have you ever been given a warning or suspension for using profane language at work?
profane language is the word 'fuck'.
this is not yelling 'fuck' at the top of your lungs, but more like 'aah, fuck', meaning why do things have to be this complicated? or, why didn't coworker X did his job as he was supposed to? Why is this documentation not in order?
Have you ever been fired over this? reprimanded at work?
I use 'fuck' a lot, not to intimidate anyone, but each time something bothers me, I could as well use 'come on!!' but 'fuck' comes to me more naturally.
If I get a written warning, is this a reason good enough to start looking for employment elsewhere?
To those of you not in America. Is it different where you are?
I once got fired for changing the title of my personal homepage of our ticketing software to "Fuck this fucking shithole". Bosses found out when they cloned my account for testing while I was on vacation.
In their defense, it was pretty stupid of me to do that. In my defense, fuck that fucking shithole.
If you've been told once and your job hangs in the balance, then perhaps that's a sign of needlessly strict management, but if I just got a stern "please don't swear in front of the public" I'd just stop swearing.
I got fired from a print shop job for saying "fuck you" back to the boss after he screamed it at me (and a dozen other people). Fuck him, though. Shop was completely closed 3 months later due to boss man's ineptitude.
Otherwise, I swear like a fuckin' sailor and never even got chewed out.
It's a story about power dynamic, and sexual tension in the workplace. When a boss gets frustrated and yells fuck you at a room of employees, one man has the balls to yell fuck you back at him! Then.....they start to passionately kiss. Just two straight men, getting caught up in the heat of the moment in a print shop break room.
Suddenly 30 employees were making out with each other. Clothes were coming off, and the man that started it all was now taking his boss from behind and making him his bitch!
If someone doesn’t understand the difference between swearing at and swearing around, that’s a shitty environment. If I say, “that was a shitty fucking outage” I am using some filler for emphasis so my mouth can catch up to my brain. If I say “you’re a fucking asshole” or “don’t be such a bitch” or “that’s fucking sexy” I am not being professional and I deserve some training on how to not be an ignorant walnut. Even with swearing around, I do think it’s smart to limit yourself to damnation, defecation, and simple fornication rather than gendered swears. There are also some places it’s not wise to swear around, such as client-facing roles because many of the people you will see don’t understand that swearing around is not swearing at.
I once lost a job after the onsite interview. I wait to swear until I I hear them swear. Apparently my use of “fuck” meant I was going to blow up and be a terrible person to my peers. Two years later I started running a department doing the thing I was interviewing for and my staff tends to be fiercely loyal. I’d argue my swearing speaks for itself and have shaped my professional attitude toward swearing around around this experience.
I work in tech and I’m quick to police my language if necessary. I’m also concerned about relative comfort (eg I try really hard not to blaspheme around some Christian peers). I do not swear at people. I do not work in a super corporate environment. YMMV.
I like study (you can find the full article online) and I think there’s been more research down this path in the years since.
It's pretty common in Australia, so long as we're not swearing at people nobody gives a fuck. I'd say unless your manager has mentioned it to you, it's not a huge deal.
Work in Germany, both in some retail jobs as a student, as well as as a dev, sometimes in rather 'fancy' office environments. No one ever cared, though I only ever cursed about a situation, never a person.
And it's funny you ask about outside the US because the way I learned this was our head of finance in Germany was visiting and as I passed the office where he was I heard him talking and it was just fucking this, fucking that, fuck so many times just in the time it took me to pass the office.
Now should you be cussing out customers? No, of course not. But no one in my office bats an eye and we often hear "what the fuck, Microsoft?!" when something doesn't work.
Work in software project management. People swear pretty regularly. The higher up in the hierarchy you go, the more they swear. If a job gave me a warning for that I might leave because they treat their employees like children.
At my company, they used to be a lot more tolerant of it, but we had exactly one person complain about excessive use of coarse language and then HR cracked the whip. They still don't really care that much about using swear words when just interacting in person with other people, as long as it's not bothering anybody else, but they heavily police our work chat to make sure that all of our messages are above the board in terms of professional conduct. Which makes sense, I can't really argue against the logic that the work chat should be a professional setting where you can communicate your thoughts and feelings without having to resort to using profanity. Sometimes people have to be reminded to not use profane language, but they never call anybody out specifically, they just send out "reminder" messages whenever they see it and usually the person who is responsible knows not to keep it up or else there will be a more direct reprimand.
It would be hard for me to not sometimes utter "fuck" under my breath while I'm at work, but if my bosses were concerned about it, I would just start channeling that into more work-appropriate language.
I've had one boss comment on it, but that job was weird. They also only hired white people at that office and a secretary on another floor tried to get me fired because she thought I was gay.
Generally...keep it away from customers and don't be aggressive. Other than that it probably isn't a good habit, but I doubt anyone would normally care enough to say something about it.
First I was asked politely to not swear, even if I was not a customer facing employee.
Second time I was cautioned was because I'd switched to swearing in another language. Manager thought it was hilarious, but they still knew I was swearing.
I spent the next five years being increasingly creative with how I swore. A temporary (and loud) revert to English swearing when I was in a workplace accident was kindly ignored due to circumstance.
I've gotten a comment in my annual review, but I don't think it impacted by bottom line score. And tbf, I was swearing in front of clients, in an industry where a bit more professionalism is the norm.
-I got detention in high school after a teacher overheard a friend of mine asking me if we had homework and i said, "fuck if I know."
Worth it, lol.
-I got fussed at working in retail if they heard me swear but never officially written up
-at my first accounting job the controller screamed FUCK from inside her office once. Swearing was generally fine here
-current job i said "fuck yeah" in a meeting with no consequence. Swearing is generally fine so long as it's not within earshot of approximately 2 specific people.
I swear.. a lot. All the time.
I do attempt, at least, to be mindful of the when and where, which is working out for me so far.
I mask at work. At work I'm happy and helpful. I don't cuss. I don't get involved in drama. I don't cause problems. Keep my head down, punch that clock, make my money. That's the only reason I'm there.
I do my cussing at home. A place without judgement or guidelines to abide by.
Haha yes. Normally I don’t swear at work. After college my first job was as a women’s shoe salesmen at Macy’s. I’m a terrible salesman but whatever. Around one of the holidays I was closing and we had one or two callouts so I was all alone and we were slammed. I had one guy, I wonder if he was a company exec, wander by at one point and say to me that the area was embarrassing and I should be ashamed or something to that effect. But the all of the customers left I did my best but couldn’t clean up all of the shoes before the store closed. I left a note that said sorry for the clusterfuck on the register. Well the store manager had to open I think because of a callout again and saw the note. I got a minor reprimand, and she said she was surprised to learn I was the one who wrote the note heh. Ended up getting fired later, but that was because of my undiagnosed a at the time adhd and often being late