That's going to be true right up until someone crosses a line or someone feels like a line was crossed, and then the entire structure will collapse on top of you, possibly killing a few people's careers in the process.

"Just be cool" is not a strategy.

I had the misfortune of working with a person who decided that everything was an affront to her existence. And being that she was a woman, firing her was out of the question because of the potential discrimination lawsuit.

God help you if you ever made the mistake of greeting a room full of people with "hey you guys" in her presence.

The ridiculousness of the complaints escalated until any Slack messages not strictly business related were relegated to direct messages with only trusted people. There were no more work outings, because people didn't feel comfortable. People avoided engaging her at work as much as possible for fear of an HR report.

It made work absolutely miserable.

I hope that doesn't delegitimize people expressing their hurt by actual discrimination in the workplace, because I know first hand how hard it can be to recover from someone trying to manipulate the system like your coworker.

Once you see one person behave like that, a very easy trap to fall into is to think that everyone who is concerned about even vaguely similar things is trying to do the same thing, even if their concern is fair/reasonable.

This is a really important point, and it highlights a pattern that humanity is all too familiar with: overcompensation.

The dominant view on social issues swings like a pendulum. When one extreme falls out of disfavor, there is a shift toward the other extreme.

I hope that one day we can settle on something sane. I'm not going to hold my breath, though.

> I hope that doesn't delegitimize [...]

It might be more comfortable for those folks that have gotten burned if there was a more endemic feeling of having any recourse. It being the case that there isn't, asking for people to feel empathy for another group of people that has actively persecuted them is a big ask. To my mind an unreasonably big ask.

That is because painful experiences have a much longer and prominent shelf-life in the brain.

Agreed. I talk to the women I work with the same way I talk to the men. If I didn't, then I'm probably not talking to the men appropriately either. I think that is the right thing to do morally and that says a lot about a person's integrity, which means they trust you when you say something. So, there's no reason to think something is anything other than what you say it is.

Another important ingredient in that is saying, "I don't know" a lot. Then when you tell them something, they know you're not bullshitting them. So again, there is no reason for someone to think something is anything other than what you say it is.

I'm curious what this environment is?

Right now we're seeing a lot of the "illiberal left" marching through institution after institution, as another commenter said, it will reach you eventually.

Just wait. I thought that was true too until a male colleague was dragged across the coals after a female colleague overheard something and took it out of context. It only takes one time.

What state? I'm assuming not California.

Then why post from a throwaway account?

Because their workplace might be normal but the wider web is not so a comment like this could hurt future job opportunities. Especially on HN where you are not able to delete your account or comments.

You should be able due to GDPR, no?

This will hit your company/industry eventually.