Post-Moratorium Insider Rumor Thread

[Spud2nique]

22 minutes ago, Gray Mule said:

Men, this might involve you because something homosexual might have happened and if it did, you just might be guilty of something. 

[HawksNWaffles]

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[AHF]

On 9/24/2022 at 3:48 PM, bleachkit said:

Wherever there is a dispute between a man and a woman of an intimate nature, the man is always assumed to be in the wrong. Unfortunately for Ime, we live in a highly misandrist culture when it comes to these matters, and there's no way he can win this. 

This again tells me you have very little to no personal experience in managing these issues if you think women are always believed and men never get a a fair shake.

[thecampster]

5 hours ago, AHF said:

This again tells me you have very little to no personal experience in managing these issues if you think women are always believed and men never get a a fair shake.

I think his failure there is saying "always".  Speaking in absolutes opens you to criticism.  It would be fair though to say that the tendency in society is to side with the woman in the absence of further evidence.  The onus (socially) is on the man to defend himself.  I see this changing some but that is still the norm (though not an absolute).

 

[Spud2nique]

18 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

 

 

My x boy!!!  

[Diesel]

19 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

 

 

There goes my hope of getting a whole team filled with players born between 9-13 and 9-30.

 

 

[AHF]

2 hours ago, thecampster said:

I think his failure there is saying "always".  Speaking in absolutes opens you to criticism.  It would be fair though to say that the tendency in society is to side with the woman in the absence of further evidence.  The onus (socially) is on the man to defend himself.  I see this changing some but that is still the norm (though not an absolute).

 

Agree on speaking in absolutes but I think your post misses the point and, again, speaks to a lack of volume of experience in this area.  Companies automatically siding by the woman in the lack of evidence is definitely not the norm.  Very recently a material portion of the media has moved to a default of assuming that accusations by a woman against a male public figure are true without having taken the time to uncover and evaluate the evidence (some merely report the accusations while there are a significant number of people in the media who assume they are true) and I could agree that the onus socially is on the accused to defend himself once this type of accusation has been levied but very few matters reach the public sphere and this media world.

I am beginning to think you guys are viewing this through that kind of media lens rather than the experience of actual men and women in the American workplace.  In that context, it is very rare for a high ranking man to not get a fair shake in this type of context.  Even for public figures, many of these things never reach the public sphere as you can see with the long histories of issues for people like Matt Lauer and Bill O'Reilly before anything became public.

For every Johnny Depp situation where it plays out in the media, there are thousands and thousands of cases of boss/subordinate or coworker sexual harassment that never reach the public sphere and are handled internally by companies.  Neither the accuser nor the accused is automatically believed in 99% of those cases and instead HR or legal (inside or outside) typically investigates and uses that to inform decisions by management about what, if any, action to take.  Where the accused is a high ranking member of management, there is probably more of a bias to believe or excuse that person if anything. 

The male/female dynamic really isn't different from similar investigations that involve race, disability, union activity, or any other protected characteristic that can support a hostile work environment claim.  The EEOC handles thousands of these cases every year and in almost every case the issue is that accuser believes the Company did not take sufficient remedial action.  The EEOC makes its own decision in these matters and supports the decision by the Company in a significant majority of those cases.  (I say "supports" but the more precise way to say that is that they conclude there is no reasonable cause to determine that the Company violated Title VII or whatever law is at issue).

Even with a high profile public employee in a very public organization, this latest situation with Udoka probably would never have become public if he had just done what his bosses asked him to do back in July when they handled it quietly and internally with zero public facing repercussions for any of the involved parties.  It appears based on the current facts that this only became public after he was told to stop doing certain things and continued to do them (i.e., insubordination) and the team felt the need to take action that would reach the public's attention.

