No Cussing At Work: What the [Bleep]?
By Anthony Balderrama
One of the first realizations many professionals have early in their careers is the divide between personal preferences and the workplace reality. You don't have to be a genius or even moderately intelligent to quickly realize that you're an employee when on the clock. You don't get to do whatever you want. The company tells you what to do, not the other way around.
Please note: We don't advocate you becoming a mindless drone. We're just saying that the boss sets office hours, dress code and other guidelines. If you walked in the boss' office and said, "Hey, you need to get here early tomorrow," she'd probably laugh at you and then hand you a pink slip.
Within reason, the company sets standards and you abide by them. Plain and simple.
For that reason, the news that Goldman Sachs no longer allows its employees to use curse words in e-mails shouldn't be headline news. But it is. How will workers adjust when profanity is a common part of their daily lexicon. The financial world is often stressful and its workers passionate. A *#@$ or !%*& is bound to slip out when large sums of money are on the line, after all.
In an article for The Daily Beast, Reihan Salam argues that the freedom to curse is one of the fundamental pressure releases an employee has:
"Swear words in the workplace might sound like a fairly juvenile way to build a sense of solidarity, yet they are essential. The pleasure of using a forbidden word can be pretty powerful. And when that pleasure is shared, it is more thrilling still. One feels like a renegade 13-year-old, armed with an illusion of competence and power. You might be a cog at a trading desk, compensated with nothing but money. But you can drop all the f-bombs you'd like. Until now, that is. Now your e-mails will be scanned and filtered by sophisticated software, heightening the sense that you are monitored and very much subject to discipline. A sense of powerlessness is the inevitable result."
Based on Salam's argument, banning curse words is akin to banning eye rolls and sighs. Workers need to vent somehow, and apparently a bad word now and then does the job for many people.
Many companies have rules about what language should be avoided in written and verbal communications. In some companies, the list of forbidden words isn't confined to expletives that would earn a "bleep" on TV. Employees at some companies are given broader guidelines that prevent any talk of a potentially controversial topic. Companies aren't just worried about you offending a colleague; they're worried about being held responsible for your profane words. If you'll recall, discussing the sexually tinged Junior Mint episode of "Seinfeld" led to one firing, which then snowballed into a multimillion-dollar lawsuitthat gained national attention and a major headache for one employer. So employers are skittish about salty language for good reason.
Consider that companies can prohibit their employees from posting negative comments on Facebook and Twitter. They don't want a digital paper trail of bad behavior, and e-mails are no different.
Are people making a big fuss over this because it's Goldman Sachs and it's an easy target? This story might not be newsworthy if it were a grade school instituting this policy on teachers, for example. It would likely be a noteworthy story if a construction company didn't allow its crew to use expletives, I imagine.
Is the controversy much ado about nothing to you because you don't think profanity should ever be used in the workplace? Or can you make exceptions and let out a few unsavory words when things just get too stressful? Leave your comments below.
This article has been reproduced with permission from CareerBuilder. For more articles, check out The Work Buzz.
