion. Honestly cannot see why a shitty job would need to have different levels of tolerance for creepiness / harassment / abuse.

FTR I have it installed in my head that to enter a workplace is to enter a place where it matters what other people are comfortable with, part of 'the job' is always to try and match/mirror this - Yerac's post about just wanting work to be about work, and various other accounts people have told me, become like, part of a dossier of evidence about what people might want that I take into work with me

Ye Mad Puffin I would concur that harassment and abuse are harassment and abuse and are not okay anywhere

I think the shitty jobs are the worst when it comes to protecting women from harassment. It's easier to just try to find another job if you have that option.

Even without going there, there should be plenty of innocuous banter to be had. "Hey, those fake flowers on your cubicle are nice and cheery" or "That's a fun Chthulhu bobblehead you have there" or "I like your Ghost World figurine" or "Hey, a Minor Threat button! Been a while since I've seen one of those." Honestly even "Hey, I also like that type of yogurt."

I feel all of this potentially sounds creepy af though, depending on the context, e.g. if it was to a woman by one of the bad at eye contact, lip-licking, unusual-or-unpleasant-prominent-physical-characteristics guys that HR article described, this is the whole problem surely?

I definitely think the lack of the pretense of professionalism at some shit/poorly paid jobs can be heartening and builds solidarity, but there is so much grey area as to what a shit job is and I still feel a small swell of satisfaction thinking back to how sincerely impressed the assistant manager at kwik save was by the job I did on the sweets aisle.

xp But also, distinguishing 'creepiness' from harassment, I sort of feel like harassment is the word for stuff that is definitely wrong (and subject to firing or legal action), whereas creepiness is ambiguous and er I suppose 'personally and culturally relative' ... obviously no-one wants to be creepy or crept-on but people come back with different definitions and judgments on what that creepiness would entail? Like mostly itt we disagree with that HR document posted above where it listed unusual appearance as something 'creepy'.

Then also remember some of these jobs like serving, bartending, cashiering, telemarketing, women are also getting harassed by the customers, but there it's in your best interest to just smile.

I definitely think the lack of the pretense of professionalism at some shit/poorly paid jobs can be heartening and builds solidarity, but there is so much grey area as to what a shit job is and I still feel a small swell of satisfaction thinking back to how sincerely impressed the assistant manager at kwik save was by the job I did on the sweets aisle.

I agree it varied, but complimenting someone for (e.g) being good at stacking tins of beans feels potentially offensive for similar reasons to complimenting someone on their haircut, i.e. most ppl would like to think that there is more to them than that? (though obv compliments on physical stuff have the added problem of maybe making ppl worry that you're going to hit on you)

I think 'assistant manager' is key there perhaps, like my experience was that I'd appreciate it if a superior took note of my hard work and skill, but if someone at the same level as me did the same it'd be more wtf

i have long said that the word "creepy" is not doing us any favors here
it covers too broad a range of potential behaviors to be meaningful on its own, without further elaboration

its connotation is "bad, unwanted" afaict?

creep·y
ˈkrēpē/Submit
adjectiveinformal
causing an unpleasant feeling of fear or unease.

xp to soref: iirc my colleagues gave me the deprecating/semi-ironic "heard about the job you did on sweets!" thing. I was pretty happy to chat about almost anything to keep my mind off the shop radio tbh. I just think there are no hard rules for navigating this stuff, no one can speak for everyone and any imperative is a blunt tool which someone will raise an eyebrow at

I see your point upthread, soref, but it rather muddies the waters.

If the Sanpakus of the world are like "wow, I can't even say 'nice haircut,'" lots of the advice is "don't compliment coworkers on their appearance ever." "Find something else to talk about."

If then the advice evolves into "don't even say 'nice Cezanne poster' or 'nice Brienne of Tarth bobblehead' if you're going to be a creepazoid about it," I can see why someone might think the goalposts keep moving.

"Don't say anything nice, unless you can manage to do it in a non-creepy way" is the same as basically telling people who are bad at stuff "get good at stuff."

