Yeah (&$# Right

by Jo | October 18th, 2007

If this started happening at my place of employment - we’d all be walking the beat for new jobs.  

“Swearing at work ‘boosts team spirit, morale’ ”

via Yahoo! News from AFP

LONDON (AFP) - Regular swearing at work can help boost team spirit among staff, allowing them to express better their feelings as well as develop social relationships, according to a study by researchers.

Yehuda Baruch, a professor of management at the University of East Anglia, and graduate Stuart Jenkins studied the use of profanity in the workplace and assessed its implications for managers.

They assessed that swearing would become more common as traditional taboos are broken down, but the key appeared to be knowing when such language was appropriate and when to turn to blind eye.

The pair said swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be seriously discouraged or banned, but in other circumstances it helped foster solidarity among employees and express frustration, stress or other feelings.

“Employees use swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative, abusive manner,” said Baruch, who works in the university’s business school in Norwich.

I believe the point is there are a lot of people who use curse words when frustrated (raising hand), and employers need to understand that.  However, employees also need to know where the curse-word “taboo” line is.  There are certain words that just should not be said at the workplace.   But how many times have you been at work and the printer ran out of paper and you just said, “Oh shit”?   

I really can’t see this becoming the norm in too many offices though.   At least not in my neck of the woods — and that’s okay.

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4 Responses to “Yeah (&$# Right”

Comments

  1. Redoubt Says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 7:00 am

    True Story:

    Back about 1993 or so, my son was in the Cub Scouts and was with the rest of the den and a scout master one Saturday when they all loaded up for a trip to a local building supply outlet for some materials for a den project.

    As it was later explained to me, since it was also the same Saturday as the Iron Bowl, the entire supply store sales crew were all clustered around a small TV. Just as the kids and scout leader approached the sales counter, something exciting happened in the game and the sales guys split between cussing like sailors and cheering while grabbing their groins and shouting ‘tackle this’!

    My son came home later that day and overheard me talking about the game. He proudly walked up, grabbed his groin and said ‘tacko dis’!

    I about sh*t and fell back in it

    …

  2. c.a. Marks Says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 9:41 am

    I just wrote about this very same thing at my new blog but it was from a different source. I work with a bunch of guys and they use the word F*** like it’s an adjective/adverb. At first, I didn’t think anything of it but with time and continual use of the F-word it started to become offensive, rude, and obnoxious. A real downer. I try to avoid them now. Oh don’t get me wrong, I cuss a lot too, but I don’t use the F’word in every single sentence!

  3. Jo Says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 11:27 am

    c.a. that is one of the words I was thinking about that would never be allowed in most of the workplaces. Sorry you have to deal with it …. to me it shows a lack of respect for their fellow co-workers!

  4. Stacy Says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 5:27 pm

    I think it has the opposite effect at my company…as things have slid downhill, the swearing has increased…but no one feels any better.

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