> For instance, on harassment: telling a coworker of either gender that you like their clothes can be reported as harassment What a terrible society we're developing for ourselves.
Generally when there's a termination it's because there's a pattern, not a one-off thing. Edit: People who get fired want to believe that they did one "stupid" thing and it was "unfair" they were fired. Hiring a new person and training them up isn't exactly cheap, easy or straightforward. I realise there are exceptions but logic would tend to suggest that in most cases businesses don't fire people for one-off mistake…
Every system will contain components that can be reductivly described to sound on-the-face silly (like complimenting someone's clothing getting reported as harassment). The soundness of such a system relies on how closely tied the correction for that silliness is the expression of the silliness.
For example, there was a post on reddit recently about a proposed anti-bestiality law that would outlaw animal husbandry. Of course the easy hand-wave acceptance of this is that cops and prosecutors would exercise their discretion in such a way that this wouldn't be a problem for farmers.
But that's still a broken system. And should be mitigated if not fixed as closely to the source of the problem as possible. It's hard to see how the animial husbandry example could backfire, but imagine it's the CFAA which is more murky and politically charged. Or there were a zero-tolerance policy in place.
Additionally, having clothing compliments in the class of things reported raises suspicion on an otherwise innocuous action. Basically EVERYTHING that happens at an office can be done in a way to harass someone, but treating one subset with more scrutiny like this raises the baseline apprehension around that activity.