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Work, Oscar Wilde said, is the curse of the drinking classes. If you curse at work, however, you don’t need to take to drink. Your potty mouth is often good enough to stall your progress up the corporate ladder.
That may sound surprising because there are plenty of bosses around who swear by swear words. In countries like the US, it is practically the language of command. Anyone who has read former US President “Dirty” Dick Nixon’s tapes will not miss the “expletives deleted”. In fact, the expression passed into ordinary language because of the publicity given to the taped conversations.
In societies where the F-bomb is just a conversational punctuation, cursing should be commonplace. But there is a dividing line between social interactions and the workplace. What you do at home or at a ballgame with the kids is your business; what you say in office has to follow stricter regulations.
“In the West, you do get a certain amount of cursing on the shop floor,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “You will get some of it from bosses who want to cultivate a tough guy image. But you will find less in the cubicle world. In India, certain business communities think nothing of using cuss words. They learn these when still in their swaddling clothes. But ask them if they would use the F-word just as freely, and they would shrivel up in embarrassment. I don’t use bad language, they will tell you piously.”
Swearing is a sensitive issue. There was a time in India, many years after Independence, when large companies were managed by expats. There were racial undertones to interactions. Cursing a worker could provoke a strike; it did happen a few times. So imported CEOs became careful about their language. This culture spread to their India staff also.
In companies run by Indian business families, it all depended on the behaviour of the owner. When swearwords are part of your normal language, nobody notices. In other cases, says Singh, it is either used to establish your authority or excite attention. When Miss Prude curses, everybody snaps to attention. She will get her message across even if it is something as trivial as borrowing her pencil without asking.
Literature on the subject is divided. A recent survey in the US by CareerBuilder shows that cursing can damage your career. The survey found:
64 per cent of employers think less of an employee who repeatedly uses swearwords.
57 per cent are less likely to promote such a person.
51 per cent of workers say they swear in office.
95 per cent of the people who swear do so in front of colleagues.
51 per cent swear in front of the boss.
Men (54 per cent) are more prone to swearing than women (47 per cent).
Cursing is a curious thing. Many newspapers have featured the survey, particularly in the cities that have been found to curse the most (See below).
There appears to be a sense of pride in the reports, Each city seems to be saying: “We are the tough guys. Look at those wimps in Philadelphia.”
Perhaps the folks at the University of East Anglia in England had it right after all. In a study on the use of profanity in the workplace, they found that swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be discouraged or banned. But in a different environment it helps build solidarity and acts as an outlet for frustration and stress. If you look at the survey and the study closely, they may be saying the same thing: button your lip before your boss; it doesn’t matter what you say to you colleagues, the coffee machine or the office cat.
AN AGE TO CURSE
Which employees are most likely to swear at work (%)
Age 18-24---- 42
Age 25-34---- 51
Age 35-44---- 58
Age 45-54---- 51
Ages 55 and over 44
Source: Survey conducted online within the US by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder
Percentage who swear
Washington D.C.---- 62
Denver ---- 60
Chicago ---- 58
Los Angeles ---- 56
Boston---- 56
Atlanta ---- 54
Minneapolis---- 50
Phoenix---- 47
New York ---- 46
Philadelphia---- 44