[thecampster]

1 hour ago, AHF said:

Agree on speaking in absolutes but I think your post misses the point and, again, speaks to a lack of volume of experience in this area.  Companies automatically siding by the woman in the lack of evidence is definitely not the norm.  Very recently a material portion of the media has moved to a default of assuming that accusations by a woman against a male public figure are true without having taken the time to uncover and evaluate the evidence (some merely report the accusations while there are a significant number of people in the media who assume they are true) and I could agree that the onus socially is on the accused to defend himself once this type of accusation has been levied but very few matters reach the public sphere and this media world.

I am beginning to think you guys are viewing this through that kind of media lens rather than the experience of actual men and women in the American workplace.  In that context, it is very rare for a high ranking man to not get a fair shake in this type of context.  Even for public figures, many of these things never reach the public sphere as you can see with the long histories of issues for people like Matt Lauer and Bill O'Reilly before anything became public.

For every Johnny Depp situation where it plays out in the media, there are thousands and thousands of cases of boss/subordinate or coworker sexual harassment that never reach the public sphere and are handled internally by companies.  Neither the accuser nor the accused is automatically believed in 99% of those cases and instead HR or legal (inside or outside) typically investigates and uses that to inform decisions by management about what, if any, action to take.  Where the accused is a high ranking member of management, there is probably more of a bias to believe or excuse that person if anything. 

The male/female dynamic really isn't different from similar investigations that involve race, disability, union activity, or any other protected characteristic that can support a hostile work environment claim.  The EEOC handles thousands of these cases every year and in almost every case the issue is that accuser believes the Company did not take sufficient remedial action.  The EEOC makes its own decision in these matters and supports the decision by the Company in a significant majority of those cases.  (I say "supports" but the more precise way to say that is that they conclude there is no reasonable cause to determine that the Company violated Title VII or whatever law is at issue).

Even with a high profile public employee in a very public organization, this latest situation with Udoka probably would never have become public if he had just done what his bosses asked him to do back in July when they handled it quietly and internally with zero public facing repercussions for any of the involved parties.  It appears based on the current facts that this only became public after he was told to stop doing certain things and continued to do them (i.e., insubordination) and the team felt the need to take action that would reach the public's attention.

I realize you work in corporate law and are closer to this...but I've been a middle to high-middle employee my whole life in almost exclusively large corporations.  I've only seen recently a change in company training videos showing the woman as the harasser or the one acting inappropriately in the workplace. The very culture of large corporations assumes the male as the aggressor (and maybe rightly so) in most cases. My comments were to societal and not corporate opinion but I can move there if you like.  The problem is the corporate workplace is more complicated, where payoffs and buyouts exist as well as pressures built around job security.  I would submit that only a fracture of inappropriate workplace dealings are reported. From a position of power against subordinates, logic dictates that more men are in positions of power and by extension more cases would be male superior vs female subordinate than any other. It would be normal and rational for personal bias to creep into the thought processes.  I think the problem here is in trying to find an all in one solution. I like the logic that  Jordan Peterson employs when talking about these workplace disparities.  He talks about the difference between individual men and women can flip any paradigm and that if you sampled 100 men, 100 women, you'd see norms played out in most cases. But that you see the greatest differences in the extremes and specifically in terms of aggression. There are women who are more aggressive than some men and men who are more passive than most women but when you sample at the extremes, the most aggressive are primarily men and the most passive are primarily women and I personally believe these are where our biases lay.

I didn't miss your point, nor his and was mostly siding with you, but my perspective is more grounded in how no matter what the policy, what the HR playbook, personal bias always plays a part and that bias of man aggressor, woman victim will always creep in (even if minor). Especially if the situation goes public because it's no longer just an HR matter, but a public affairs problem as well.

Edited September 26, 2022 by thecampster

[JayBirdHawk]

 

Oh Technology!!!

[AHF]

9 minutes ago, thecampster said:

I realize you work in corporate law and are closer to this...but I've been a middle to high-middle employee my whole life in almost exclusively large corporations.  I've only seen recently a change in company training videos showing the woman as the harasser or the one acting inappropriately in the workplace.  The very culture of large corporations assumes the male as the aggressor (and maybe rightly so) in most cases.

