I’ll go first, I work as an insurance broker and I would never swear to a client but around the office and during meeting, swearing is extremely common

40 comments

  1. I work in a hospital, in front of patients, no. In the therapy office, that’s basically all we do.

  3. It depends on the job, and on the type of people you’re working with.

  4. Depends on job. When I was a chef, swearing is all we do in the kitchen. When I worked at an archive, nope never (found it difficult to do the small
    talk instead).

  5. You know something is wrong when your manager loses all ‘blue sky thinking’ and can no longer ‘hit the ground running’ and describes something as an absolute clusterfuck. I knew that was going to be a very bad day.

  6. I work mainly in office, so, no, not much swearing, unless the office is attached to a warehouse. Then yes, a whole lot of swearing goes on.

  7. I work with a bunch of Americans. My British colleagues never swear when around them. But they swear all of the time when they’re not.

  8. Never to a customer and only mildly swearing to colleagues from other departments but I’ve been known to turn the air blue when dealing with some of the wee arseholes in my team.

  9. Context matters, if it’s at someone then no.

    If it’s to emphasise frustration at something ridiculous then yes. Although that generally depends on how uptight the company is.

    The less you do it, the better the impact.

  12. There’s a time and a place for it. It’s every day all day long in our place.

  13. Also an insurance broker – on the phone with clients, absolutely not. I have had clients swear in conversation with me, but I still wouldn’t. For a start, it would be uprofessional. But sods law, that would be the call they decided to audit.

    On the phone with colleagues, or insurers, absolutely. But only where it’s appropriate and I have a good relationship with them. In any of my jobs, as long as it wasn’t Infront of a client, swearing was acceptable. Especially in retail when backstage!

  16. I’m a lawyer and every time I open an email I go ‘for fuck’s sake’.

    Would not swear in front of a client unless they swore first, then it’s game on cunts.

  17. Depends on the job.

    Teaching a class of primary school children, no.

    Working on a building site? Fuck yeah.

  18. Work for a bank. My Division and team is pretty relaxed and we all swear in meetings etc, as long as no one else there. Senior Managers will too, but above that level you very rarely hear swearing. Other Divisions are more formal though, and it’s far less common.

  19. Depends on the job, the situation, the recipients of your language.

    If I go to a little old lady or a kid, language is appropriate for them… go to a Friday/Saturday nights student accommodation for drunken injuries, it’s perfectly acceptable to call my patient a twat who fucked up, and will learn for next time.

  21. my CEO swore as he was interviewing me for the job. That’s when I knew that swearing was cool where I work. So are fucked up jokes, which I love. And I’m a big swearer too so in short, yes, we swear and I love it personally

  22. Yes but I work in an engineering company. It’s very common on site, especially when a Project isn’t going to plan or there’s a catastrophic failure.

    We had one Account Director responsible for a high profile site in Manchester who’d walk around site staring down the engineers who looked idle.

    If they happened to catch his eye he’d shout something like “what’re you lookin at cunt? fuck off back to work!” Miss that guy.

  26. It happens, as long as its not during meeting, in front of external no one cares. The company doesn’t tolerate swearing AT people. Although that changes when we have a near miss.

  27. Working in a library, we’re very polite to our customers, but swear like sailors when they’re out of earshot.

  28. I worked in an industrial laundry if we didn’t swear in the first 5 mins someone asks if we were ok

  29. On 3rd Party Server Support sometimes you can’t help but let it slip out.

    Me: “What’s happened to the SQL database”

    Customer: “Oh yeah, our apprentice truncated it at the weekend because the C: drive was running at capacity”

    Me: “Do you have a snapshot”

    Customer: “No”

    Me: *Softly* “Oh fuck”

  30. Hello, work in IT. In front of customers, no. In the back? Ofc; swearing at broken machines is a vital stage in fixing them.

  31. When excel crashes its absolutely necessary to should “ahhh for fuck sake!”

  32. Although I work in a Warehouse, I consider it a Zoo. Therefore, I consider my colleagues like animals and animals don’t know what swear words are, so fuck them.

    My manager has been trying to convince me to do more unpaid work. Fucking Prick.

  33. I’m sitting in the canteen as I read this, drinking from a mug that says CUNT on it.

  35. We got a swear jar once (lawyers) and it was 50p per swear with everything going to charity. We made close to £100 in a day and that was only the honest people!

    My old boss was a big swearer on conference calls and he’d mute his end and let off. One time he didn’t press the button properly and about 3 firms with 15 people on the call heard him say “for fucks sake, why do these twats hire lawyers when they think they know every fucking legal point when they can’t even find their own arsehole”. The client just said “X, you aren’t on mute and I do know where my aresehole is thank you very much.” My cocky boss looked liked the wanted the ground to swallow him up. It didn’t stop him though!

  36. I work hospitality and that currently involves working with kids, so absolutely not.

    In general I try not to swear with my colleagues but that’s partly so it has more effect on the occasional time I go for it.

  37. 👋 motorsport engineer here, we do swear and others are making racist jokes towards me as I’m from abroad – Eastern Europe – it’s a great fun I love my workplace. They also sometimes call me gay just for fun even if they know my wife. 😂

  38. I’m a nurse but I’m from teesside. Swearing is punctuation here. You get a feel for who you can and can’t swear in front of. Some patients respond quite well to someone saying “I’m so sorry you’re having a really shit day” and others you know would prefer a more formal relationship with their nurse. Anything goes in the break room though. You learn new swear words in the break room.

  39. I’m in the fucking army of course it is what sort of shit cunt asks that question wanker?
    Honestly it really depends on what we are doing. Swearing at recruits is frowned on happens though and certainly never at the public. Rest of the time its fair game.

  40. I work in IT. The phrase “it’s fucked mate” is uttered with regularity

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