Quite a long time, five seconds, when you count it. And ever since Netflix reportedly warned its employees not to stare at a colleague for longer than that, the paradoxical effect is, inevitably, to make you stare and count.
The company’s new guideline is, of course, all part of corporate America’s response to the #MeToo scandal and if the Netflix directive is anything to go by, it’s going to result in the human race dying out in the US, because no one will be able to make a pass at anyone else, ever. It’s not that the individual prohibitions are onerous or particularly unreasonable; it’s that the collective effect can only be to make men – because it’s not aimed at women, is it? – take flight from anything pertaining to flirtation with the opposite sex.
Under the new advice to production staff delivered at a “harassment meeting”, it seems you should shout “stop, don’t do that again!” if a colleague has been “inappropriate” (I couldn’t bring myself to shout when I was actually assaulted on the way home from work, when I was younger); you mustn’t ask for someone’s number unless they have given permission for it to be distributed; touching colleagues for lengthy periods of time is forbidden; and you must report unwanted behaviour immediately.
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