That makes sense - if you learn words and phrases from their common use vs. from instruction, you're more likely to know both the literal and colloquial version

That makes sense - if you learn words and phrases from their common use vs. from instruction, you're more likely to know both the literal and colloquial version of the words. That said, taking everything as textbook literal isn't viable in most languages. English isn't even close to the top of the heap of languages that use idioms and contextual clues to change the meaning of words and phrases. In the context of a thread where people are likely upset about layoffs, taking the use of the word "used" to have more of a negative than neutral connotation makes sense. It's not as if we're looking at a textbook example with "Jack used their employee James" and you have to guess what definition of "used" is intended. No one is arguing that OP meant that Zoom literally picked up their employees and wielded them in combat, even though that could be a viable context-less definition for "used".