6 ms·

This Generation Is Most Likely to Swear at Work

42 points by BWStearns 10y ago

otterley 10y ago
Moderators: can you please update click bait title?
vmarsy 10y ago
Comment about the form rather than the content: It's an interesting choices of colors for the chart. Women are in Blue on the left and Men in Pink on the right. Because of stereotypes and the fact that I didn't pay attention to the legend, I read all the charts the wrong way the first time.
- dietcokke 10y ago
  I'm also slightly confused by the first graph. If I'm reading it correctly (and I could be completely wrong, so somebody please correct me), it seems like both the men and women's percentage add up to over 100%. So unless some people gave multiple answers, there's something not quite right in the representation of the data.
- mamon 10y ago
  I can't recall where I read that but back in the days blue was considered girl's color (because it is the color of some delicate flowers, not to mention sky), and pink was considered boy's (because it's vauge resemblance of blood, preferably of his enemies slain in battle).
askafriend 10y ago
Fuck everyone, I just want to ship product.
- buckbova 10y ago
  Then get back to work and stop dicking around on HN.
  - askafriend 10y ago
    That is a good fucking point, thank you for the reminder :)
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  Take it to ao3.
roryrjb 10y ago
No shit.
STRiDEX 10y ago
Replacing millennials with snake people is especially funny in this article. I wonder if millennials are more likely to replace words with other words using browser plugins.
- serge2k 10y ago
  > especially funny in this article. So it's marginally funny at best? on topic: I swear occasionally, not that often, in conversations with people. I mutter swear words under my breath at my computer in a constant stream some days.
  - STRiDEX 10y ago
    > marginally funny Yeah, my bar is pretty low for this.
minimaxir 10y ago
Misleading headline: the article reports only analyze the responses by millennials; it do not compare them to older demographics, or to changes over time. (Unsure if this is the case with the original survey, which Bloomberg does not link to.) EDIT: The article seems to more accurately argue "This Generation Has A 50/50 Probability of Swearing at Work."
Clubber 10y ago
I'm late GenX. I used to swear like a sailor at work (and everywhere really) until I had a kid and I actively had to mitigate the use of my preferred expletives. A lot of fricks and dangs these days. My favorite? "Poop on a stick."
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  I learned about "get your poop in a group" from a coworker who works with children.
  - Clubber 10y ago
    That's a good one, I'll have to remember to add it to my repertoire.
imgabe 10y ago
Whenever I see these "this generation does such-and-such" article, I have to wonder if it's really a generational thing or just an age thing. Do 20-something millenials really swear more than 20-something Gen-Xers or 20-something baby boomers did? I think probably not, but maybe people just tend to swear less as they get older.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  A lot is age, though an underappreciated element I've noticed is economic climate. Boomers, relative to other generations, had everything on a platter. GenX started relatively strong, but with some stumbles. Early millennials walked straight into the dot-com crash, then early 2000s boom. Late millennials came into a complete shitshow, SV and finance being about the only real exceptions. Having watched a bunch of early bloggers get really quiet, the FB generation oversharing strikes me as probably time-limited. About when the first wave of divorces starts, I figure.
Avshalom 10y ago
Has it ever been otherwise? I am sure when snake people have kids they'll be the most likely to swear and so on.
lightbyte 10y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I don't give two shits about swear words. They are the same as other words to me and have almost no negative connotation. I don't think twice about swearing at work, and neither do the other people my age (24) that I work with.
- mc32 10y ago
  I think it's about the attitude it fosters and enables. It enables and fosters 'bro' culture and 'bachellorette' culture. And that can lead to people thinking it's okay to refer to others as bitches and duchebags etc.
  - dmoy 10y ago
    There's a difference. I swear profusely at work, but never at people.
  - roflc0ptic 10y ago
    Careful with that slippery slope! I curse profusely and I think referring to people as bitches is 100% unacceptable. I think there's room for respectful swearing. Swear about ideas, don't swear about people.
    - mc32 10y ago
      I suppose. I do see the difference, but go into a sales meeting after the client leaves and tell me how they speak about the client. The expletives are directed at both animate and inanimate entities.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        You can insult and belittle people without swearwords, the two are just commonly used together, not necessarily related.
  - WallowC_33 10y ago
    At offices I worked where swears were "ok", where even the CEO or other upper management were dropping F-bombs, it was still against the "rules" to call a person a "fuckface". Generally expletives are/were ok when stuff like tests fail, deploys fail, etc.. Calling a person a "douchebag" or "shithead" was not OK. "We're building fucking cool shit!" -- OK "Our PM is a useless asshole. Fucking prick!" -- Not OK
santaclaus 10y ago
