What about platonic friendships at work?

[brotherted]

In a bunch of different jobs I've had over the years, I've developed many close friendships with female co-workers. Sometimes these situations would later evolve into dating or relationships, and other times they wouldn't, either because one or both of us was already in a relationship, or else it just didn't develop that energy for other reasons. But in all these cases, they were real friendships.

As you might have predicted where I going with this... there have been several times when I've offered up one of those simple, one second surprise attack pokes in the sides to some of these female friends, eliciting everything from happy laughter, to silent physical reflex jerk, to no response at all. Some of these responses stay locked in my memory.

My question isn't about us -- the people reading this -- but of the dominant society. What percentage of people would consider a quick poke to an opposite sex friend to be sexual? Verses playful, funny or just silly? Any thoughts on this?

 

[oldgeezer]

It could be sexual, playful, both or neither.

And, if you're doing it at work it could be dangerous.

 

[pacattack]

You forgot vs. unwanted and bordering on sexual assult.

 

[TheMasterTouch]

ANY unwanted touching could get you in trouble at work. It's not worth the risk.

 

[Wade]

I've been the target of tickling in the workplace on multiple occasions, from multiple individual coworkers, sometimes repeatedly -- all women, all already in committed relationships, 100% platonic, not at all flirty, super fun even if also mildly embarrassing.

But in every one of these cases, our relationship was already chummy and lighthearted, and we'd worked together long enough for me to have established that my at-work persona was low-key, easygoing, informal, and jokey. Once the initial tickling occurred while I was engaged in playing an impromptu office prank. And these were offices where the culture was friendly and casual and leaned toward a general sense of humor overall.

These were also all instances of a woman initiating the contact toward a man; I wonder if that's a safer context in general because women are constantly the targets of unwelcome attention and so any such contact is inevitably fraught. I've never tickled a woman in my workplace except in a couple of the instances where they did it to me first (and in most of those instances, they weren't ticklish at all anyway, or concealed it well, so I never tried again.)

I can't imagine it would ever have occurred to them to tickle me if any of those variables in that overall context had been different. (And some of these occurred quite some time ago; it's possible the climate in many offices nowadays is very different.) Of course, once they did tickle me and enjoyed the extremity of my reaction, many of them proceeded to make a habit of it.

 

[Yote]

Even if it's a simple poke it could get you in trouble if you do it as a surprise. If it's consensual, i'd do it outside of the workplace to be safe.

 

[Wade]

Does the average person consider that sexual? Or if not sexual, flirty? Or if neither, just playful and silly? I'm convinced all three reactions exist, but I'm not clear on the ratio in real life.

I'm confident that none of the women who've tickled me at work thought they were flirting with me -- just being playful. However, I suspect the dynamic is different when directed from a man toward a woman -- women encounter so many men at so many levels of acquaintance (and non-acquaintance) who try to sexualize their encounters on a regular basis that I'd tend to expect a woman to interpret any such behavior as containing a libidinous element.

Obviously every person is different and some individuals will absolutely not see it that way based on their relationship with the tickler.

 

[brotherted]

I'm confident that none of the women who've tickled me at work thought they were flirting with me -- just being playful. However, I suspect the dynamic is different when directed from a man toward a woman -- women encounter so many men at so many levels of acquaintance (and non-acquaintance) who try to sexualize their encounters on a regular basis that I'd tend to expect a woman to interpret any such behavior as containing a libidinous element.

Obviously every person is different and some individuals will absolutely not see it that way based on their relationship with the tickler.

Yes, there probably is a pretty big gender difference here. I may need to do my own survey of non-tickling-community females on this question.

 

[chicago]

I don't understand what's so hard about keeping your hands to yourself at work.

 

[brotherted]

I don't understand what's so hard about keeping your hands to yourself at work.

What's relevant here is the quality, trust and depth of the friendship, not how you met them.
And just because you first knew a person through work, and see them mostly there, doesn't mean the relationship can't grow far beyond work-related exchanges. It's happened with me many times.

Having good people skills and the basic human empathy to know what would be considered insignificant, versus inappropriate, is what matters.

 

[chicago]

What's relevant here is the quality, trust and depth of the friendship, not how you met them.
And just because you first knew a person through work, and see them mostly there, doesn't mean the relationship can't grow far beyond work-related exchanges. It's happened with me many times.

Having good people skills and the basic human empathy to know what would be considered insignificant, versus inappropriate, is what matters.

Still doesn't answer the question of how hard is it to keep ones hands to oneself at work. If you are close to the person, you probably have chances outside of the workplace that wouldn't pose such a risk to one's employment / work life. Further begging the question, why would it be worth it to do on the clock?

 

[ticklingj]

I've been through plenty of those Respect in the Workplace training sessions. The issue isn't what you intend by an action but how it's perceived. Obviously you don't have a lot of control on how it's perceived since every perceives the world differently. Especially considering how easily offended people are these days, I'm pretty careful about what I say and to who. I definitely will not be tickling anyone at work. And a little more broadly, there's no reason to be putting your hands on people at work unless it's part of the job. My boss recently got in trouble for giving people shoulder rubs. He did it to me once and it really creeped me out. We're both big guys. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a 5'5" woman in that instance. Yuk.

 

[brotherted]

Still doesn't answer the question of how hard is it to keep ones hands to oneself at work. If you are close to the person, you probably have chances outside of the workplace that wouldn't pose such a risk to one's employment / work life. Further begging the question, why would it be worth it to do on the clock?

The question of "why would anyone touch a person with whom you work?" is identical to the question "why would anyone date, have sex with or propose marriage to a person with whom you work?"

Decisions to do any of them could produce negative consequences, particularly if someone is tone deaf to human emotions and relations.
What I'm saying is that a co-worker could also be offended if you talk to them too much. They could call that unwanted attention. Same with looking at them too much. Or emailing them about non-work things. Or suggesting lunch together. Or asking them a single question about their personal life. Literally any form of workplace interaction whatsoever could be called unwanted and creepy.

They way to avoid these problems isn't to ban, avoid or rail against every particular action which could theoretically be interpreted as unwanted. It's to be empathetic enough to understand the other person's point-of-view. That way, and only that way, will you ever know whether it's okay to ask them about their life, send them a funny, non-work-related email, suggest a date or touch them for one second.

Your position might be to stridently divide these things -- that somehow suggesting lunch together, talking about personal issues, or asking a co-worker out on a date is all on one side of a giant "could be okay given enough advance positive indicators" ledger, whereas even the most minimal co-worker touch is on the other "never okay, no matter how many deep and countless positive indicators" side of the giant ledger. Not me. For me, all of these things take the same form -- potentially misinterpretable, but also potentially fun human interactions. And the thing to be is smart about it.

I don't predict we'll agree. But I hope this explains my point of view.

 

[Wade]

Keeping one's hands to oneself at work is the necessary default position, especially because no one wants to feel unsafe or harassed in a workplace they're required to go to every day.

But in my circumstance it's analogous to asking "Why can't you keep yourself from taping your friend's phone receiver down at work" or "Why can't you prevent yourselves from watching cat videos online at work" -- if you're lucky enough to have platonic friends at work, and if the workplace culture permits it, then you're going to do friendly, frivolous, playful, pranky, teasey things at work, and in the case of some of my work friends that included tickling me on occasion, and they felt confident that it wasn't going to be perceived as a violation and I felt confident it wasn't going to go too far.