work wierdities

[NewbeeMummy]

ok, this is all a bit odd and makes me feel like I'm back in high school, so please bare with me...

At my company there are a group of about 6 of us who get on fairly well, we all have the same sense of humour, and although we don't see each other outside of work we tend to all have lunch together a couple of times a week, have a good laugh, and some slightly warped conversations.

Recently a new lady has joined our company, and although I've never spent any time with her the others have commented about her being a bit odd, I think nothing of it until today.

We're all having our lunch at one of the tables in the kitchen and the conversation had sunk to it's normal low level, when this new lady joins us at the table (no issue with that), but then after about a minute butts in mid conversation and says she doesn't like the topic of conversation, so we all just sit there in silence not quite sure how to react. She then left and went off to speak to her manager (about what I have no idea)

The question is what do we do, this event has left us all feeling a bit unsure of what to do next, we don't want to exclude her, but at the same time, we want the break from work and just some time to have a bit of a laugh. Do we apologise to her, do we just ignore it, do we change our lunch routine?

I feel so stupid being in this situation given we're all mid 30's adults, but this has left us all feeling a bit like we're in high school.

Agree completely with findingmymojo, don't do anything at all - no need to apologise and don't change your behaviour just to please her. She's new, she's finding out who to bond with - it clearly might not be you lot. C'est la vie.

Conversation sounds pretty harmless to me, but if she chooses to be offended, up to her.

I really don't see it as political correctness. I see it as behaving with your colleagues in a respectful and appropriate way.

Just as I actually swear quite a lot at home (bad me, trying to stop before the DCs overhear and copy), but wouldn't at work, I would not make certain jokes or comments or discuss certain topics. There is a difference between home and work and I think, in increasingly informal times, people sometimes find it hard to see that difference and mark it down as 'political correctness gone mad'.

Is the woman in your department?
I'm not sure about this. Part of me remembers working in a cliquey, snooty department and being excluded from in-jokes and tutted at for "butting in" when trying to join in with conversations and get to know people better. It was crap. On the one hand, I was getting painted as an unco-operative loner, and on the other, I was getting pulled to one side and told that people didn't like me "interrupting" whenever I tried to join in. Work canteens are not private, they are public places where everyone can be.

if i was new, and i tried to make an effort to integrate with colleagues at lunch, and they started talking about hotel staff dealing with porn, i would definitely be i wouldn't complain but i would wonder where their manners and professionalism was!

it would be different if i'd known them a long time, but even then, in my workplace this sort of thing isn't on, in case a client drops in without warning or someone is on the phone etc (staff room door is always propped open, unlikely anyone would hear, but still...)

so that wouldn't have been acceptable to me, really

As to if it's a suitable conversation for work, well it's not to my taste, but I don't think it's entirely unsuitable as the topic of a private conversation, just because it was at work.

But then it wouldn't even measure on the bottom of the 'unacceptable' work conversations scale at the places I've worked over the last 25 years or so (opposite of 'corporate'), so I have to accept experience may have warped my view a little.

Excluding is a form of bullying.

I'm actually quite gobsmacked at those who think discussing porn at work is just a bit of banter, I just hope none if you end up on the wrong side of a disciplinary. Yes it might be over the top pc, but that's just the way things are these days and personally I'd rather keep my job than have a bit of non pc banter.

I'm afraid I feel very sorry for the new person here. She's trying to be friendly, sits down with a group of people - some of whom she works with - in the works canteen at lunch, to then have to listen to jokes about porn.

If the new person had asked to join their table in a pub on a Saturday night, having bumped into them by chance, fair enough.

But this isn't the pub on a Saturday night, this is lunch time in her place of work. It can be hard enough to join a new place of work, without finding out that there are unwelcoming cliques who talk about porn.

So I am going to say that the OP is BU as I would want to be welcomed into a new team/company, and to me that includes lunch times in the canteen.

[And I know some work situations are worse than others - but I'm normally the sole female in our canteen, engineering company. I would never expect to have to listen to jokes about porn.]

It's not as if it was a joke saying, "ooh int porn brilliant?? I love porn" or anything like that. To me it sounded a lot less offensive. Sort of like I might make a joke that my dream job would be sleeping with johnny depp in a film. Daft stuff that means no offence to old chums. They weren't excluding the new woman or bullying her, they had no idea she would find it so offensive.

But that was basically the joke. "Porn is so great it would be my ideal job to watch it for a living." The joke only works as a joke if you assume that the thing you are describing is a lovely thing to be doing.

Ahhh you see I am loving this because these are all the arguments and reasoning I get from people when I'm dealing with this stuff every day.

This new lady may just give you a wide berth and lunchtimes from now on or she might speak to manager in a formal capacity, the bottom line is that it IS different at work and you cannot assume that just because you think it is ok to talk in a certain way that others will too.

It may not be the way some people want it to be but it is what it is and if a formal complaint is made then the company have a duty to investigate and if necessary discipline those concerned.

So what if 99% of the people in the office think that that the complainant is the person being oversensitive and awkward, it doesnt matter.If they say they are offended then they are.

Now I have had cases where someone clearly has an axe to grind and if the company does there job properly during the investigation process you can usually nip unreasonable complaints in the bud before everything blows out of proportion.