I dunno, the old French guy at our office swears like a sailor, most of the younger peeps are quite tame in comparison.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  In the grandest tradition of Anglophones, I have at times borrowed words like "merde", "schiesse", and "cào nǐ mā" (with atonal pronunciation) from other languages, whenever I'd like to express something in colorful metaphors without other people necessarily understanding it to be vulgar. So if I were you, I'd probably take notes. This might one day get me into trouble while traveling outside the US, which generally only knows English and Spanish.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    I hate to tell you, but Spanish speakers can probably understand "merde". It's fairly similar to their counterpart.
gh1 10y ago
There might be correlation between workplace stress and the amount of swearing. Health care coming out on top at 64 % closely followed by finance at 62 % suggests this pattern to me. This article doesn't make sense at times. It says young women are more likely to swear in the workplace and follows this up by saying millennial men are more comfortable with workplace swearing compared to millennial women (hypocrisy alert). They follow this up with a histogram that shows that men are more uncomfortable with workplace swearing. Huh?
some-guy 10y ago
I think it's important to also point out that this generation is also a little more sensitive about using derogatory / racist / sexist terms towards others that target specific groups and/or individuals. So you could say it's a wash -- some words (fuck, shit, etc) just don't have the same negative connotations anymore and are used very frequently even in professional settings, but other types of speech have become more taboo.
A3mercury 10y ago
I don't find value in cussing in any setting personally. I don't mind when others cuss, but I just don't really feel it necessarily when I speak. I find it ironic at my place of work.. we're told not to wear headphones working long term at a clients office, but my CEO has no problem cussing in a pitch meeting with a new client.
noonespecial 10y ago
“Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” ― C.S. Lewis If you swear infrequently (and get a reputation as such), you'll have something to say on those occasions where you really need everyone to stop and listen to you.
AcerbicZero 10y ago
I went from my second deployment, straight into the work world, and I brought along the vocabulary to prove it. To be fair I don't swear "at" people, only at technology, but I'm sure in some environments I'd need to clean it up a little.
josephv 10y ago
Click bait I'm not clicking on. Advice from an almost-millennial (born 1981) and someone that's hired and fired countless programmers: don't swear at work, it makes you sound stupid. Some days you will swear more than others because some days and situations fucking suck. Don't call people names regardless of your stance on swearing. Know the audience, all communication should be tailored to who is listening, you should know if the person(s) you are talking to will tolerate swearing or not. Swearing and using bad grammar or spelling are probably equal in many regards. Sometimes you can get away with it, but know who you are talking or typing to.
- freshflowers 10y ago
  I agree with the "know the audience" part. As in: much of your audience here isn't American, and you obviously are.
  - josephv 10y ago
    Well, I guess that's true. Given the site is an aggregator for a SF-based incubator I figured a reasonable enough number of people would be a American. I'm also not sure why my comments have anything to do with being an American. I think not swearing at work would be universally good advice. I guess if swearing at work is integral to your identity you may be offended by someone declaring that you shouldn't swear at work. But it's generally not a good idea if you're wanting to optimize your career progression.
strictnein 10y ago
Pretty sure my productivity level is measured in MCPM: Muttered Curses Per Minute. High productivity : low MCPM
optforfon 10y ago
At least when it comes to startups this makes total sense. Work is increasingly both your work and your life. Your friends are increasingly your colleagues. Traditionally you don't cuss in the work place b/c you have to stay professional - ie. you have to not be emotional about your work. Cussing is a form of injecting emotion into your speech. If you are at the office 12 hours a day with your friends, then the lines get blurred. Personally I don't like the trend, but to each his own. There are pluses and minuses to each type of workplace
oldmanjay 10y ago
They also seem mostly likely to complain about politics in a loud voice, using phrasing and concepts that indicate they have a surface understanding of the system at best. Also they think they invented the blowjob.
rhapsodic 10y ago
Years ago, I stopped using profanity at work, unless it's in private conversations with people I really trust and/or consider close personal friends. It's partly out of simple respect for my coworkers, but a big motivation is the personal risk involved. These days, there are more than a few people who will complain to HR about anything and everything that might offend them. And I simply don't want to be on the receiving end of any of those complaints. And what's ironic, is the people I'm referring to, at least in my company, are by and large millennials, who, according to the article, are big users of profanity in the workplace. I've had complaints lodged against me for simply speaking bluntly, well within my authority, and not using the "praise sandwich" when correcting someone who had totally screwed something up. Both times I was fully exonerated, I'm happy to say. But it might have gone a different way had I laced my blunt statements with profanity.

