I recognize this is an easy target. Who has ever been to a deeply insightful sexual harassment training? I don't think it is possible to stick a bunch of strangers in a room to discuss an uncomfortable issue for an hour and get anything interesting out of it. Except perhaps a bunch of people that are a little less uncomfortable discussing the topic than they were previously. And while that may be the point, it doesn't really excuse anyone for making me sit through it.
My personal highlight is came when discussing a particular scenario that involved a man asking a woman to go to a bar for a drink where he put his arm around her. I referred to it as a "date" and some guy pipes up with "Well, the paper doesn't actually call it a date. I don't know if we can really call this a date." I may not have always agreed with what the other women in the class were saying, but at that moment we all had the same thought as we looked at the moron who had piped up with this one. Aside from the word choice not being particularly relevant, who did he think he was kidding? In this same scenario, the woman was actually ordered to go on the date by her supervisor who was hoping for a discount from the company. And some (other) guy argued that the supervisor wasn't guilty of sexual harrassment for five full minutes before realizing he hadn't read the scenario completely and so had missed that part.
Mostly though, there were no highlights, just a lot of answers of the following variety:
"Well, it all depends..."
"I guess it's all about how you feel..."
"We just don't know all the facts..."
"I think it varies..."
"I don't know if we can really say who is more at fault..."
In an entire hour almost nobody managed to say anything at all.
1 comment:
I just love productive meetings.
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