This was the day after the majority of our dept., including my boss, spent a chunk of meeting time lauding Trump, Musk, and DOGE while espousing relevant canards; this resulted in one nonparticipating coworker leaving the room clearly upset by their dogma.
The conversation with this one coworker the following day went along the lines of him asking me where I went to college and I answered with the college name and campus location, both of which have a strong leftist/liberal/progressive reputation. He responded “You’re not one of those damn dirty liberals, are you?!”, and to defuse the situation without showing too many cards or creating a row, my response was to give a pronounced laugh and say that the polarity was an initial cause for me not wanting to go there and that I wanted to go to a different college that gave me a better scholarship but I wouldn’t have had the support from my parents otherwise.
Within certain industries, if you fire everyone who partakes in political soapboxing or uncouth commentary, you’ll lose half or more of the workforce and your company won’t stay afloat. This isn’t the first workplace that I’ve seen this. It is difficult to locate workplaces in which these behaviors are not common among the grunts as well as some higher-ups. A company won’t dismiss difficult to replace employees since it could cost the company its own existence. My employee handbook only “asks” that employees avoid talking about politics, and my HR rep is a self-described moderate (the HR rep self-described themself via an appropriate platform unrelated to work).
Man I had an interaction like this the other day where the dude started going off about Zelensky and how corrupt/dictatorial he is blah blah Russia is misunderstood bullshit
I just paused for a sec, chuckled and said “hey man wrong team.” He laughed, I laughed, we moved on.
I’d be worried being that friendly with someone that lives in a fantasy universe. He’s one easily convinced conspiracy away from doing something dangerous.
I don’t think talking politics is a fireable offense but, depending on the tone, I could see it as a threat of violence. I wouldn’t call someone a “damn dirty” anything if I didn’t feel they needed at least a good slap.
He asked you this on company time? Sounds like a threat and grounds for dismissal.
This was the day after the majority of our dept., including my boss, spent a chunk of meeting time lauding Trump, Musk, and DOGE while espousing relevant canards; this resulted in one nonparticipating coworker leaving the room clearly upset by their dogma.
The conversation with this one coworker the following day went along the lines of him asking me where I went to college and I answered with the college name and campus location, both of which have a strong leftist/liberal/progressive reputation. He responded “You’re not one of those damn dirty liberals, are you?!”, and to defuse the situation without showing too many cards or creating a row, my response was to give a pronounced laugh and say that the polarity was an initial cause for me not wanting to go there and that I wanted to go to a different college that gave me a better scholarship but I wouldn’t have had the support from my parents otherwise.
Within certain industries, if you fire everyone who partakes in political soapboxing or uncouth commentary, you’ll lose half or more of the workforce and your company won’t stay afloat. This isn’t the first workplace that I’ve seen this. It is difficult to locate workplaces in which these behaviors are not common among the grunts as well as some higher-ups. A company won’t dismiss difficult to replace employees since it could cost the company its own existence. My employee handbook only “asks” that employees avoid talking about politics, and my HR rep is a self-described moderate (the HR rep self-described themself via an appropriate platform unrelated to work).
Man I had an interaction like this the other day where the dude started going off about Zelensky and how corrupt/dictatorial he is blah blah Russia is misunderstood bullshit
I just paused for a sec, chuckled and said “hey man wrong team.” He laughed, I laughed, we moved on.
I’d be worried being that friendly with someone that lives in a fantasy universe. He’s one easily convinced conspiracy away from doing something dangerous.
You are a Ukrainian spy afterall
Just some dude I met at Mardi Gras. I’ll never see him again lol
I don’t think talking politics is a fireable offense but, depending on the tone, I could see it as a threat of violence. I wouldn’t call someone a “damn dirty” anything if I didn’t feel they needed at least a good slap.