Posted 2:46 PM by Anonymous

My opinion on the matter: UH's situation was complicated, particularly considering the former relationship. The client clearly overstepped the bounds, at least by American standards, and it's UH's right to deal with it as she did. However, she should never have had to deal with it, and absolutely not during office hours with people around. Raymond, you're right that with the way people work these days, it's difficult to meet people outside of work. However, office romances are fraught with problems, most notably when one person is at a different place in the office hierarchy, which was not really the case here, but it all too often is.

Pjammer's comment in Sylvia's most recent post smacked of knee-jerk anti-PC*, but then I went to his site, and it seems he actually had some thoughts he had worked out around the issue. I do think, though, that the one who is naive is pjammer, not Sylvia. The transgression wasn't just "clumsy and unprofessional"; it trampled over a line into UH's personal space. OK, so you're comfortable enough in your own hetero space that you know that any advance by a man is subject to a verbal warning, followed by an ass-kicking upon further transgression. Um, congratulations. For a lot of other people, the lines are more difficult to determine, especially right in the moment, a moment that one doesn't usually see coming, by the way. So she responded a tiny bit to his kiss. So what? If he could read her so well, he'd have read her response better and not tried to kiss her a couple more times. He was after what he wanted, not what she/they wanted, and he hadn't bothered to find out what she wanted.

*What's ironic is that, these days, it's politically correct to be politically incorrect (or at least anti-PC), until you say something the majority disagrees with (cf. Bill Maher, who expressed an unpopular opinion in the wake of September 11 and now finds himself without a television program). Being anti-PC is a lazy excuse to keep from challenging yourself to find out whether there's anything to that PC stuff. It's hard work to admit that there is, because it means living less self-centeredly.