Hi everyone,
I run the book exchange at work here, and as part of that
I sent out an email telling people where to find it. This email
included that my cubicle had a poster on it, which said 'escaped
refugees welcome here'.
On the basis of that, someone complained that they found my poster
offensive. As far as I know they haven't actually seen the poster.
Management have told me to take it down, on the basis that it was
offensive and they needed to maintain workplace harmony.
I've refused to take it down. My belief is that 'offensive' doesn't
just mean 'anything that anyone says they find offensive' - there
should be some test along the lines of 'would a reasonable person be
expected to act offended if confronted with this'. I also don't
believe that workplace harmony is best served by having a system where
anyone can have anything removed by demanding it.
I think there should be some expectation that we're all adults here,
we don't necessarily agree on anything, and we should be expected to
be able to deal with that. We shouldn't be offended just by the fact
that there are people that strongly disagree with us.
Someone at my work was leaving fundamentalist Christian material lying
around, I could have been said to have 'found it offensive' in the
sense that I strongly disagreed with it. I didn't complain about it,
on the grounds that he should have the right to say what he thinks
without being punished for it. As you might expect, other people have
occasionally had political or religious material displayed at their
desks, and people who presumably disagreed with it haven't complained.
I don't believe there should be any system where management decides
that some political views are more offensive than others - that seems
to be political censorship under another name.
Any advice / support would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
James.
.
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