[yummyfajitas]

As a large white man, similar things have happened to me.

"Can we have this conversation in the stairwell so I can stand 2 steps down and make you feel comfortable?" <- actual thing I've had to say and do with a crazy female coworker

There may be some racial bias here (I don't have enough reliable data to have much of an opinion), but don't think majorities are immune.

[SamReidHughes]

Yeah, well, the difference is, every single black person I've seen that works in the industry has had a superlatively gregarious personality -- comfortable to talk to, ultra-diplomatic, with a good sense of humor. Any similarly sized group of white men I can think of, be it groups of coworkers at different companies, people I play golf with that are in tech, etc, have some angry, caustic personalities. Where'd all the angry black people go?

[waterlesscloud]

I've had similar as well. Literally had managers tell me I can't express anger the way others do because it was intimidating when I did it. Size matters as much as anything in that kind of situation.

At one job, I regularly interacted with a man who was larger than me and often angry. He was a few inches taller and 70-80 pounds heavier. He'd had a couple people threaten him with going to management for official notice when he got angry. I ended up dealing with him because I sort of understood how he felt about all that, so I'd just let his anger wash off my back. I knew he wasn't actually threatening.

But it did give be the perspective of seeing someone larger than me who was angry, which was something I hadn't encountered as an adult. I could then see where others were coming from as well.

[stephen_cagle]

I actually think that is kind of interesting. As a 5'9'' guy, it aint a problem, but it is interesting.

It reminds me of a character in the `Tale of Alvin Maker` series by Orson Scott Card. Forgot the characters name, but he was basically a bully and a 'sadist'. He had a sort of geasa placed on him as a baby, so that he never really got hurt. Anyway, he looses it, and suddenly is hurt badly. He suddenly understands what it was like for the people he was hurting. It wasn't really that he was a bad person, it was just that he had never experienced pain himself. It was enlightening when I read it as a teenager. Is it possible to really empathize until you experience something yourself? Don't know.

BTW, I am not in any way implying you are a bully or sadist. :)

Just saying it is interesting that you had a earnestly hard time understanding why other people felt threatened until... The exact same thing happened to you! Some human experiences are very hard to communicate, they seem to only be learned through direct experience.

[DanBC]

> At one job, I regularly interacted with a man who was larger than me and often angry. He was a few inches taller and 70-80 pounds heavier. He'd had a couple people threaten him with going to management for official notice when he got angry. I ended up dealing with him because I sort of understood how he felt about all that, so I'd just let his anger wash off my back. I knew he wasn't actually threatening.

No, he actually is treatening if he is angry enough at work to cause people fear, alarm, distress.

It's absolutely not acceptable to be that angry at work. It's understandable if it happens once or twice, but here you've mentioned a person who has had several colleagues talking about escalating complaints about his behaviour.

That employee should have been supported to change their aggressive behaviour (because it causes harm to them, and it causes harm to other employees, and it causes harm to the company) with a fairly stern reminder to stop fucking about.

[yummyfajitas]

If a physical trait causes people around someone to feel fear, alarm and distress, then that person actually is threatening and it's not acceptable.

As noted above, other physical traits (e.g. blackness) also cause those reactions. Your claim - namely that people's subjective perception, rather than objective behavior, are what determines the bounds of acceptability - seems to prove too much.

[DanBC]

It's not the physical traits of height or maleness or colour, but the anger displayed.

Perhaps I should have phrased it as "Don't have a work environment that regularly causes your employees to display anger"; and "Support your employees with workplace stress".

But still, anyone who is regularly angry at work needs to realise that their behaviour is not acceptable.

[zasz]

Right, so imagine how much worse it would be for you if you were black on top of being large.