Pro Tip

[lydy]

Do not hit on a girl who is required by her profession to be polite and pleasant to you. It is borderline creepy. Should you in fact make this mistake, do not compound it by assuming that her responding politely and pleasantly is in fact a come on when it is actually her attempt to keep her job. Issuing the same invitation upwards of five times and being refused each time is definitely creepy. But absolutely under no circumstances whatsoever should you tell this person about how often you have sex with your spouse. You have now gone from creepy to someone who needs to have a note in their file advising that you should not have a female tech ever again.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

P.S. I am sorry that you cannot remember your area code, but in point of fact, in order to use our phone system, you must dial all ten digits, and no, I don't know what your area code is, so stop yelling at me.

Comments

[carbonel]

Borderline?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I can conceive of a situation where one might, for instance, hit on a waitress or clerk in such a way that it wasn't completely creepy. This requires, among other things, being able to tell the difference between politeness and interest. Which this man totally did not.

[guppiecat]

There should be a phone service that gives people recorded advice on how to not be a creep. Then you could give out that number when people ask you.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Maybe we should start a Kickstarter...

[guppiecat]

I'd be up for that. What do we call it?

CreepCall?

We should structure it such that it has a "local" number for each major metro area and a set of email addresses.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

"Who you gonna call?"

"Creep Busters!"

[lydy.livejournal.com]

We could set up a phone tree. "Did the person you were flirting with give you this number. Press one for yes, two for no." If they press one, then the recording says, "You are being a creep."

[guppiecat]

I was actually thinking more seriously. The problem is that the "not my responsibility to educate" comes into conflict with "people need to be educated". It would be nice to lower the education burden without having to cause pain for others.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

That actually makes sense. Although such a thing might benefit from a sense of humor. I will think about this somewhat more seriously when I've had some sleep. It is kinda past my bedtime, here. I wonder if people would use it, and if it would reach the people who need it. Will cogitate when awake.

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

You would not believe how easy it is to set this up, btw.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think the people who need it wouldn't use it and anxious perfectly OK people would.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Maybe it could be reassuring to the anxious people? And maybe it could help people sort out whether or not an approach was creepy or not?

[guppiecat]

I think that reassuring anxious people is a good and that taking away power from the creeps is also a good.

It may be more effective at one than the other, but I think it's worth at least thinking about.

[ckd]

I can conceive of it, but even if it's done in a non-creepy way I think the implicit power differential makes it generally inappropriate.

(And in this case, there's not even a gray area, as you note. Eww.)