No disagreements here other than the word "assumes."  The reason you have only recently seen this shift in terms of messaging to show the woman as the harasser reflects two things:  (1) males traditionally have disproportionately been the harassers and (2) males have disproportionately been the bosses.  This has never been exclusive as there have always been women who discriminate against men or harass men, etc. but the dynamic has stereotypically been the male boss making unwelcome advances at the female subordinate and that is definitely where the the problems have developed.  This is similar to race issues where the focus is on whites discriminating against blacks because that has been the most common situation.  Sometimes this is called "reverse" discrimination but this has no real legal meaning.  The laws have always equally protected men and women and people of all races.  It is called "reverse" simply because it is a reversal of the statistically "normal" dynamic.

My only objection to the word assumes is that I don't think large corporations assume the male is the aggressor in actual investigations.  I agree with that characterization if you are saying that from a messaging standpoint the issue with regard to sexual harassment was thought to be almost always a man harassing a woman.  I'd also say that was rightfully the baseline assumption.

Today, the training to HR and thus from HR has shifted to reflect these "minority" cases more in the actual training materials because while the chances of a female physically raping a man remains incredibly small the odds of a woman with authority abusing that authority to pursue an unwelcome sexual relationship are much more significant.

Quote

My comments were to societal and not corporate opinion but I can move there if you like.  The problem is the corporate workplace is more complicated, where payoffs and buyouts exist as well as pressures built around job security.  I would submit that only a fracture of inappropriate workplace dealings are reported. From a position of power against subordinates, logic dictates that more men are in positions of power and by extension more cases would be male superior vs female subordinate than any other. It would be normal and rational for personal bias to creep into the thought processes. 

I'm not talking about corporate workplaces per se.  What I've said applies just as much to blue collar workers as white collar except for the power disparity you are talking about at the end there where that shifts the dynamic.  The big difference from a legal standpoint is that when you have coworker harassment an employer has additional defenses available that they don't have when it is someone they have put in a position of authority harassing a subordinate.

Quote

I think the problem here is in trying to find an all in one solution. I like the logic that  Jordan Peterson employs when talking about these workplace disparities.  He talks about the difference between individual men and women can flip any paradigm and that if you sampled 100 men, 100 women, you'd see norms played out in most cases. But that you see the greatest differences in the extremes and specifically in terms of aggression. There are women who are more aggressive than some men and men who are more passive than most women but when you sample at the extremes, the most aggressive are primarily men and the most passive are primarily women and I personally believe these are where our biases lay.

I didn't miss your point, nor his and was mostly siding with you, but my perspective is more grounded in how no matter what the policy, what the HR playbook, personal bias always plays a part and that bias of man aggressor, woman victim will always creep in (even if minor). Especially if the situation goes public because it's no longer just an HR matter, but a public affairs problem as well.

As I said earlier, the law applies equally to both sexes so I'm missing how that solution doesn't work in the context of harassment.  Whether the female or male is the alleged harasser or female or male is the alleged victim, the legal standards for whether the employer is responsible for the creation of a hostile work environment are the same and you can find cases where both genders fill each of those roles (including same sex harassment cases).   In both cases, there are legally significant factors that touch on things like whether the conduct was unwelcome, whether the conduct was sufficiently severe or pervasive, etc.  The determination has to be fact specific and when HR steps in to investigate, I don't think there is a significant bias in the big picture.  (Of course, there will be anecdotal cases where an individual company unfairly condemns or ignores a male or female employee, etc. but that is always the case when people are involved - as you note with the reference to personal bias which could be of any persuasion.)

