16 February 2024 , 15:25
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You always need to be careful about what you say at work.
Knowing exactly how to conduct yourself in the workplace can be a fine line to tread, and as you get to know - and like - your colleagues, it is easy to slip into being a little too comfortable in the office and speaking a bit too freely.
One woman found out the hard way that she had overstepped when she was pulled up by a senior member of the HR team for asking what she had thought was simply an innocent question to her colleague about children.
The woman posted on Mumsnet looking for advice after she had gotten into trouble at work and explained that she had "asked a member of the HR team if they had children, in the context of discussing a flexible working request."
The question had come at the beginning of the meeting, during which her flexible working request was being explored, but the woman said that her question had come "in the small talk/intro part of the conversation, it wasn't said to make a point or anything or to bolster my request for flexible working."
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Instead, she claimed, "It was literally a polite back and forth before the actual meeting began," and that her coworker had been asking about her own child to which she "mentioned some new teething and it was all very chatty and I just asked - I thought politely! - if she had children."
The woman replied that "she didn't and the time had passed for her to now. We then moved onto the meeting itself." The following day, after the woman hadn't thought much of it, she got a phone call from "someone high up in HR to say I shouldn't ask people if they have children and this is not an appropriate question in the workplace."
While the woman explained that she understood "that pregnancy etc can be a sensitive topic" she thought it was an overreaction from the HR department, adding that "I lost a baby a few years ago and it was and incredibly painful time at work and I felt triggered by any small talk about babies. However I would never have made an issue and I didn't make an issue when the topic was raised."
She asked other mums for advice about whether it was reasonable to "think this is a step too far to be policing this sort of conversation? I am recently a single parent and wouldn't launch into being offended if I was asked if I had a partner? Where does it end? I was only making conversation!"
Commenters were divided about whether or not the woman had been appropriate by asking the question in the first place. Some felt it was a perfectly normal question to ask in the context of the conversation they were having, and others thought it was a clear breach of professional behaviour.
"Very OTT. Yes it can be a sensitive subject for some, but it sounds like you asked during a conversation where it was in context, and you didn't follow up with nosey questions," wrote one.
Another disagreed, saying "It's not a question I'd ask someone in any context tbh as it might be uncomfortable for any number of reasons. I find that if I'm chatting away about my own [children], other parents tend to join in by talking about their own. If the other person doesn't mention having children when they're the direct topic of conversation then I'd assume they don't have them."
However, others took a more balanced view, with one writing: "I think it was probably a very sore point for the other person. You couldn't possibly have known but maybe she was upset after the meeting and this was an attempt to stop it happening again. I wouldn't overthink it."
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