Business Expert Says You Shouldn't Talk Sports at Work Because Women Can't Understand It
BBC - Chat about football or cricket in the workplace should be curtailed, a management body has warned.
Chartered Management Institute head Ann Francke said sports banter can exclude women and lead to laddish behaviour such as chat about sexual conquests.
"A lot of women, in particular, feel left out," she told the BBC's Today programme.
"They don't follow those sports and they don't like either being forced to talk about them or not being included," ... she added, arguing bosses should crack down on sports banter.
Ms Francke is concerned that discussing football and, for example, the merits of video assistant refereeing (VAR) can disproportionately exclude women and divide offices.
"It's a gateway to more laddish behaviour and - if it just goes unchecked - it's a signal of a more laddish culture," she said
"It's very easy for it to escalate from VAR talk and chat to slapping each other on the back and talking about their conquests at the weekend."
Before we begin, let me take a stab at translating this from British into plain American:
Businesses need to put a stop to men talking about (real) football and baseball in the workplace because it discriminates against women because they don't know anything about it. Allowing male employees to talk sports will ultimately lead to more instances of them behaving like actual males. Any time you talk about about, say, the new rules for challenging pass interference calls, the females feel left out because they can't understand, making them easily confused and frightened. If you allow men to freely discuss things like replay challenges, inevitably they will begin bro-ing out so hard that it will be impossible to stop all the bro-ing. And in no time they will be talking about how they got laid last weekend. Women's brains are a 1/3 the size of a man's.
It's science.
I don't speak fluent UK. But between my knowledge of Monty Python, Harry Potter and Doctor Who, I think I was able to capture the general gist of what Anne Francke is trying to say.
Besides, deranged, virtue-signalling, gender-baiting, grievance-obsessed, easily offended, shrill social justice monkeys who get paid massive amounts of money for this bullshit speak a universal language. And invariably it's the language of those who have no idea humans interact or how the world actually works.
Simply put, who the fuck is this spinster to say women can't talk sports? Or men can't talk about, say, "The Bachelor"? And how long do you think a male business consultant would last if he made a blanket statement about 50% of the population like that? To measure the rest of his career, you'd need the clock they use to time particle reactions in the Hadron Collider.
I don't work from Barstool HQ, but imagine me telling Liz I won't mention the Packers because I want to be fair to her. Or tell everyone not to bring up Texas A&M football around Kayce because her delicate constitution can't handle all our knowledge. So let's all make sure we keep the conversation to shoes and Hallmark movies to be fair to the gals. Hell, if someone said they can't talk figure skating around me because I can't possibly understand all the subtle nuance of the great sport, I'd sue Barstool for gender discrimination.
Just imagine the towering, know-it-all arrogance of trying to tell employees in (allegedly) a free society than in their down time, they can't talk about patently inoffensive, non-controversial things because you assume half the office won't be able to follow their private conversation. Here's an idea I think might just work: If two people at your job are talking about something you're not interested in, tune them out. It's crazy, but just crazy enough to work. But I guess an idea like that is so 2019.