Granting Miller Brewing partial summary judgment, the trial court dismissed with prejudice Mackenzie’s wrongful termination claim. The other claims, however, proceeded to trial and the jury returned verdicts: (1) finding that Miller Brewing and Smith intentionally made misrepresentations to Mackenzie, and awarding, against Miller Brewing, $6,501,500 compensatory and $18,000,000 punitive damages, and against Smith, $1500 compensatory and $500,000 punitive damages (later reduced by the trial court to $100,000, which Mackenzie accepted); (2) finding that Smith intentionally interfered with Mackenzie’s promotion, and awarding $100,000 compensatory damages; and (3) finding that Best intentionally interfered with Mackenzie’s contract, and awarding $0 compensatory damages and $1,500,000 punitive damages (later set aside by the trial court).
Mackenzie = fired employee.
Smith = Mackenzie’s supervisor.
Best = person who made the claim his reference was inappropriate.
The misrepresentation claim was the company re-orging and reducing his job grade, but keeping his salary and benefits and telling him he wasn’t impact at all. Then a couple years later reducing his pay because of the lower job grade.
Previous company: I’d refrain from even using “crap” or similar.
Current company: I refrain from using harsher language like f*ck when talking to higher management, unless they breach that boundary first. It’s not uncommon to speak that way, but more so in 1-on-1 situations or small meetings.
I don’t care about profanity in a personal setting, but I find people who use profanity at work make the environment hostile. They tend to be toxic, at best. It’s not something some people would want to be coerced into being subjected to.
The worst environment I’ve been in was when I worked in the UK and had to hear homophobic and sexist slurs from management. It was clearly intended to be in jest, and it didn’t seem like the folks it was directed at were offended, but I was. I don’t think it was entirely a culture difference. Calling a man a woman who enjoys performing oral sex on men in order to offend him seems like something that isn’t suited for…well, anywhere.
I was having a super bad day at an old job. I was in the printer room and I let out a string of F-words just as a coworker came in. She knew I was having a bad day, so she knew it wasn’t directed at her.
While I do love my four-letter vocab, I keep it in check during the work day.
I typically don’t curse at work but I’ve worked places where it has been very common. More common probably with men than women in my experience. Also depends on the context - in formal meetings or presentations, rare, but in office chit chat or work discussions outside of formal presentations, common. Also more common in one-on-one conversations than in group discussions.
Yeah, well, I would imagine this is in part due to women traditionally not having as much clout in the workplace. It’s not really helping our cause to tell all the mother@#&%@#s that we think they’re mother@#&%@#s - that would make us appear “too emotional”.
True. I am a woman, I’m more inclined to curse in conversation with someone at work once they do first, and it’s more clear that the person won’t be offended. Although that’s probably a good habit for anyone… Agree on there being an issue of perception of being emotional/bossy/whatever.
about 4 jobs back, it was a virtually “no swearsies” office. Not officially written down anywhere, but it was pretty uncommon to hear anything worse than on a PG movie. I did hear a sales head once say “shit” twice in a conversation, but that was in his office, behind closed doors. I once let drop a “I keep asking because I’m afraid I’m going to fuck this up” and later went back to the other two in the conversation and apologized for letting my emotions get out of contro.
the job after that, it was probably common to hear “oh fuck me!” about ten times a day.
after that, it’s been pretty much in the middle: probably 1-2 swears a week, usually “damn” or “shit”.
The guy that this thread was inspired by needs to explain to a customer how to do certain calculations and had our new hire helping him make numerical examples, which is now me because it’s tough and we both ran out of time to do it.
Anyways, I made it through a whole 1/2 hour meeting just now of me trying to explain my issues with running the example while also trying to understand Mr. Profanity’s accent - and he didn’t even swear at me once!!!
He even comforted me after he called out my dumb shit “…well, what’s dis EXRs you have no claims without EXIs…” and I was like “OH SHIT OH SHIT I’M DUMB SORRY THANKS BYE”.
For grey area things the rule is that is isn’t hostile until someone complains to HR
Seriously though I think it depends on the group and how well they know each other. No one on my team does (at least not at work) but I work with other teams and some of them will do it depending on who they are with. I think as long as no one around them is bothered by it (or is being sworn at) then it isn’t hostile. If someone is cursing out another employee who isn’t present then I would say it is, but simply swearing at financial results/the computer/the weather generally wouldn’t be. HR might have a different opinion though:).
What is a bit more awkward is dealing with a client who is a high level executive of something who starts swearing in a formal business meeting…
Also for the record I have worked with actuaries who would swear… mostly when the computer crashed and they hadn’t saved anything.
