[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.