What's the point of your whistling story? Did he complain or throw something at your?

Sorry I guess I didn't finish it off, he just complained to me about it. This kind of thing is happening to everybody though. Complaints about this, complaints about that.

I'm still not seeing an issue. You throw out the term "social justice warrior" but then your illustration is about asking you not to whistle. Was the new coworker rude about asking you not to whistle or did he or she simply ask you to try to avoid doing something that you acknowledge would be annoying?

How do you think your manager will respond if you tell them, "when I whistle out loud it bothers another person, can you tell them to just put up with it?"

Was he polite when he asked you to stop whistling? If this is your only example, I think you've got to come up with something better. Asking someone to stop whistling should not be upsetting.

When I saw the title "A new employee has upset the team/office atmosphere", I remembered a time years ago (90s tech boom, hiring anyone, pulse optional) when there was briefly someone who might or might not have been diagnosibly paranoid schizophrenic on our team. Instead, this person is "upsetting the team/office atmosphere" by... asking you not to whistle out loud? Really?

@JoeStrazzere Yeah I can see how it is annoying to him that someone is whistling and all that. However I don't see how the OP can complain that he didn't like something he was doing that he knew was annoying?

I agree with ColleenV, when OP labeled the new employee as a "social justice warrior" I was curious because people who are often labeled this are those that speak out loudly about topics other people might not be comfortable with and are stereo-typically intensely opinionated. However the whistling story fell short as an example of how they have "upset the office atmosphere". Are there more concrete examples of their annoying/argumentative behavior?

I need more examples. Otherwise I'm going to assume that when you say "social justice warrior" what you really mean is your office "culture" includes being openly sexist and / or racist and he took issue with that. We had a guy who came into our (very much led by our boss at the time) sexist / racist office culture and disrupted it... and it led to a lot of people eventually admitting that they never felt comfortable with the "culture" to begin with and were glad someone was finally calling it out.

@AndrewWhatever "social justice warrior" is pejorative in common usage in my part of the world, and it tends to get used for people who are generally intolerant and complain incessantly and aggressively about first world problems. It's entirely possible that the company culture is bad, but I think saying its "racist/sexist" because the OP used SJW to describe someone is a huge leap. Regardless, the question is about how to manage the conflict, not necessarily whether the complaints are justified (they probably are justified, but were delivered poorly).

It's a pejorative in all parts of America as far as I know. The problem is, it's an undue pejorative generally used by Conservatives to attack people they think are being too Liberal "PC", and in most cases this just means people who take issue with racism and sexism and speak up about it. When I see someone say "social justice warrior" it says more about them than the person they are saying it about.

To clarify further, whatever you think about the state of "PC" culture in America, in a professional workplace yes, you do actually have to be fairly "PC". The kind of things you can say around a group of like-minded friends are not the kind of things you can say in a diverse workplace where all employees are supposed to have a safe and comfortable place to come and do their jobs. So someone essentially complaining that an employee expects a workplace to be "PC" (which is what complaining about "social justice warriors" usually means) doesn't get much sympathy from me.

@AndrewWhatever I was just trying to point out what I saw as a failure of communication. You heard "person who campaigns agaisnts isms" while what I think the OP meant was "complains a lot about trivial things". I'm not a fan of labels, especially pejoratives like Liberals and Conservatives, because I think it is a way to dehumanize people you disagree with, so I might have said it differently if it were my question.

That's why I want examples of what this person means. The only one given, whistling, is innocuous and doesn't really meet any definition of social justice warrior anywhere. I'm wondering what type of "SJW" behavior the OP perceives this individual has.

@AndrewWhatever Take a closer look at the question. It seems like this person gets himself involved in other people's conversations just to cause an argument.

That's not a concrete example that is an observation by the OP about what it "seems" like, the same OP who uses terms like "social justice warrior" as an insult. I question the OPs bias and merely asked for more specific details.

@AndrewWhatever What does that have to do with the question? The OP is asking how to deal with someone who has disrupted the team, not whether he's justified in calling that person names. Obviously he thought SJW would communicate something about the disruption the person causes (being argumentative). I agree it was a poor choice of words, if only because it derailed us into this discussion. All examples do is detract from the issue by folks arguing whether that one particular instance was justified while ignoring the larger problem.

Because if, as I suspect is the case, his "disrupting the teams" means the person is calling them out on sexist / racist / etc. behavior which has been allowed to go on in this office culture (the natural conclusion when someone is calling someone a "social justice warrior", a term that literally applies to taking on social justice issues) (and I highly doubt this word choice was an accident), then the answers should reflect that. Why do you object so much to me asking for examples to clarify?

@ColleenV People who use terms like "Social Justice Warriors" are generally narrow minded people who have issues with diversity of lifestyles, genders, and races. It says so much more about the person using it than it does about the person it slurs. Generally by anyone not very right wing its considered a badge of honor to be called one.

@ColleenV "I was just trying to point out..." That's not "just" what you were trying to do. You were trying to re-characterize the targets of the pejorative from behind the shield of Well, in my part of the world... and excuse those who use the term pejoratively.