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Dear Abby: Concern or Stalking
DEAR ABBY: I'm a retired man who took a community college class. My lab partner was a young woman who was having difficulties attending the class. She wasn't there for the final exam, and I wondered if she had dropped the course. I did not have her phone number or her email address, but she had mentioned she worked at a nearby bank, so I went to visit her there. We talked for a few minutes and she told me she had actually done quite well in the class.
When I told my wife and daughter about it, they were shocked. They said what I did was inappropriate because of the age difference and she could have gotten into trouble at her job. Abby, they almost accused me of stalking her.
I don't understand why they considered this inappropriate. Is there a social rule that makes my behavior incorrect? I find it hard to believe someone would get into trouble for talking to a person in the bank at any age. Gender should not be a concern. I would have done the same thing had she been a man my own age. -- AM I MISSING SOMETHING?
DEAR AM I: You appear to be a very nice person. What you are "missing" is the fact that your wife is insecure, and your daughter backed her mother up. You did nothing wrong.
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Yeah, no. For anyone to show up at a person's job just because they're "concerned" is borderline at best. For a man (particularly an older man) to show up at a young woman's place of employment is both inappropriate in terms of her professional standing (yes, she could have gotten in trouble, although I would hope supervisors would not blame her) and not a little creepy. Maybe she didn't mind, but another woman might have minded very, very much, and felt more than a little vulnerable to this demonstration that this man would take casual chit-chat and use it to track her down.
The wife and daughter were not being insecure. They were trying to give him a woman's perspective on his behavior.
You really dropped the ball on this.
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I respect that you feel vehement about this but it would honestly not even remotely occur to me that a lab partner - someone I spent quite a bit of time talking to - dropped by a BANK (that is, a public interaction job) that I had specifically mentioned to him I worked at would be even a little bit threatening. It's something that's actually totally normal for me. It's something people where I grew up do on a regular basis. As long as it wasn't Super Busy, not only would supervisors (again, at a bank, a place with continual front of house interaction with the public) not give her shit, they'd likely give five or ten minutes outright.
If I HADN'T told him where I worked, that would be different; if he were just Some Dude in my class it would also be different. But a lab partner showing up where I'd openly revealed I worked just to say Hi seems totally normal and friendly to me, and if I were legitimately having had trouble with attendance, ABSENT actual danger signs from him, I'd think it was kind of sweet.
So while I respect that both you and his female relatives feel the way you do, please do not claim for the Whole Gender on this one.
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If she hadn't mentioned it and he tracked her down, or if it was out of the way and he turned up, or if he keeps going back to see her, then, yes, all the warning flags flying.
I'm more concerned about Abby's dismissal of the wife and daughter as 'insecure' than I am about the guy's behaviour at this point in time, given the information we have.
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- they weren't lab partners/hadn't spent a similar amount of time working in tandem (like a major project, or something)
- she hadn't mentioned where she worked
- it weren't a bank, which is a public-facing person-off-the-street-interaction job - like if she worked in an office-building or at a school or something else not-at-all public.
But with the details as is, this is the kind of thing people of both genders where I grew up and several of the places I lived would do as a sort of matter of course. I have literally done similar things in similar situations, and have literally had people (of both genders) check in on me similarly. Just an "oh hey I know where X might be part of public life, I'll just drop in quick and make sure nothing horrible happened." *palms up shrug*
In the social model I grew up in, the kind of interaction and cooperative work implied in lab partners creates enough of a social bond that casual but deliberate contact in public spaces outside of class is totally normal, and again bar it being Busy a supervisor at the bank (or restaurant, or cafe, or grocery store, or whatever) would consider five minutes to catch up a non-issue.
So for me, absent any other warning signs at all, the immediate jump to "this is SO WARNING SIGNAL BEHAVIOUR" feels very odd. I respect that others may feel that way! But it's really weird to me.
Tho yes, dismissing the women in his life as "insecure" DOES very much parse as . . . .off, to me, because it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the issue. Maybe she felt the word "paranoid" was too harsh, or "worry about this too much" had too many words? But insecure feels weirdly like somehow she's trying to imply they're jealous? And that's weird, in an uncomfortable way.
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The fact that both the wife and daughter reacted so strongly is the only thing in the story that does strike me as worrying, since they might have heard details of the encounter that weren't in the letter.
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So that is the context I brought.
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