Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

> Someone might say "I know she is lying because she used this term which liars always use plus I read this story about a woman making up harassment charges to elicit sympathy."

Using a mathematical approach, maybe they started from an axiom that liars use specific terms which out them as such. Then after several theorems and lemmas, they managed to establish what that specific term is. Without the guarantees given by the axiom, all the knowledge they managed to build upon it is dubious.

The problem with axioms is that they fall outside of the "purity" of maths - they're basically "something a bunch of people agree on". When you scale that to billions of people, it tends to fall apart(also evidenced in maths, where there's lots of questions which set of axioms to use as the foundation for a specific branch). Very mushy.

Myself and my close friends curse, insult and tease each other in a manner that we find entertaining; however if I had this same type of interaction with someone I've only known for a couple of months it would be insulting and I'd avoid that person.

In the above post, I used foul language (sorry) - but I didn't call anyone names. ? I was describing a situation in which my ex-girlfriend was given special treatment by some unscrupulous people. When I was referring that people should 'shut the F up and behave' I was in no way referring to the person making claims, I was referring to people who are would-be harassers in general (i.e. 'they should behave').

I didn't call anyone names, I don't think in any of my comments ...

I referred to two comments as 'bigoted' - because in my opinion they were. We can't go saying "white men are misogynists" - that's really not fair, I think it's within my right to assert that such comment is bigoted, and I was careful not to refer to the commenter as a bigot - but rather to indicate that the statement itself was.

... in fact, I was provoked ad-hominem quite a few times through this thread. I was told all sorts of things 'about myself' which is I think unfair. I have nothing to say at all about other commenters, or about the people involved in this situation.

Anyhow, I'll get off the thread.

I'm the worst dresser on my team and i commonly (not daily, but monthly) get "hey nice clothes!" comments. We all laugh and move on. if the comments bothered me, i could say something, or dress like an adult. The issue only occurs if it truly bothers me and im too afraid to say anything. it's pretty easy to say "are people saying things because they dont like me or because we're friends bantering".

I think the real difference is mutual fun with the subject also being involved. The repeated subject matter shouldnt matter. If someone can't tell that the subject isn't involved, the problem isn't their bullying/teasing, it's the fact that the person is a jerk. it's all subjective and some people can read it better than others.

To be frank, I was part of and witnessed a smaller role compared to others, as I prefer to keep my head down and work, and not participate in office politics. Regarding the lunch, it was something we often did when we were feeling cheerful. Most, if not all had a reason to be plenty cheerful by the time lunch hit, but I digress. It turned out to not differ from a normal outing. It was the defining topic of discussion, of course.

In this case, I think catering to the notion of trying to "fix" someone this toxic who is bringing others down in hopes of rehabilitating their work behavior is a lost cause. He had numerous chances and it was unanimously understood that work life would be easier for all without his presence. I believe you are very right in stating that this shouldn't be a primer. Thanks for your response.