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Slightly orthogonal to your #5: are you in a current job role where you ever bring up the topic of your customers or your clients in casual discussion? Do you e

Slightly orthogonal to your #5: are you in a current job role where you ever bring up the topic of your customers or your clients in casual discussion? Do you ever refer to either group in less-than-stellar terms? For my part, I do both. I have bitched and kvetched at times about my clients being cripplingly needy, aggressively brain dead, and the like. I certainly wouldn't say it to their faces, and it doesn't mean I don't rely on their dollars to support my business. Nor either does it mean I am producing lesser-quality work for them. This is a non-issue. People everywhere bitch about the outsiders they have to deal with in language that would never be used in business proper. It is a massive chasm of difference between calling a group "needy" and categorizing them as illegals, rapists and murderers.

smsm42 10y ago
I would never ever use such language in work email. You are always one wrong click away from everything being sent to your clients or to the whole wide world. There's a "New York Times principle" applicable to work emails - don't write anything you couldn't deal with if it were on the front page of the New York Times. Now, if I were talking one on one with peers over beers, that's a different matter. There is much more freedom and it would allow some things said which are not meant to be heard by anybody not in the audience. > People everywhere bitch about the outsiders they have to deal with in language that would never be used in business proper. This is not exactly business - those are people that pretend to be champions of those "needy latinos" and represent them. It's a higher bar than just business transaction - I would have no problem doing business with a person I disagree with on everything and who maybe secretly hates me, as long as the business end is fine I'm fine. But I probably prefer to choose somebody else to represent me and speak for me.

smsm42 10y ago

I would never ever use such language in work email. You are always one wrong click away from everything being sent to your clients or to the whole wide world. There's a "New York Times principle" applicable to work emails - don't write anything you couldn't deal with if it were on the front page of the New York Times. Now, if I were talking one on one with peers over beers, that's a different matter. There is much more freedom and it would allow some things said which are not meant to be heard by anybody not in the audience. > People everywhere bitch about the outsiders they have to deal with in language that would never be used in business proper. This is not exactly business - those are people that pretend to be champions of those "needy latinos" and represent them. It's a higher bar than just business transaction - I would have no problem doing business with a person I disagree with on everything and who maybe secretly hates me, as long as the business end is fine I'm fine. But I probably prefer to choose somebody else to represent me and speak for me.