[lqdc13]

In that case, should 50% of men at your current workplace be immediately fired for previous harassment? You are probably assuming it is one or two people doing all the harassment, but what if it's uniformly distributed?

Different people find different things offensive. Some have a very low tolerance. Some joke to build camaraderie. On the other hand, there is always a way to interpret almost any joke as offensive. Getting the gender wrong by accident is another big one.

Luckily, I haven't ever worked with anyone who might consider reporting someone for an "innocent" from my PoV mistake, but I have met a lot of people like that outside of work.

[SCdF]

> In that case, should 50% of men at your current workplace be immediately fired for previous harassment? You are probably assuming it is one or two people doing all the harassment, but what if it's uniformly distributed?

What if!

I'm guessing there is a cultural issue here, since you've jumped onto firing, which I didn't even realise was something we were talking about . It sounds like in your (US-based) experience people can be trigger fired based on an honest miscommunication (e.g. a joke that unintentionally offended someone).

This is not anything I have ever experienced.

I guess this comes down again to why I found the statistics to be so surprising. Taking those stats by themselves, the US appears to be incredibly paranoid and puritanical about "the other sex", to the point where you're scared to be in the same room as one of them.

In my non-US experience if you make a shitty joke you are called on it, but you're not going to be insta-fired.

If you physically assault someone, or continue to be a misogynistic shit-heel, that is another story..

[learc83]

>It sounds like in your (US-based) experience people can be trigger fired based on an honest miscommunication (e.g. a joke that unintentionally offended someone).

Yes this can easily happen here. There are almost no employee protections in the US. For the vast majority of employees an employer can fire you at any time with no notice for nearly any reason.

If there's a he said she said situation, it's generally worth it to fire any low level employee rather than risk the slightest chance of a lawsuit or bad PR even if they know they'll likely win.