But the defence of "I didn't mean to be offensive or bully or harrass" doesn't cut it at work I'm afraid, especially when it comes to things ( ie.sex, race, religion, gender, age etc.)

It may sound boring to some, but really the best solution is when your at work behave professionally and leave the bad jokes and purile banter for when you are out with you aren't.

or even "when your aren't"

or "you" even .....gee you can tell I'm not at work today

Badfairy - I run training sessions sometimes, and it's ringing quite a few bells with me too!

Two points about the supposed inoffensiveness of the initial remark. (1) even low level stuff contributes to an atmosphere where some people feel uncomfortable (for instance, I had a boss who was a very genteel late middle-aged spinster - does she have no right to feel comfortable in her workplace just because her morals are slightly out-of-step with society as a whole?). (2) The next issue is where things go next - by calling the thread "work weirdities",I assume the OP feels (she can correct me if I'm wrong) that having discovered a mismatch between the newbie's idea of appropriate conversation and her new colleagues, the onus is on said newbie to "fit in", or "sit in a corner eating her lunch by herself", both of which are workplace bullying. Funnily enough, way before the days of "PC gorn mad" (which I always interpret to mean the complainant is a niggardly misanthrope who doesn't like common standards of politeness), the armed forces (not known as hot beds of PC-ness as far as I'm aware) had a rule of thumb - "no sex, politics or religion in the officers' mess". Different rules apply in the workplace to down the pub (OK, we all bend them when we know we're with someone we know extremely well and can't be overheard by other colleagues - my current boss is very impressed by the fact I can swear like a trooper in Spanish).

Yes RibenaBerry I bet it is.

The thing is I am a real fan of the way the workplace has been liberalised in the past 20 years. I really don't want to go back to the days when I wasn't allowed to wear trousers because I was a woman and it was assumed I would leave my job when I got pregnant.

I also don't want to have to call my boss "Sir" which is the way it was in my first job. But I do think with freedom comes responsibility and that means being mindful of what you say and do in and around your colleagues.

Have been following the responses with interest.

so to answer some of the questions that have been posted

The lady does not work in my department, but does work with some of the others that are in the lunch time group. But as I've mentioned previously her team have tried talking to her and she just blanks them.

I only named the thread work wierdities as we all felt a bit weird after the experiance and were unsure what was the best course of action was, if any.

By no means do we expect the lady to feel she can't join us for lunch, we're not cliquey, we regulary have others join us, we just seem to be the core group. No one has ever made a comment before and typically people just join in with (what I had viewed up to now as) harmless banter, this is why it's thrown me.

I accept that our conversation was not ideal for the work place, but I'm really trying to establish what the boundries are. For example with the same mixed group earlier this week, there was some banter about men in uniform. So is that wrong too?

I'm not asking to start an arguement, I've worked in many offices where I'm the only woman and so have quite a thick skin when it comes to what is and isn't offensive.

I guess my test would be:

Would I be happy for this conversation to be held in front of my nice, sensible 15 year old daughter who has been in the office for work experience and is hoping to do so again?

I dont think that the conversation you had would have shocked her but I can imagine that it would have made her feel uncomfortable.

Nice to see you can accept you WBU

Personally, as a general use of thumb if I wouldn't say it in front of someone's granny then I wouldn't say it at work.

Happy to be told I WBU - know this forum well enough to expect honest answers.

I think both those rules are a good guideline, as to what we discuss in work. I had thought of trying the would I say that in front of my boss rule, but tbh he's just as bad.

ditto Suzie....

Also, I think what I was trying to get at earlier is that someone's "harmless banter" is another persons idea of " an offensive remark" It is hard to say what is "wrong" because you cannot possibly know everyone's personal circumstances.

The culture in all offices is different and people make there own judgements about what is and isn't acceptable so I understand your confusion. You and your colleagues have just got used to a way of being together that works and is very comfortable.You have all sussed out how to relate to each other and probably pretty much know how far to go with the banter and what is off limits. Unfortunately,whilst understandable I can also see why to someone outside the group it would be offensive and unacceptable.

As to the "men in uniform" comments I'm afraid again it just depends on whether any one thought you were being derogatory and was offended by it - really comes down to a judgement call on your part.

I hate to be the party pooper but at the end of the day the less risky option really is to keep it professional in the office and leave the banter for down the pub.

I had a similar relationship with a couple of colleagues in my old job. We didn't have a work kitchen so we generally had said conversations off-site. It was me (woman) and two men. We did occasionally joke that if anyone heard things out of context it could get awkward but always thought eavesdropping was just as rude.

If she walked in mid-conversation then, frankly, I really don't think you've done anything wrong. I'm assuming that, had she come in with you all at the beginning the conversation would have been inclusive from the get-go. If she happened to walk in just as you were discussing a topic she found offensive and you had no prior warning of her arrival I don't think it warrants an apology.

If she find such topics offensive perhaps, now you know about it, you should go down the pub for lunch or something in future.

I'm a firm believer in the school of thought that says that work kitchens are in no way private places. You cannot "eavesdrop" just by hanging round in a kitchen.

If it's something you're not happy to say to anyone who walks in, you need to find somewhere more private to talk.

I'm not sure I would find the 'So, what do you not like to talk about?' conversation an entirely comfortable one. Work is work, not counselling. Why on earth should someone feel in any way pressurised (and just asking the question is pressure) to lay out what they consider to be offensive to talk about?