Hi everyone!
I had a bit of a pickle on a post about a sensitive subject: a woman getting confessed by her boss.
To be honest I absolutely didn't see the problem with such situation as he confessed, got rejected, and took the rejection. I understood people saying “be careful” or similar but tons of people were really creeped out by the situation, calling that sexual harrassment, saying to change job and take a lawyer, reporting to HR and else.
I asked about and lots of people were quite rude and abrasive on the subject. Some were kind enough to take the time to discuss calmly and I finally understood the problem.
Guess what? The problem wasn't me, it wasn't them, it was just a cultural thing. I'm French and believe me when I say asking an employee out when you're a manager or a boss is 100% legal, and seen as perfectly ok morally by most people (here he was married so not so much about the morality but still perfectly legal ;D ). There is no law against that and the simple idea of a company trying to put a policy on such subject seems… Ridiculous. It would be illegal, unconstitutional and wildly impopular. We take love and sex VERY seriously if you want to restrict it you better have a godamn good reason! And I'm not sure for all Europe but I would guess that it's at least the same for Italians and Spanish because we share tons of cultural traits especially regarding private/work and relationships (feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken!)
All in all I learned lots of things about US culture in this discussion and I hope you learned one on French culture! But I just wanted to say that even if r/antiwork is mainly US focus and I completely understand that you assume anyone talking is American, please bear in mind that sometimes the guy in front of you just doesn't understand and for a good reason and try to not be directly on the defensive.
Even if you can't do it all the time because that's tiring, please give the benefit of the doubt to the person you engage with <3
Cheers!
(And as I said to someone, I hope US company do an extensive training on the subject to any French people working there. Because I have at least 4 friends that got together with someone from work and 2 of them were on VERY different level from their partner! And that's 100 ok and normal here)