Nearly An Argument

 Ailz was saying that when she was working in offices in the 1970s things went on that would now be interpreted as harassment but really weren't; a boss would lean over you, put a hand on your shoulder, help himself to a drag on your ciggie- and the guy she was particularly thinking about had been a tail gunner in Bomber Command and didn't know any better. An overfriendly boss, she said, was better than an officious one because you could give the overfriendly one an elbow in the ribs and he'd take it in good part.  And I was taking a hard line and saying sexual bullying is and always has been wrong. It was in danger of becoming an argument but we didn't want that so we left the past to stew in its own juice and agreed that whether morality is relative to time and place or Platonically absolute there's no doubt that powerful men taking advantage of their juniors is wrong now. We then went on to consider non-sexual bullying and agreed that that was wrong too but that it was going to be a while before behaving like Gordon Ramsey was considered completely unacceptable- and society still has a lot of growing up to do.