42 points by BWStearns 10y ago

Moderators: can you please update click bait title?

Comment about the form rather than the content: It's an interesting choices of colors for the chart. Women are in Blue on the left and Men in Pink on the right. Because of stereotypes and the fact that I didn't pay attention to the legend, I read all the charts the wrong way the first time.

dietcokke 10y ago
I'm also slightly confused by the first graph. If I'm reading it correctly (and I could be completely wrong, so somebody please correct me), it seems like both the men and women's percentage add up to over 100%. So unless some people gave multiple answers, there's something not quite right in the representation of the data.
mamon 10y ago
I can't recall where I read that but back in the days blue was considered girl's color (because it is the color of some delicate flowers, not to mention sky), and pink was considered boy's (because it's vauge resemblance of blood, preferably of his enemies slain in battle).

askafriend 10y ago

Fuck everyone, I just want to ship product.

buckbova 10y ago
Then get back to work and stop dicking around on HN.
- askafriend 10y ago
  That is a good fucking point, thank you for the reminder :)
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
Take it to ao3.

roryrjb 10y ago

No shit.

STRiDEX 10y ago

Replacing millennials with snake people is especially funny in this article. I wonder if millennials are more likely to replace words with other words using browser plugins.

serge2k 10y ago
> especially funny in this article. So it's marginally funny at best? on topic: I swear occasionally, not that often, in conversations with people. I mutter swear words under my breath at my computer in a constant stream some days.
- STRiDEX 10y ago
  > marginally funny Yeah, my bar is pretty low for this.

minimaxir 10y ago

Misleading headline: the article reports only analyze the responses by millennials; it do not compare them to older demographics, or to changes over time. (Unsure if this is the case with the original survey, which Bloomberg does not link to.) EDIT: The article seems to more accurately argue "This Generation Has A 50/50 Probability of Swearing at Work."

Clubber 10y ago

I'm late GenX. I used to swear like a sailor at work (and everywhere really) until I had a kid and I actively had to mitigate the use of my preferred expletives. A lot of fricks and dangs these days. My favorite? "Poop on a stick."

stinkytaco 10y ago
I learned about "get your poop in a group" from a coworker who works with children.
- Clubber 10y ago
  That's a good one, I'll have to remember to add it to my repertoire.

imgabe 10y ago

Whenever I see these "this generation does such-and-such" article, I have to wonder if it's really a generational thing or just an age thing. Do 20-something millenials really swear more than 20-something Gen-Xers or 20-something baby boomers did? I think probably not, but maybe people just tend to swear less as they get older.

dredmorbius 10y ago
A lot is age, though an underappreciated element I've noticed is economic climate. Boomers, relative to other generations, had everything on a platter. GenX started relatively strong, but with some stumbles. Early millennials walked straight into the dot-com crash, then early 2000s boom. Late millennials came into a complete shitshow, SV and finance being about the only real exceptions. Having watched a bunch of early bloggers get really quiet, the FB generation oversharing strikes me as probably time-limited. About when the first wave of divorces starts, I figure.

Avshalom 10y ago

Has it ever been otherwise? I am sure when snake people have kids they'll be the most likely to swear and so on.

lightbyte 10y ago

Maybe it's just me, but I don't give two shits about swear words. They are the same as other words to me and have almost no negative connotation. I don't think twice about swearing at work, and neither do the other people my age (24) that I work with.

mc32 10y ago
I think it's about the attitude it fosters and enables. It enables and fosters 'bro' culture and 'bachellorette' culture. And that can lead to people thinking it's okay to refer to others as bitches and duchebags etc.
- dmoy 10y ago
  There's a difference. I swear profusely at work, but never at people.
- roflc0ptic 10y ago
  Careful with that slippery slope! I curse profusely and I think referring to people as bitches is 100% unacceptable. I think there's room for respectful swearing. Swear about ideas, don't swear about people.
  - mc32 10y ago
    I suppose. I do see the difference, but go into a sales meeting after the client leaves and tell me how they speak about the client. The expletives are directed at both animate and inanimate entities.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      You can insult and belittle people without swearwords, the two are just commonly used together, not necessarily related.
- WallowC_33 10y ago
  At offices I worked where swears were "ok", where even the CEO or other upper management were dropping F-bombs, it was still against the "rules" to call a person a "fuckface". Generally expletives are/were ok when stuff like tests fail, deploys fail, etc.. Calling a person a "douchebag" or "shithead" was not OK. "We're building fucking cool shit!" -- OK "Our PM is a useless asshole. Fucking prick!" -- Not OK

santaclaus 10y ago

I dunno, the old French guy at our office swears like a sailor, most of the younger peeps are quite tame in comparison.

