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watch your mouth
By heather | November 28, 2008
When I was little, any form of swearing was unacceptable. Use the word “crap” and you got a look, any greater offense earned a trip to your room. I started testing the curse word waters in college and no one slapped my hand, so I waded in a little deeper.
Now I work in an environment where the f-word is more common than “the”. Verb, noun, adjective, adverb – sometimes all in the same sentence.
I’m all for a little sprinkling of spicy words if the situation warrants it, but this often and it loses its punch. When you’re talking about your weekend and what you did with your kid, it really seems grating and unnecessary.
To tell me that you use swear words to put emphasis on important points is one thing…I get it, I do it too. But this is the equivalent of ending every sentence with an exclamation point. It also makes me think that you don’t really know what you’re talking about and you hope everyone is distracted by your rank and title.
I’ve often wondered – is the commercial world like this too? Does it depend on the industry? How high pressure the job is? What if you find swearing deeply offensive? (I don’t, but I pose the question out of curiousity.)
I don’t want to become immune to the effects, because then I drop curse words in front of the kids and next thing you know Alex is swearing at me in Target. But any requests to tone it down have been pre-empted by the “that’s just the way it is here” speech.
Discuss, damnit.
Topics: work | 2 Comments »
Tags: swearing at work
November 29th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Well, that’s the first time I’ve seen that word spelled in the bloggy land as damnit and not dammit.
I used to curse pretty heavily in college. I could make a sailor blush. Now I don’t see that it’s necessary. To hear someone peppering their sentences with cuss words just reduces my respect for them for the exact reasons you mention above. I’m not shocked at the onsey twosey words, but all the time? Please.
Vicki’s last blog post..A visual reminder
November 29th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Cursing makes me feel better, I try not to do it around the kids. But when I am in the car, very bad things come out of my mouth.