Ask a Manager: Swiping on a Coworker on a Dating App

[minoanmiss]

Is swiping on a coworker on a dating app grounds for an HR meeting?

Asking for a friend: They absent-mindedly swiped on a coworker in a dating app (whom they asked out once two years earlier). Said coworker was uncomfortable with that and went to HR, and they all had a sit-down about leaving said coworker alone.

I am all for not harassing people you work with romantically, but I am also conflicted — is swiping right on a coworker on Bumble or Tinder grounds for an HR intervention?

They are both on a dating app, after all — a place where you are opening up yourself to these kinds of interactions explicitly. And then the interaction has to be mutual anyway — both people need to “initiate” conversation here, without knowing if the other person has done so. (Apparently in this case their coworker was paying for premium rights to see who was swiping on them, and spoke with HR without initiating.)

Dating apps also location-based, and so a lot of coworkers might show up there. Having worked at a 500-person office, I probably have swiped on several without realizing! A lot of people also use these by quickly swiping, not necessarily making a researched decision every time.

I might be utterly off-base here, but I want to be sure not to alienate people I work with. What would be the correct etiquette here?

This doesn’t sound like someone who reported a coworker to HR simply for swiping right on them on a dating app. Their perspective is likely that the coworker had already asked them out and been told no, now they’re making another overture, and they work together so it’s extra aggravating that they weren’t respecting the original no.

It still could have been overkill to involve HR — but so much of this depends on how your friend handled the original rejection and how they’ve treated the coworker since then.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Ask a Manager, like most of the internet, is FULL of people who find reasons to defend the most egregious sexual behavior at work, I STG. It's perennially annoying.

[mrissa]

"Their perspective is likely that the coworker had already asked them out and been told no, now they're making another overture, and they work together so it's extra aggravating that they weren't respecting the original no."

Yeah, you know why that's likely their perspective? Because it is the literal facts on the ground.

LW, you absolutely know the difference between "wait, you work for Large Company? wild, me too, what department?" and "I have plausible deniability about Caitlin from Accounting right? right? RIGHT?"

[ioplokon]

Yeah, exactly. And tbh with the HR thing, presumably the friend can just explain it was an unfortunate anecdote & they plan to leave their coworker alone, and then do that, and it will blow over with time? Like it doesn't sound like HR did anything except basically relay for the coworker that they were uncomfortable this happened.

[melannen]

This does seem somewhat mitigated by the fact LW's friend had no reason to know they would even know about the swipe if they weren't receptive. Like. I am 100% in agreement that you don't continue to pursue someone who said no (a coworker least of all). But if you're paying extra money to bypass a system specifically designed to minimize that, I kinda feel like that's on you?

[minoanmiss]

Whereas I think this is information Coworker was in the right to make sure she'd have, both in general (knowing who swiped right on her) and about the Friend if they popped up. Especially considering that women get blamed no matter what we do so we might as well be forearmed with as much information as possible. Maybe nothing has happened between 2 years ago and now. Or maybe many small hard-to-grasp things have "happened" and Coworker could finally take this particular one to HR. Based on patterns of harassment I've seen over the years I know which way I'd bet.

[melannen]

I mean, I'm not super experienced with dating apps, but it seems like if you're on a dating app you are explicitly inviting people to swipe right on you, and that's just part of the deal. It's a really different context from bothering someone at work.

Like this is not a dude pressuring her in any way; this is a guy saying well, she's stating to all and sundry she's interested in dating right now when maybe she wasn't before, I'll tell the algorithm I'm still interested and if she's still not, she will never even know I did anything. That's the point of the swipe system, signaling zero pressure interest that nobody even finds out about if it's not mutual.

If there's more to this than just what's in the letter and there's been an ongoing pattern of advances and/or harassment, sure, this would be completely justified and she'd have good reason to track swipes, this whole story is third-hand and could be a lot worse. But based on what we've got, he did what you're supposed to do on a dating app, kept it there where it belonged and shouldn't bother her, and the only reason she even knew is she went looking for it deliberately.

[minoanmiss]

I have a hard time believing that the story we got is all there is to the story, and I think that once he hit on her at work he established a context where any other romantic attention should get flagged. By hitting on her at work he disqualified himself from the group of people allowed to swipe on her because for others it is the start of an interaction whereas he already had his romantic interaction with her and it ended in a no, so trying to revive it is part of an ongoing interaction that should not exist.

Basically, it's not the same for him to swipe right on her as it is for a random person who carries no baggage to do so.

And also... when I was becoming a teenager I was told that one of the reasons I should Guard My Chastity [tm] is that once I had sex with one boy I had no standing to turn any others down. I never thought that made sense, really, whether about sex or kisses or invitations or anything else in the realm of romance/sexuality.

[full_metal_ox]

And also... when I was becoming a teenager I was told that one of the reasons I should Guard My Chastity [tm] is that once I had sex with one boy I had no standing to turn any others down.

An attitude expressed by William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, towards Mary Fitton, whom he knocked up and refused to marry:

Then this advice, fair creature, take from me:
Let none pluck fruit, unless he pluck the tree;
For if with one, with thousands thou’lt turn whore;
Break ice in one place and it cracks the more.

[minoanmiss]

I wish she had gotten to kill him.

[full_metal_ox]

And ever notice how the icepick never seems to suffer defilement, no matter how many frozen ponds it cracks?

[minoanmiss]

Oh yes, yes I noticed.

[firecat]

If a dating app in non-premium mode only discloses your mutual swipe-rights, and the dating app in premium mode discloses all the swipe-rights you’ve received, then the dating app has two legitimate ways to use it.

I don’t understand why LW is using language suggesting the full-disclosure mode doesn’t count or is less legitimate or “how was my friend to know?” The dating apps I’ve been on have all prominently badged premium users, and it seems to me a good idea to look into whether premium users of an app get extra access to your information, before you go into the swipe-hypnosis mode LW describes.

I agree with AAM about whether it was appropriate to involve HR.

[conuly]

1. If this really is only two incidents, one from two years ago, then there's no reason to assume this won't all blow over.

2. However, wow, LW is too invested in Friend's problem. If Friend had wanted to write to an advice column about it, he could've done so himself.

[minoanmiss]

I did love everyone's dedication to maintaining the fiction that LW was just writing about a "friend's" situation, yeah.

[jack]

The AAM comments were surprisingly sympathetic to the swiper. I think that if it happened *as described* then they didn't do anything wrong and the response was an overreaction. But I think it's much more likely that the swiper had already at work given the coworker the idea they were still interested, and swiping on them was optimism not absent-mindedness, and coworker felt like they were following them about.

[minoanmiss]

One of the things I don't like about AAM is how sympathetic the commenters often are to sexual malfeasance. If I had a dollar for every wretched "he's not deliberately harasssing you he's just autistic" comment...

[likeaduck]

1. It's possible for a swipe-right to be innocent, not an infraction, and for it to be reasonable for a coworker to flag it to HR. Flagging it with HR and getting them to communicate that it's unwelcome is just communication and recordmaking, and if nothing else happens it shouldn't reflect badly on the swiper, and early recordmaking is helpful if more troubling things happen down the line.

2. Sure dating apps are location-based and you might see coworkers there, but also...if you are on your dating app at work...you know that? It actually makes it less likely you "absent-mindedly" swiped on a coworker without realising who it was?

[movingfinger]

I have never used a dating app, but anything involving a repetitive, small motor gesture is going to misfire occasionally.

[ethelmay]

I cannot resist a "nym checks out" here!