Swearing at Work is Bleeping Good For You

coondoggie writes "This is the kind of news that your HR folks don't want to hear, but researchers today said letting workers swear at will in the workplace can benefit employees and employers. The study found regular use of profanity to express and reinforce solidarity among staff, enabling them to express their feelings, such as frustration, and develop social relationships, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UES). Researchers said their aim was to challenge leadership styles and suggest ideas for best practice. "Employees use swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative, abusive manner. Swearing was as a social phenomenon to reflect solidarity and enhance group cohesiveness, or as a psychological phenomenon to release stress, " the study stated." I'm sure the discussion and tags on this story will be completely G Rated ;)

Comments

It is called open communication

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, people can communicate withought swearing. But this limits 'how' you communicate.

Limiting vocabulary impeads what you are really trying to say.

I can appreciate that some people are offended by some words. That doesn't always mean that the words are inappropriate.

Re:It is called open communication

[Danny Rathjens]

If you are not adult enough to brush off those who are so immature that they get offended you need to go back to high school and toughen up a bit.

I don't get offended by people cursing in professional settings. It simply lowers my opinion of them. If you aren't adult enough to control yourself then perhaps *you* should go back to high school and finish maturing. ;)

As for cursing in the workplace, I think it hurts the atmosphere. It may make the guy who just got off the phone with a dumb customer feel better to vent, but the dozen people who had to listen to his vehemence have all just had their days worsened a bit and everyone is a bit more on edge. We're human; harsh words and conflict make us feel bad. It's a simple formula. There is not much we can do about that.

That being said, people experiencing bad things together often bond together. I think that is the effect the study is showing.
I prefer having nice quiet, productive days much more than having my annoying primate instincts triggered by making me feel bad so I'll bond with people that aren't my friends.

Re:It is called open communication

[kklein]

I agree wholeheartedly. Profanity is a way for the speaker to let off steam. There is no semantic content to "fuck" when used as an expletive; it is just emphatic.

I used to work in tech support (for Apple, during the switch to PPC--not a fun time for that company), and the rule was that if the customer swore, we were allowed to terminate the call. I always hated that, because most reps just used that as an excuse to get rid of annoying customer service problems. But the thing is that if you disconnect someone while they're venting, they are just going to get angrier and call back. It makes the problem worse.

After noticing this trend, I stopped disconnecting customers who were screaming. As long as they weren't personally abusive to me (they almost never were--they were angry at the computer, angry at the company, angry at themselves for not backing up, angry at life, angry at a really shitty day--almost never were they angry at the person on the other end of the line), I let them just go. Just let them get it all out. I took notes whenever something emerged that was actually useful information, but mostly they just wanted to vent. And who doesn't???

I found that if you let people do this for about 2 minutes, and let them know that you empathized, as a fellow human being, with what they were going through, they would calm down and just be the easiest people to deal with all day. They felt relaxed. They felt like someone who could help them actually listened to them. They were also incredibly polite after that because they knew that the person listening had done them the human kindness of listening, when most people would have just hung up, and that they could not really be angry at them.

Profanity is very rarely about the listener; it's about the speaker. Sure, we could all walk around quantifying and qualifying our exact feelings in measured, calculated, meaningful lexical choices, but when we want to use profanity is when the idea is not really worth encoding, but we feel a need to express the emotion nonetheless. This is profanity's role in the English language, and most other languages have analogues.

People who are offended by profanity are weak, small, scheming people, IMO. They don't want to be around anyone who expresses their feelings, because feelings and human interaction embarrass them. As a general rule, I don't trust people who do not swear. They are obviously controlling their output, hiding their feelings. What else are they hiding? When I think back on the people who have been loyal coworkers who treated people with respect and fairness, they are the swearers. I have never been backstabbed by a swearer. It's always, in my experience, the people who don't. Swearing in front of someone is saying "I consider you close enough to expose this part of me." Refraining from doing so says, "You and I are wholly unrelated. You will act upon the information I impart." Granted, it's not like non-swearers are bad people. It's just that I am much more careful in dealing with them.