I think the comments you are talking about from Peterson arise in the context of discussing salary disparities rather than workplace harassment.  He talks about the aggression being a valued asset in terms of climbing to positions of greater pay and responsibility and thus that simply looking at salary disparities without accounting for these variables doesn't make sense.  I frankly agree that to intelligently compare salary disparities you do need to control for variables and often find statistics around this issue to be fatally flawed.  (Like comparing what men and women in a given law firm earn without controlling for the fact that in that office most of the administrative employees are female and most of the attorneys are men.  You will, of course, find a large difference in average earnings by simple averages in this context but controlling to see whether full-time female and male associates of similar seniority are earning similar amounts is much more useful to explore whether there is a pay gap driven by gender.)

My bigger point is that (a) boss/subordinate sexual relationships are fraught with risk and (b) I don't think there is much of a case that men are at some kind of huge disadvantage in the context of workplace investigations of harassment.  When you leave actual workplace investigations and start talking about media reports, I don't disagree that men in public positions who are accused of this type of behavior are frequently assumed to have done something wrong after the first public accusation by a significant and vocal % of the media and have an uphill battle to rehabilitate their reputations.  (With the Jeffrey Epsteins and Harvey Weinsteins of the world helping to form that stereotype.)  But I don't think it is helpful to confuse media reporting and company investigations because they are very different.

In this specific case, it appears to me that the Celtics tried to handle the matter quietly without any damage to Udoka's reputation and he refused to follow the direction they gave him and forced their hand.  The one year suspension is very unusual.  (Typically would be something much less severe than that or an outright termination.)  We'll see more as the matter unfolds no doubt.

I'm just glad the Hawks aren't involved in this type of garbage.  We had enough black eyes when you had divided owners trying to leverage Ferry's comments to hurt the team's reputation and grab more power within the ownership group for themselves.  No need to go back to that kind of negative coverage of the team when we have such a positive and exciting group of young men playing in Atlanta this year.

[bleachkit]

11 hours ago, AHF said:

This again tells me you have very little to no personal experience in managing these issues if you think women are always believed and men never get a a fair shake.

Well I don't know what field you work in, but I work in health care, and I have personally seen several men get fired over unfounded and questionable accusations from female patients. I have yet to see a woman get fired over accusations from a male patient. Perhaps it's just my anecdotal experience, but I do think there is credibility to the notion that gender bias could impact decisions of this nature.

[AHF]

Just now, bleachkit said:

Well I don't know what field you work in, but I work in health care, and I have personally seen several men get fired over unfounded and questionable accusations from female patients. I have yet to see a woman get fired over accusations from a male patient. Perhaps it's just my anecdotal experience, but I do think there is credibility to the notion that gender bias could impact decisions of this nature.

I would say it is both anecdotal and, unless you had full access to the investigation, of limited use given that you don't know what information the decision-makers were acting on.  That isn't to say you are necessarily wrong as these certainly could be cases of bad administration by the staff but they could also be well founded and you just not know all the details.  I have seen that exact scenario play out in the medical context (where there was powerful evidence the doctor abused his position and he was fired but the healthcare admin kept the details quiet because they believed this was in the best interest of practice so as to minimize the reputational damage even if it may have led to some within the office being confused by why the termination took place).

Just curious, how many times have you seen a female doctor accused of unwanted sexual advances by a male patient?  You say the above as if you have seen a similar number of accusations against male and female doctors and only the men were fired but I am curious if you have seen many accusations of that kind against female doctors.

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[RedDawg#8]

1 minute ago, bleachkit said:

Well I don't know what field you work in, but I work in health care, and I have personally seen several men get fired over unfounded and questionable accusations from female patients. I have yet to see a woman get fired over accusations from a male patient. Perhaps it's just my anecdotal experience, but I do think there is credibility to the notion that gender bias could impact decisions of this nature.

This subject is close to home. I got a write up once because a female coworker who was also a close friend and I fell out pretty bad outside of work but still had to be in the same office. My write up said that she repeatedly asked me not to contact her outside of work matters and I continued to do so. Which was not true. And I had actual proof of the opposite from her own words. They didn’t care. When I got my write up they literally said, “We don’t need to see your proof, this is how she feels and this is how we are going to handle it.” 

