Line crossed

Casual workplace conversation can quickly become hostile to others

L isa Smith remembers the first time she found herself in the middle of an inappropriate conversation with a coworker. “I was at lunch with two male colleagues and a female colleague and we were talking about our boss, who was getting married and taking two weeks off to go to Europe with his new wife,” says Smith, who asked that her real name not be used. “For some bizarre reason, one of the guys started talking about how he’d never spend the money to go to Europe on a honeymoon because of what he did on his honeymoon, and it just went south from there, just graphic stuff, out of left field, wildly inappropriate.”

Smith says she and the other two coworkers at the table didn’t say a word. “We just sat there stare at our food, picking at our salads,” she says. “And this was a guy pretty new to the company so we didn’t know him as well as we knew each other. Not saying that it would be right, but if a friend at work started telling me some sex story about his wife, I’d cut him off immediately and he’d probably spend the next month sending me emails apologizing for what he said.”

Not this coworker. Smith says he picked up on the awkwardness at the table and switched subjects. “But no apology, no ‘whoa, I shouldn’t have gone there.’ Nothing,” she says. “We let it go and went back to the office. A few weeks later, he was gone. He tried to have the exact same conversation with one of the sales reps, who said nothing, and then our administrative assistant. She wasn’t having it. She went right to her boss and they both confronted this guy, who got really combative about the whole thing. They didn’t fire him outright. I think they found a way to give him a small financial package to leave the company before anyone filed a complaint with HR, and they left it at that.”

Murky waters

As companies take sexual harassment claims more seriously, many of today’s employees are thinking beyond the standard forms of harassment and concentrating on how inappropriate conversations at work may not only offend others but also can create a hostile work environment.

“No one wants to work in an office that’s like open-mic night at the local comedy club,” says Dana Garcia, a Miami-based social worker who specializes in workplace relationships and office dynamics. “Work isn’t the place to share the dirty joke your uncle told you on Christmas. Sometimes, people forget that.”

But it’s not just jokes, says Patrick Roth, an executive coach who previously worked for FedEx and the University of Michigan. “Sometimes, it’s commentary on the news or a discussion about a movie,” says Roth. “People might retell a story they read on a blog or describe a scene in a movie without realizing that they’re probably saying some things that aren’t coworker-friendly.”

Caution ahead

Roth points to conversations about Donald Trump’s hot-mic moment with Billy Bush that was made public in 2016. “When some people heard a coworker quoting Trump’s ‘grab her’ line verbatim, they’d get upset,” Roth says. “I talked to numerous HR directors at the time and they said they were getting complaints, mostly from female employees who felt like some male coworkers were continually saying the Trump line as a subtle form of harassment on its own.”

Roth says one HR director’s reaction to those complaints—a memo gently asking employees to refrain from political discussions at work or, if they did, to be respective of other people’s opinions, missed the mark. “Saying certain words at work are inappropriate, no matter the context, especially when people say them in the course of casual conversation,” Roth says. “The HR director should have reminded people that their words held weight and that they would be held accountable for them.”

“But we’re friends … “

Garcia says people often excuse their behavior at work by pointing out that their interactions are with their friends. “You may have a great friend at work who says he or she doesn’t mind your lower forms of conversation but unless you work in a two-person office, you’re not off the hook,” Garcia says. “And work relationships can hinge on promotions, transfers, layoffs—a number of things—so the dynamic can change quickly. No one will be able to dictate the things you say to your friends but they certainly can ask you to be more mindful about where you say them.”

Smith says she thought that was where her former honeymoon-loving coworker made his mistake. “We were at lunch having some laughs so I guess he felt comfortable enough to take the conversation in a new direction,” she says. “But I’m not listening to your tell-all account of your honeymoon, whether I’ve known you for three months or 10 years. That’s gross. It’s just wrong.”

Roth says it’s not that difficult to police your own words when engaged in conversations with coworkers. “I’d say think before you speak and make sure you don’t say anything that would offend your wife or mother,” Roth says. “My wife, who’s also in HR, is a little more direct: ‘Don’t be a pig.’ That’s how she puts it.”