The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

We should be able to interact in the best manner of the business and out coworkers. Sometimes doing that may be perceived by others around you as having crossed a line. Sometimes, there isn't a great answer.

What if bringing an office problem forth exposes that the person causing the problem has personal reasons for doing so (a disability they don't want to advertise, for example). The end situation may just be the status quo (neither the company nor the staff really want to impede the person with the disability once it becomes known), but with two people now uncomfortable either with each other, with coworkers, or both. I would say that's often a case that can be helped by being able to talk about sensitive things, but also a case where people may have good reasons for wanting their privacy (people do not always act rationally). The "right" answer is often contextual, and in some cases it may not exist.

This isn't to say that we should just forget it all. It's just that it's hard, and we should be careful before assuming even somewhat obvious statements such as yours (which I agree with) are enough.

It's all relative. What you consider normal, is quite slimy for someone who is not engaged in your activity.

> but if you associate soap with that, then you obviously haven't found the right soap for you.

I just told you, this is not due to soap but to the increased oil production in response to you stripping the oils from your skin. Do you not understand this?

> this sounds like an uneducated statement to say the least. it's not about dirt (a bit of dirt never harmed anyone), it's about bacteria and diseases, and the risks posed to those with developing or weakened immune systems.

Jesus Christ, how did you construe that I thought that dirt caused disease?

> could you sleep if a baby you had contact with died from MRSA or diarrhoea? if you are consciously assisting the spread of infection and disease then calamity is the least you deserve.

You dare blame "MRSA" on someone advocating for less routine and systematic destruction of germs everywhere and anywhere? How do you think the "MR" part of "MRSA" got to be that way, hmm?

> If you admit to willfully using soap on items that protect and insulate an organism then these could by natural extension include skin.

There is a huge difference between washing a tool and washing what is as actually a human organ, namely the skin. The human body is complicated and tuned to a particular environment. Radically changing it by smearing chemicals on it several times a day will have many short term and long term unintended effects.

> also, the reproductive and therefore evolutionary rates of microorganisms far exceed our own - you and your kin would not evolve quickly enough to survive a pandemic.

If that were true how did humanity evolve in the first place?

> bacterial infection and disease are not a product of unethical marketing.nor are they some imagined, artificial problem. the suggestion that soap is not needed is conflating to the domain of cosmetics, of which it does not belong. I'm not saying soap is the answer to humanity's demise, it just enables us and other species to thrive.

Our species thrived quite fine before people engaged in obsessive hand washing. And I wasn't aware other species used soap?

> the major example being post-sanitation life expectancy.

Do I really need to explain to you correlation vs cause and effect? Just because people started washing their hands and started to live longer does not mean that one caused the other.

> firstly, soap is not a medicine so that analogy is safely dismissed.

If soap is meant to prevent disease, namely infections, and blood pressure medication is also meant to prevent disease, namely strokes and heart attacks, then how is not a medicine? What is it, if not, and why are you pushing its use so hard if it isn't?

> secondly, those are auto-negating or rhetorical questions, so I'm not inclined to answer. mine were life-or-death scenarios, which you chose not to answer. I wonder why that was.

Are you insane? You don't think scenarios where you ask if I would choose to live rather than die is not supposed to be taken rhetorically?

> I will not assume you would choose death, but instead presume you acknowledge that you would indeed need soap.

You get that I'm not advocating for the banning of soap use anywhere and everywhere, right?

> soap does not alter our immune systems. everything we are immune to has nothing to do with the availability of soap. it's more about protection and mitigation against the things we are incapable of becoming immune to.

If it only targeted germs that we are incapable of becoming immune to, and had no other effects, that sure, why not? The problem, though, is it reduces our exposure to all germs, and our immune systems do not develop properly in this sort of environment. There are many studies that show a connection between over sanitized environments and allergic reactions due to the immune system going haywire, as well as getting sick easily when they are then exposed to dirtier environments.

> it's absurd you dare include yourself in that "we". you are the minority here.

I am a "we" as in I am in a human being in the human race. You really cut those dividing lines deep, don't you?

> you are alive for two reasons, the first being you are lucky enough to live in an environment where sanitation is available,

Am I asking for a ban on sanitation?

> and secondly because the majority of mankind grasp basic biological concepts and are not living under some anti-goopiness delusion.

Sorry, I don't want my body to overproduce oils all the time and then have to wash those oils away every day to prevent being covered in my own body oils. We've lived like that for tens of thousands of years, it won't kill us all.

> there are several instances in pre-sanitation history where we did nearly all die. to say that you do not need soap is simply insane (etymological pun intended :)

Sanitation isn't wholly and exclusively comprised of hand washing. Me advocating for not doing it, isn't being against sanitation entirely.