I was like, wow, so the truth doesn’t matter. We just go by feelings now? At least I kept my job, but I felt like I had no rights in that situation to even defend myself against a bogus accusation.

Both of my bosses would apologize later once it became apparent she just had a bad day and got some bad advice to do that to me. But there was no repercussion for her actions. 

They took her word without a second thought. Because “they see it all the time”.  And I’m literally telling them, this is not what you think it is. I could only imagine if it was something more serious and widely publicized.

[AHF]

4 minutes ago, RedDawg#8 said:

This subject is close to home. I got a write up once because a female coworker who was also a close friend and I fell out pretty bad outside of work but still had to be in the same office. My write up said that she repeatedly asked me not to contact her outside of work matters and I continued to do so. Which was not true. And I had actual proof of the opposite from her own words. They didn’t care. When I got my write up they literally said, “We don’t need to see your proof, this is how she feels and this is how we are going to handle it.” 

I was like, wow, so the truth doesn’t matter. We just go by feelings now? At least I kept my job, but I felt like I had no rights in that situation to even defend myself against a bogus accusation.

Both of my bosses would apologize later once it became apparent she just had a bad day and got some bad advice to do that to me. But there was no repercussion for her actions. 

They took her word without a second thought. Because “they see it all the time”.  And I’m literally telling them, this is not what you think it is. I could only imagine if it was something more serious and widely publicized.

This is exactly how the law doesn't work.  Sorry you had bad HR.  They simply chose not to punish her for lying (which was undoubtably against their rules) and you could have actually sued the company for sex discrimination and won the case.  The fact that they told you they didn't want to see your evidence would have made it a very easy case for you.  The law actually protects you in this case (because they were treating you worse based on your gender by disciplining you without considering the evidence and giving her a pass when there was proof she was violating company rules by lying and making a false claim).  

There are absolutely cases like this just like there are ones where management turns a blind eye to actual harassment.  Both are anecdotes of bad HR.  That process should be driven by the evidence and both of your bosses should be ashamed of themselves if they didn't remove the discipline from your record when they (appropriately) apologized.

Had they done something more serious than a note to the file that didn't have long-term implications for you they could have exposed themselves to very serious consequences because you would have had a very strong case.  (Even the discipline is enough that you could have pursued it had you wanted to do so.)

[macdaddy]

21 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

 

 

He'll be happier when he's in Brooklyn in January. 

[Peoriabird]

I usually don't comment on gossip like the Udoka drama but this dude supposedly was sleeping with a senior VP's wife while being engaged to an actress...A public figure!  why did he think he could keep this on the down low???  Some of the things people do are so stupid that you just have to lower the boom on them regardless of their position.

[RedDawg#8]

58 minutes ago, AHF said:

This is exactly how the law doesn't work.  Sorry you had bad HR.  They simply chose not to punish her for lying (which was undoubtably against their rules) and you could have actually sued the company for sex discrimination and won the case.  The fact that they told you they didn't want to see your evidence would have made it a very easy case for you.  The law actually protects you in this case (because they were treating you worse based on your gender by disciplining you without considering the evidence and giving her a pass when there was proof she was violating company rules by lying and making a false claim).  

There are absolutely cases like this just like there are ones where management turns a blind eye to actual harassment.  Both are anecdotes of bad HR.  That process should be driven by the evidence and both of your bosses should be ashamed of themselves if they didn't remove the discipline from your record when they (appropriately) apologized.

Had they done something more serious than a note to the file that didn't have long-term implications for you they could have exposed themselves to very serious consequences because you would have had a very strong case.  (Even the discipline is enough that you could have pursued it had you wanted to do so.)

Got dammit I needed you back then!

I feel vindicated reading this though, thank you.