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Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

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Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By asking/telling someone to smile, one is basically saying, "You should look more pleasant for my benefit." I can't see asking someone to smile being appropriate in a workplace setting unless the person is in a customer-facing role and it affects job performance. The sexist part is that it seems to happen far more often to women than to men.

Or maybe you just want to actually cheer up that person? Not everyone follows the sociopathic line of thinking you presented.

How does telling someone to smile cheer them up? Besides, you can be cheerful but not smile.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#202
post #97

Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting? In this specific case I understand that insinuating a rape scenario — which by the way is not against women but "everybody" — in a work environment is bad, but without knowing what other toxic comments or behavior happened…

From an european POV I'd guess it has to do with fire-at-will and litigation-happy culture combined with scant labor protections for white-collar positions & low union participation. Maybe people are reluctant to raise issues until it's blatant enough that they can win a court case if they are shrugged off and fired by the employer? In many north european countries you could take these up as a workplace bullying issu…

I think that in europe we are more relaxed and nobody would not care this type of jokes. You would only tag the guy who did this joke as asshole and move on.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rape goes both ways. Men and women can get raped. Someone telling rape jokes can be disgusting and inappropriate, but it will stay as a joke. Agree, a workplace is not a good place to tell these. In fact there might not be a good place for it. Also, if we go further down the rabbit hole and say that rape jokes promote rape, then we can start saying that video games promote violence, etc... My concern is to have someo…

If you don't want to get fired for making a rape joke at work, there's a pretty easy solution to that. (Spoiler: it's "don't make a rape joke at work.")

Ah, now you ruined it for me. I was just in the middle of telling one to everyone.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#204

It's almost hard to read the comments on here. "It's a stressful environment---people have to blow off steam." "Is X comment really that offensive?" "Joking around is important to office culture." "The real damage is punishing people who said the offensive thing when he/she didn't mean anything by it." It's really not that complicated. Act professionally at work. Working at a job isn't easy, but part of the responsib…

When you feel an impulse to talk or joke about physical appearance, politics, religion, sex, gender, rape, racial issues, nationality/ethnicity, etc., just hold your tongue! Going to such extremes to guarantee never offending anyone is a great way to wind up unhappy and alone at work. It's fine if that's what you want - when I don't like talking to my coworkers in the first place I happily implement that strategy. Ch…

Don't see how it's going to extremes. I sit at a table with 6 others and manage a team of 8, have followed this for years and enjoy constant conversations and have good relationships with all my co-workers. Maybe I just have a richer personal life than others, and have plenty of other things to talk about?

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#205
post #48

The time that I worked at Apple was brutally hard work. If we're talking about work environment, I think many people reading that article have no concept of how difficult a job it is, how high are the expectations, and how many hours the average engineer is putting in there. This is a very difficult job which can be extremely stressful for a long duration of time. As a society we tend to laud grueling hard work rathe…

Why shouldn't people be expected to remain professional at work? Why is the difficulty of the job an excuse?

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#206
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So sexism is okay until men and women are raped in equal amounts?

It's not sexism. Women and men are treated differently from basically the day they're born. Talk to some women for a change, and learn about their fears and apprehensions. You'd be surprised. Until you try to educate yourself, the Internet can't do it for you.

So equality is a list cause and your fine with that?

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#207

Absolute BS. She sent an email to the entire company about this "incident", which I'll include here (names redacted). > 8:53:41 AM Person1: so am I the only one who thinks of the Bed Intruder auto-tune song everytime Person2 warns us of undisclosed persons in the building? > 8:54:47 AM Person3: hide yo wife? > 8:54:57 AM Person1: and yo kids > 8:56:02 AM Person3: well, you're not any more > 8:56:13 AM Person1: #winni…

Person1 should have just held their tongue. Both Person1 and Person4, along with others potentially, would have benefitted from the 8:53:41 AM message merely having never been sent.

Can anyone express the argument against this position?

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#208

Absolute BS. She sent an email to the entire company about this "incident", which I'll include here (names redacted). > 8:53:41 AM Person1: so am I the only one who thinks of the Bed Intruder auto-tune song everytime Person2 warns us of undisclosed persons in the building? > 8:54:47 AM Person3: hide yo wife? > 8:54:57 AM Person1: and yo kids > 8:56:02 AM Person3: well, you're not any more > 8:56:13 AM Person1: #winni…

Person 4's fascist solipsism is astounding. She has transferred the "toxicity" and "unacceptability"in her own mind onto the whole team. A song was referred to but there was no actual mention of sexual assault. The song is not "completely unacceptable" as it is obviously commonly known and legally sold. It is therefore acceptable in the workplace, referred to as it actually was.

Lots of things are sold legally and commonly known, but are still not acceptable to discuss in a workplace.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#209
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Person 4's fascist solipsism is astounding. She has transferred the "toxicity" and "unacceptability"in her own mind onto the whole team. A song was referred to but there was no actual mention of sexual assault. The song is not "completely unacceptable" as it is obviously commonly known and legally sold. It is therefore acceptable in the workplace, referred to as it actually was.

It's also clear that she has listened to the song enough to know the words too. So she was happy offending herself.

> It's also clear that she has listened to the song enough to know the words too.

I've never listened to the song, and the exchange in the thread was sufficient to inform me of the information that it complained about, to wit, that it was a song referencing sexual assault.

Its not like the exchange was at all subtle or opaque.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#210
post #139

Absolute BS. She sent an email to the entire company about this "incident", which I'll include here (names redacted). > 8:53:41 AM Person1: so am I the only one who thinks of the Bed Intruder auto-tune song everytime Person2 warns us of undisclosed persons in the building? > 8:54:47 AM Person3: hide yo wife? > 8:54:57 AM Person1: and yo kids > 8:56:02 AM Person3: well, you're not any more > 8:56:13 AM Person1: #winni…

If this is sexist, what isn't?

This particular comment could be perceived as being insensitive to victims of sexual violence, which disproportionately effects women.

However, I can think of a lot of things that would completely avoid any chance of being perceived as offensive! How about,

> 8:53:41 AM Person1: so am I the only one who feels uncomfortable/unsafe everytime Person2 warns us of undisclosed persons in the building?

> 8:53:41 AM Person1: so am I the only one who takes a coffee break everytime Person2 warns us of undisclosed persons in the building?

> 8:53:41 AM Person1: so am I the only one who wonders why there are so many undisclosed persons in the building everytime Person2 warns us of undisclosed persons in the building?

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