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Comment by readthenotes1 | Hacker News Reader

I used to rank the McDonald's in Toppongi hills Tokyo as having the best employees anywhere after I saw one run from one side of the little shop to the other when the French fry buzzer went off.

However, it got beat out by the McDonald's in Arkadelphia Arkansas, where the employee fast walked as quickly as hen could to take the order to the car waiting in the Drive-Thru, and then also fast walked back. Running of course would have been against OSHA and gotten hen in trouble so hen did the best hen could.

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Are you Swedish? Just wondering because I've never seen the gender neutral pronoun "hen" in English.

And here I thought it was about how actual hens walk.

"hen" is my go-to gender neutral 3rd person singular pronoun.

I realize that English speakers use "you" for both singular and plural, having retired "thee" and "thou", but the resulting ambiguity has led to the creation of a new word, "y'all", or sometimes prepending it with "all of" for clarity.

Using "they/them" in the singular will just lead us down the same path.

Why not short circuit it and just add the pronoun English speakers have needed forever?

How often is the gender of the pronouned person(s) relevant? In my experience, almost never.

Right now I am reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer for the first time and guess what, back in 1984 there are uses of “they” in a situation where gender of a hypothetical singular third person is irrelevant. It is not confusing in the slightest, compared to a completely new artificially created word.

As a writer, he can make sure that he crafts a situation so that they is unambiguous. I have tried using it in my personal life only to stumble on whether they is one or many.

That's why I settled on borrowing a word that has proven its mettle

(Edit: I used "he" here because William Gibson seemed to identify as a guy, but Gibson's gender is completely irrelevant to this.)

Til https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_(pronoun)

The run usually isnt because they care its because theyre scared of senpai and (bucho/shacho) big boss.

If the management is chill they arent gonna run.

I'm not sure what was going on in tokyo, but in arkadelphia it was simply that there are a huge number of people waiting for food and the employee did not want them to wait any longer than they had to.

I don't want to see employees running in the direction of hot fat, thanks.

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