(Full disclosure: I swear like a motherfucker, so I may be a bit biased.)

maybe initially

[Floritard]

Wouldn't it lose it's luster if everyone were swearing all the time? I'm all for the unrestricted use of language everywhere, I think it's childish not to be, but wouldn't any positive side effects be related to the fact that being allowed to swear at work is unusual and kind of a privilege? Of course, once everyone got completely used to swearing, we'd all be better off anyway IMH fucking O.

Re:Well, duh.

[sacherjj]

Actually, I'm finally at a work place where the IT department isn't F this and GD that. Frankly, I like it. You emulate those that you are around the most. I actually enjoy an environment that doesn't reward those talking like a salty sailor.

Uh no.

[SatanicPuppy]

I'm sorry you got that from my comment.

My only problem with working with females is in this particular context; if I say something off the cuff, in frustration, they'll view it as more significant than a guy would.

This is because they are, in many ways, better at communication than a guy would be, and more sensitive to nuance.

So you've got to watch what you say, because they pay attention, and they'll think about it more. A guy just hears, "wawawawa" noises contexted with a tone of voice. A female will hear what you actually say, and then think about it, then try to reconcile it with your subsequent and prior actions.

This is just a generalization. Lots of guys behave in what I'm representing as the "female" mode, and there are a lot of women who pay as little or less attention to what you're saying as a guy would.

Re:odd...I know people who got fired..

[Chrisje]

In Soviet Russia, vulgarities fire you!

Seriously, how is this news? I work for HP, and I've done nothing but swear with colleagues for the last 12 years. Not necessarily inside meetings, but sometimes definitely with customers on projects and whatnot.

I mean when you're in a data center and someone overwrites a production LUN to an Oracle Server because he took the wrong hardware path for his ignite restore, the customer won't say "Oh golly, that was rather unlucky, mate!" Shit no, we' be Fuck this and Fuck that. Or in sweden Jävla Faaaan! Hörrudu va'görru nu din dumma skit!. This is a completely normal thing if the shit hits the fan and the relationship is solid.

Most companies know this. Unless you're caught in an eternal re-run of Office Space.

It depends on HOW they use profanity...

[javabandit]

I know people who got fired for profanity, as well. In fact, I fired one myself. But the context of the profanity was the problem and not the profanity.

In the case of the guy I fired, it was during a post-mortem review for a project. Probably 15 people in the room. He said, "I'd rather lick a dirty asshole than have to look at code." Five minutes after the meeting, the guy was fired. Although, I'd have fired him if he said, "I'd rather lick a dirty anus..."

When people create a hostile work environment through their words, they should be axed. But I don't think profanity itself is the issue.

The issue is that *a lot of times* profanity is used in conjunction with verbally creating a hostile work environment.

Re:My favorite General Patton Quote

[vertinox]

When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. ... As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence. -General George Smith Patton, Jr.

Re:Call me sad but..

[Dexx]

The way I look at it is that if you swear all the time, what do you say in those situations where you really need to let loose?

Re:As my pappy says...

[paeanblack]

Profanity is the linguistic crutch of a fucking ignoramus.

Profanity is simply a communications tool used to convey emotion directly instead of relying upon the receiver to interpret the words in the appropriate context. They are analogous to smileys used in email and chat; they're an extra communications channel.

Profanity is not antisocial. The overuse of profanity is antisocial. One can use the word "fifteen" as many times as necessary without diminishing its utility. Fifteen will still equal 15, no matter how many times you say it. On the other hand, the value of the word "fuck" lies in its emotional content. Every time that word is used, that content gets diluted for both the sender and receiver. When overused, the word becomes meaningless.

Profanity is simply another linguistic tool, and not using all the tools at one's disposal to communicate concisely and precisely is foolish. However, some tools dull faster than others, and the waste of perfectly good profanity through overuse and misuse is naturally offensive.