I dunno. Honestly I was just hunting for ways a call center drone could possibly compliment another call center drone without going into no-go appearance/clothing zones.

how about make conversation that is not a compliment? the need for compliments is actually quite low when it comes to regular everyday workplace conversation.

true

it's a good starting place for not making people feel unease
if that is your ultimate problem

I literally started watching terrible reality tv for one job so I would have something to discuss with people to pass the time.

reading over Sanpaku's comments on the other thread, it seemed like he was worried about what counts as flirting vs. other kinds of (positive, I gather) interactions. Flirting, it seems to me, is unserious courtship, a testing of the waters, so to speak. Is it genuinely unclear when an interaction aims to court? Is it genuinely unclear when you *intend* to court?

get some ladies talking on the foods they used to eat as kids and they will talk for 3-5 lunch breaks
there is a world of possibility in conversation topics

part of the problem is the widely swallowed advice that if you don't know what to say to a person, give them a compliment because everyone loves compliments and everyone loves to talk about themselves. this is untrue and bad advice. especially in the workplace.

also i will note that the hair compliment example he chose to use from me was 1) not at the workplace 2) mentioned quite a while ago! 3) was not interpreted as menacing in a sexual way but as scripted behavior that misread its recipient. lots of noise interfering with that message. if i happen to be sensitive to reading people's messages with a degree of skepticism, i blame a lifetime of being a woman and thinking about this stuff literally all the time.

soref that HR document was horrendous and wrong. the reason LL is saying that "creepy" is unhelpful here is exactly because it's used to judge aspects of people that are not within their control - and there are usages of "creepy" that are plain rude and bullying in themselves. the flipside of this conversation about how we interact with people at work is that most people will make judgements about us and some of those judgements will be unfair, uncalled for or mean. nobody can control how another person responds to them. by thinking about the interplay between how intimately we know a person and what our relationship to them is - working, social, whatever - you get a sense of what kind of conversation should be ok. I think a good rule is, if you're not a friend, I won't ask you personal questions or make personal comments, male or female doesn't matter. if I say something innocuous and somebody responds badly because they think I talk strangely or they don't like the way I look then tbh I'm just gonna move along and talk to somebody who's more polite.

Rule 8b. A compliment paid to a co-worker should only ever be an end in itself, e.g. if you genuinely and spontaneously dig the person's bobblehead and say so. Not a means to an end, however innocuous you think that end is, e.g. "brightening her day."

I think ppl are in general more forgiving than the more socially anxious among us fear. everyone I know has said something awkward/inappropriate/rude/offensive at some point and it doesn't change how much I like them or w/e. ppl are quieter about and less confident in their judgements offline, & most will cut ppl who seem awkward some slack (& sometimes ppl exploit that & sometimes you can't tell &c. &c.)

'creepy' is the new 'hipster'

Last few posts starting from LL on all otm and get thread back on track imo

compliments are weird for me, from men or women. i find them kind of stressful. my inner Australian just wants to shut it down. it was years of being in an American office before i stopped doing this:

“your hair looks nice”
“ha! god i need a haircut so bad”

“cute shoes”
“what? these shitkickers? lol”

I like when I'm wearing a cool shirt and people tell me it's a cool shirt

although it'd be nice if they started a fresh pot of coffee instead of complimenting my shirt while finishing off the current pot

truth bomb

how about make conversation that is not a compliment? the need for compliments is actually quite low when it comes to regular everyday workplace conversation.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, January 9, 2018 3:30 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this times a million, thread should've been locked after this (if not way before). worst thread i've read in years (and that's saying something). it's getting really embarrassing to read the oblique "hey its not flirting but can we not compliment a woman who is working, what's a guy to do, where's the guuuuuuide" takes anbd persistence itt.

i mean, what is there to say? it's all been said already in this thread, about this subject. i don't get why the mice keep running this treadmill. unless it's because they've got their answers, but... won't leave alone what is really inexcusable behaviour.

what is the point of this thread, at this point? where do people want it to go?

I find it difficult to square the argument that this is all very straightforward and anyone who claims to be confused is just disingenuously looking to excuse bad behavior with the argument that there can never be clear rules about what is an isn't acceptable because it's all very complex and subjective, don't these contradict each other?

it's extremely straightforward: unless you have a personal rapport with a coworker, don't comment on their physical appearance in any way. and if you do, keep it professional.

^^ which is what several women have already expressed, repeatedly, in this thread. and yet it still drags on...

xp I agree with that, but the conversation itt seemed to be broader than "should you comment on a co-worker's appearance y/n", if it was just that then yes we probably could have sorted it by now (but still, y'know, who gets to define what a "rapport" is, who gets to define what is and isn't professional? that seems pretty circular)