logfromblammo 10y ago
In the grandest tradition of Anglophones, I have at times borrowed words like "merde", "schiesse", and "cào nǐ mā" (with atonal pronunciation) from other languages, whenever I'd like to express something in colorful metaphors without other people necessarily understanding it to be vulgar. So if I were you, I'd probably take notes. This might one day get me into trouble while traveling outside the US, which generally only knows English and Spanish.
- icebraining 10y ago
  I hate to tell you, but Spanish speakers can probably understand "merde". It's fairly similar to their counterpart.

gh1 10y ago

There might be correlation between workplace stress and the amount of swearing. Health care coming out on top at 64 % closely followed by finance at 62 % suggests this pattern to me. This article doesn't make sense at times. It says young women are more likely to swear in the workplace and follows this up by saying millennial men are more comfortable with workplace swearing compared to millennial women (hypocrisy alert). They follow this up with a histogram that shows that men are more uncomfortable with workplace swearing. Huh?

some-guy 10y ago

I think it's important to also point out that this generation is also a little more sensitive about using derogatory / racist / sexist terms towards others that target specific groups and/or individuals. So you could say it's a wash -- some words (fuck, shit, etc) just don't have the same negative connotations anymore and are used very frequently even in professional settings, but other types of speech have become more taboo.

A3mercury 10y ago

I don't find value in cussing in any setting personally. I don't mind when others cuss, but I just don't really feel it necessarily when I speak. I find it ironic at my place of work.. we're told not to wear headphones working long term at a clients office, but my CEO has no problem cussing in a pitch meeting with a new client.

noonespecial 10y ago

“Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” ― C.S. Lewis If you swear infrequently (and get a reputation as such), you'll have something to say on those occasions where you really need everyone to stop and listen to you.

AcerbicZero 10y ago

I went from my second deployment, straight into the work world, and I brought along the vocabulary to prove it. To be fair I don't swear "at" people, only at technology, but I'm sure in some environments I'd need to clean it up a little.

josephv 10y ago

Click bait I'm not clicking on. Advice from an almost-millennial (born 1981) and someone that's hired and fired countless programmers: don't swear at work, it makes you sound stupid. Some days you will swear more than others because some days and situations fucking suck. Don't call people names regardless of your stance on swearing. Know the audience, all communication should be tailored to who is listening, you should know if the person(s) you are talking to will tolerate swearing or not. Swearing and using bad grammar or spelling are probably equal in many regards. Sometimes you can get away with it, but know who you are talking or typing to.

freshflowers 10y ago
I agree with the "know the audience" part. As in: much of your audience here isn't American, and you obviously are.
- josephv 10y ago
  Well, I guess that's true. Given the site is an aggregator for a SF-based incubator I figured a reasonable enough number of people would be a American. I'm also not sure why my comments have anything to do with being an American. I think not swearing at work would be universally good advice. I guess if swearing at work is integral to your identity you may be offended by someone declaring that you shouldn't swear at work. But it's generally not a good idea if you're wanting to optimize your career progression.

strictnein 10y ago

Pretty sure my productivity level is measured in MCPM: Muttered Curses Per Minute. High productivity : low MCPM

optforfon 10y ago

At least when it comes to startups this makes total sense. Work is increasingly both your work and your life. Your friends are increasingly your colleagues. Traditionally you don't cuss in the work place b/c you have to stay professional - ie. you have to not be emotional about your work. Cussing is a form of injecting emotion into your speech. If you are at the office 12 hours a day with your friends, then the lines get blurred. Personally I don't like the trend, but to each his own. There are pluses and minuses to each type of workplace

oldmanjay 10y ago

They also seem mostly likely to complain about politics in a loud voice, using phrasing and concepts that indicate they have a surface understanding of the system at best. Also they think they invented the blowjob.

rhapsodic 10y ago

Years ago, I stopped using profanity at work, unless it's in private conversations with people I really trust and/or consider close personal friends. It's partly out of simple respect for my coworkers, but a big motivation is the personal risk involved. These days, there are more than a few people who will complain to HR about anything and everything that might offend them. And I simply don't want to be on the receiving end of any of those complaints. And what's ironic, is the people I'm referring to, at least in my company, are by and large millennials, who, according to the article, are big users of profanity in the workplace. I've had complaints lodged against me for simply speaking bluntly, well within my authority, and not using the "praise sandwich" when correcting someone who had totally screwed something up. Both times I was fully exonerated, I'm happy to say. But it might have gone a different way had I laced my blunt statements with profanity.