Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a "societal and political discussion"? In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless/drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp?
People are going to say "obviously stuff like this is okay", but to me that's even worse. The company can and will apply arbitrary rules to whatever they think is unacceptable political speech.
And if they do strictly enforce that employees must only ever communicate about work (and the weather or whatever), then that sounds like a very depressing and dystopian workplace.
Is it really that hard to hire adults who can have reasonable adult conversations (with sometimes differing opinions) without it being a "major distraction"? And is the best response to this really to bow down to the loudest voices on either side and shut down conversation for the 99% who are just...normal?
People are going to say "obviously stuff like this is okay", but to me that's even worse. The company can and will apply arbitrary rules to whatever they think is unacceptable political speech.
And if they do strictly enforce that employees must only ever communicate about work (and the weather or whatever), then that sounds like a very depressing and dystopian workplace.
Is it really that hard to hire adults who can have reasonable adult conversations (with sometimes differing opinions) without it being a "major distraction"? And is the best response to this really to bow down to the loudest voices on either side and shut down conversation for the 99% who are just...normal?