9 November 2017, 11 am
Unroiled after a good night’s sleep, I attend a meeting in a Virtual Office. Or perhaps I mean a Metaphoric Office. Or even a Pretend Office. Whatever. The Pretend Office looks just like a coffee shop from the outside, but you can tell it is an office because the people inside have clearly been there all morning; they have picked their seats, plugged in their laptops and set up their desk tidies and family photographs alongside their coffees, and they are not going to move until they have held three meetings and answered all their emails. My meeting is with two lovely HR consultants and a cappuccino. After I have tripped over their laptop cables a few times on my way to and from the coffee-dispensing part of the Pretend Office, they sit me down in a corner and talk nicely to me about how they can help IP Inclusive. One of the things they are going to help with is a talk about workplace banter and harassment. This is obviously very topical right now, as 50% of Westminster is in the process of being found out for turning workplace harassment into a form of compulsory CPD for junior staff members, particularly female junior staff members with provocatively-shaped body parts and no sense of humour. We want to make sure the IP professions are not like that. They tell me all sorts of stories about workplace banter going wrong. This is humbling. I am keen on a bit of banter myself, and often I am guilty of assuming that everyone else will be as thick-skinned (for which read emotionally incompetent) as I am and not be upset by the banter. But it turns out that often people are upset by banter, even if they do not say so because you will not let them get a word in edgeways and anyway because you would laugh at them if they did. I resolve to be more careful from now on. But I also resolve that the next time someone teases me for drinking Red Bull®, or shedding straw, or wearing boots wherever I go, I will punch them.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |