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Comment by notpc | Hacker News Reader

When meeting with clients or other teams in a big organization, it's obviously discouraged.

When speaking with colleagues, it's discouraged only when there's people who are trigger-happy about complaining to HR. Fairly or not, women in particular have a reputation of running to HR when someone says something offensive or crude, which leads to them being excluded from office banter, which leads to them feeling left out of the group. Tough problem to solve.

It makes sense really. You let the profanity flow when you feel that you can trust people. You're also most honest when you feel that you can trust people.

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It reminds me of the famous article by Joel Spolsky about his first Bill Gates review [1]

>In my BillG review meeting, the whole reporting hierarchy was there, along with their cousins, sisters, and aunts, and a person who came along from my team whose whole job during the meeting was to keep an accurate count of how many times Bill said the F word. The lower the f*-count, the better.

Was Gates the only one allowed to swear?

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...

God bless Bill. I've also heard great stories of chairs being thrown (not at people, of course) in high-level Microsoft meetings. Can you imagine him getting away with it today though? Someone would have tried to sue him for creating a "hostile workplace" or something like that.

We're getting too soft these days.

If I have to consider what I'm saying. Then I'm considering what I'm saying and I have a opportunity to spin it or outright lie. Straight off the cuff I can speak faster but don't have that chance.

I was raised in a home that didn't allow any swearing, swearing just really isn't in my active vocabulary.

I totally swear when I stub my toe, when I forget something and I'm half way to work, but I never feel need the need to interject swears into common sentences.

People comment that I don't swear often -- usually uncomfortably checking if I'm against it-- I'm not, I work in finance where there is a lot of swearing done and don't mind. Its just not part of the vocab I use.

Interesting twist for me is that now that the kids are all grown up my mother swears and said she swore a lot before kids but 'gave it up' to make the rule real. Totally hard for my brain to handle.

> Fairly or not, women in particular have a reputation of running to HR when someone says something offensive or crude, which leads to them being excluded from office banter, which leads to them feeling left out of the group. Tough problem to solve.

Actually, it seems really easy to solve: Stop cursing so much at work and stop excluding women from your conversations. If you can't see the value of inclusiveness over cursing, you're the problem in the situation.

If I don't like how _you_ talk does it mean you are excluding me from your conversation?

Slippery slope. What if I don't like the topics you bring up?

This is not a slippery slope. All I'm saying is that you should prioritize making people feel included over using whatever vulgar language you want in the workplace. Do you disagree with that?

Friendship is not fair. Friendship is freely given and freely withheld. Who you choose for your social circle, and why you choose them, is unassailable.

Also, it's not a purely gender thing. My mother, of hispanic upbringing, finds that she cannot banter the same way around American-raised women as she can with other hispanic women. It turns out that getting easily offended and trying to ruin people's careers over it is not innate to women, but has for some reason arisen out of American culture and also afflicts many men.

Sorry, but aren't you changing the subject? You've leapt from coworkers to friends, which is a completely different social situation.

It's not really. Coworkers engaging in banter is friendship. But yes, there's no doubt that friendships between coworkers affect how things get done. That's just the human condition. If you want to change that, you'd have to run your office like a Stalinist dictatorship, and that would be terrible for getting things done. Which is, you know, the whole purpose of a team.

The situation is different, in that you don't necessarily have the right to choose your coworkers or teammates as you would your friends.

And no, I'm not promoting a Stalinist regime by suggesting that people be considerate of the feelings of others.

As an aside, and probably why I replied in the first place, is that I feel people are just too extreme nowadays. Everything is offensive to everybody, including getting offended of others being offended. People can't swear freely without eventually offending somebody, but people can't object to offense without being belittled. The extreme component of this is that nobody has chosen to pick their battles, instead further entrenching themselves in an ideology of moot points rather than a focus towards conflict resolution. I feel many of the comments in here are representative of this.

I'm hopeful that people realize that there's a middle ground to all of this, but folks on both sides don't seem to care.

Sorry for my rant.

Workplaces are supposed to be inclusive environments. It's fine if your mother talks in a way that American-raised women don't like (whatever that means) with her friends. It's not fine if she does that in an office setting.

I'm not saying you need be friends with everyone. I'm saying part of your job is helping ensure everyone on your team feels included and feels like they fit in. I'm not suggesting this will always be possible for every last person, but it's hardly the tough problem you seem to think it is. Read people around you and be empathetic and accommodating. That's it.

I should also say your talk about women ruining careers by going to HR is ridiculous, but it's so ridiculous that I don't feel it needs further addressing. I've been in the industry a long time and I've never heard of anyone filing a complaint with HR outside of clear instances of sexual harassment.

I love that instead of arguing that women don't do that, you argue that they do and it's OK. Wow. Glad I don't work in an American office.

I didn't argue women do that. I've never encountered a woman who has done that.

People can be made uncomfortable though by vulgar language. It shouldn't be used in an office setting to the point that it's making other people uncomfortable. Read those around you and try to be accommodating. This is basic stuff.

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