Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 785

TV’s Frink said:

Jeebus said:

I guess my question is ‘who decides what staring at someone is?’ Could someone conceivably get in trouble for staring at something behind someone else? What if someone’s just staring into space, but someone else thinks they’re being stared at?

Come on.

It’s a totally reasonable point.

TV’s Frink said:

moviefreakedmind said:

TV’s Frink said:

When I was first dating my now wife, we used to go to something called a mall to people watch. We’d sit up on the upper level and watch people down below to see what they were doing, what stores they stopped at, the weird things they were wearing, etc. It was a nice way to spend no money while having some fun conversation and learning about each other.

I think it’s hilarious that anyone would equate this with staring at the secretary all day.

It’s not much different if you really think about the concepts. Both are incredibly weird and “creepy” if you want to misuse that word. Either way you’re looking at some innocent person who is minding his own business. It’s just that in one situation you’re on the upper level looking down and mocking the clothes of people on the lower level and in the other you’re in a corporate shithole looking at a poor secretary that wished she’d chosen a less demeaning career. In reality, however, it’s actually true that watching people can be creepy, and other times it isn’t creepy. What if you just looked at the secretary for five seconds, and not all day? What about six? What about 4.99 seconds? What if you looked at her for five seconds with a normal expression on your face while someone else looked at her for three and a half seconds with a really threatening look on his face? How about everyone minds their own damn business while simultaneously not freaking the fuck out when some person looks at them? How about that?

This is ridiculous.

Why? Personally, if someone was watching me at the mall I’d be fucking disturbed, or at the very least pissed off enough to commit violence, and I’d be disgusted at the idea of wasting my time sitting with someone and watching others. That’s my subjective take on it, but something tells me that you aren’t clamoring to make life more comfortable for me. And you shouldn’t be. I wish no one on the planet would ever look at me again, in fact, but I realize how selfish and dumb it is to expect people to pander to my hangups. It’s no one’s responsibility to ensure anyone else’s comfort. No one should be expected to alter their totally harmless actions in order to make other people less uncomfortable.

Handman said:

Collipso said:

man, staring at someone and looking at the direction someone’s in is very clearly and very noticeably different.

How would you quantify that legally?

Who is talking about legal definitions? Wasn’t this 5-second-rule just part of a guideline to provide a rule of thumb? Why is everyone talking like this is a proposal for an actual law?

My problem is because it’s just some corporate bureaucracy bullshit designed to make the robotic corporate employees into even bigger robots and to control people even more. I hope I never have to work an office job ever again.

I’m almost a 100% misanthrope at this point, which next to no expectations of good behavior from my fellow man, and even I am amazed at how little the American people care about the massacre that just happened.

moviefreakedmind said:

I’m almost a 100% misanthrope at this point, which next to no expectations of good behavior from my fellow man, and even I am amazed at how little the American people care about the massacre that just happened.

The Capital Gazette shooting?

As an outsider looking in… it seems for the main part such tragic events as this have sadly become ‘the norm’ in the US - where prayers and thoughts are offered - yet nothing/little of note changes/happens to prevent similar shootings in the future.

It’s easy to say, yet maybe a look at how other countries around the world have addressed events such as this and what they have done to try and prevent similar acts from occurring? (or as much as anyone can) - instead of the usual rhetoric.

We tend to value the second amendment over the first. I say I need muh guns to fight The State, but actually I’m using them to do The State’s bidding and kill journalists.

Most post-shooting debates and headlines focus on the evils of “assault rifles” with many people saying they don’t want to ban guns. In this case it appears that an “assault rifle” wasn’t used. So there’s less traction for the story outside of seeing it as a tragedy. Except for the minority of people who do want to ban guns.

This sounds like a cherry-picked piece of a much larger issue. Where I work, there have been many lawsuits for sexual assault and harassment. And the way it always evolves is this… First, some senior employee scumbag with a lot of clout egregiously harasses or assaults someone (or multiple people), usually repeatedly, and management does nothing (or more commonly, punishes the victim(s)). Eventually, a lawsuit happens, which begets years of litigation and millions of taxpayer dollars spent on lawyers. During the entirety of time, management digs in its heels that nothing wrong happened, and it’s the victim’s fault (their lawyers instruct them to do this). After a couple of years pass, a settlement is finally reached which generally includes paid retirement for the accuser, and the accused agreeing to walk away from the job never to return or discuss the matter. It also ALWAYS includes several hours of court-mandated training for all of the remaining employees. The training is outsourced to some company that specializes in this and has a decent reputation.

Now, having taken probably a hundred hours of such training over the years, I have observed that it is invariably pretty decent, and full of real-world scenarios with suggested ways of handling them. Both the laws, and the gray areas, are discussed, also with general guidelines for helping reduce the likelihood that such misconduct will occur (or, that related lawsuits are less likely to occur). I usually find myself irked that these trainings invariably are packed with repeated admonitions of going to management/HR to resolve any issues, as if they are the annointed beacons of light when in my experience they are the ones that can be least-trusted to actually try and stop such problems (they are more likely to want to cover it up and avoid any admission of trouble, lest they be sued). But I digress.

Cherry-picking any single item from this process is likely to sound strange. I could easily see one of the given scenarios starting with “Jane walks by Jim’s cubicle every day to work, and is bothered by Jim staring at her for long periods…” bla bla bla, and ending with “… Keep in mind that starting for more than about 5 seconds can make someone uncomfortable or be misconstrued.” But what great fodder to be wrapped up in a typical Fox News hit piece (ok, National Review, same difference) so that the angry white guys can rant SEE!? SEE!? Now the snowflakes made a RULE saying I can’t look at someone for more than 5 seconds! Geez, it’s tiresome.