I once got fired for changing the title of my personal homepage of our ticketing software to “Fuck this fucking shithole”. Bosses found out when they cloned my account for testing while I was on vacation.

In their defense, it was pretty stupid of me to do that. In my defense, fuck that fucking shithole.

Learn to code switch better. Profanity is almost never useful in a professional environment.

If you’ve been told once and your job hangs in the balance, then perhaps that’s a sign of needlessly strict management, but if I just got a stern “please don’t swear in front of the public” I’d just stop swearing.

“Fuck” isn’t profane, it’s vulgar. “Goddamn” is profane.

I got fired from a print shop job for saying “fuck you” back to the boss after he screamed it at me (and a dozen other people). Fuck him, though. Shop was completely closed 3 months later due to boss man’s ineptitude.

Otherwise, I swear like a fuckin’ sailor and never even got chewed out.

It’s pretty common in Australia, so long as we’re not swearing at people nobody gives a fuck. I’d say unless your manager has mentioned it to you, it’s not a huge deal.

I build fences. 3 out of 4 words is fuck.

I’m a professional and I conduct myself like one at work. Your coworkers have the right to work in a non-hostile environment, and believe it or not, some people consider profanity to be hostile. Plus, there are more effective ways to communicate your thoughts in a professional environment than through profanity. I’ll occasionally swear with a coworker I’m close with if we’re one-on-one, but never in a group setting. Cursing is expected - almost mandatory - in some careers such as a restaurant kitchen, or a construction site, but I don’t work in that sort of environment anymore.

If someone doesn’t understand the difference between swearing at and swearing around, that’s a shitty environment. If I say, “that was a shitty fucking outage” I am using some filler for emphasis so my mouth can catch up to my brain. If I say “you’re a fucking asshole” or “don’t be such a bitch” or “that’s fucking sexy” I am not being professional and I deserve some training on how to not be an ignorant walnut. Even with swearing around, I do think it’s smart to limit yourself to damnation, defecation, and simple fornication rather than gendered swears. There are also some places it’s not wise to swear around, such as client-facing roles because many of the people you will see don’t understand that swearing around is not swearing at.

I once lost a job after the onsite interview. I wait to swear until I I hear them swear. Apparently my use of “fuck” meant I was going to blow up and be a terrible person to my peers. Two years later I started running a department doing the thing I was interviewing for and my staff tends to be fiercely loyal. I’d argue my swearing speaks for itself and have shaped my professional attitude toward swearing around around this experience.

I work in tech and I’m quick to police my language if necessary. I’m also concerned about relative comfort (eg I try really hard not to blaspheme around some Christian peers). I do not swear at people. I do not work in a super corporate environment. YMMV.

I like study (you can find the full article online) and I think there’s been more research down this path in the years since.

My boss told me verbally “don’t call your colleague a fascist by email or anything else that leaves a record”, so that was nice of him.

Work in software project management. People swear pretty regularly. The higher up in the hierarchy you go, the more they swear. If a job gave me a warning for that I might leave because they treat their employees like children.

First I was asked politely to not swear, even if I was not a customer facing employee.

Second time I was cautioned was because I’d switched to swearing in another language. Manager thought it was hilarious, but they still knew I was swearing.

I spent the next five years being increasingly creative with how I swore. A temporary (and loud) revert to English swearing when I was in a workplace accident was kindly ignored due to circumstance.

There was no third warning.

At my job? No. That would not happen.

And it’s funny you ask about outside the US because the way I learned this was our head of finance in Germany was visiting and as I passed the office where he was I heard him talking and it was just fucking this, fucking that, fuck so many times just in the time it took me to pass the office.

Now should you be cussing out customers? No, of course not. But no one in my office bats an eye and we often hear “what the fuck, Microsoft?!” when something doesn’t work.

If I get a written warning, is this a reason good enough to start looking for employment elsewhere?

To those of you not in America. Is it different where you are?

Germany here. We have explicit laws protecting workers.

If the company wants to terminate your contract, then there are only a limited number of specific reasons that are allowed. And then they must observe a notice period usually (1-2 months). The worker can easily go to court against it (costs are moderate) to have it checked.

If they want to fire you immediately (all subsidiaries of foreign corporations usually want that, and most of the German big corpos too), they can suspend you from working, but you still get your pay until the end of the notice period, or you can make a termination agreement that ends the contract immediately and you get all that money (plus maybe a little more, negotiable) at once.

And there is another way: if you have severely violated your duties, then they can terminate you immediately, without paying any longer.

But it is only with very serious violations, where they can argue that it isn’t tolerable for the company to have to endure you any longer. Many such events actually go to court afterwards, so they really have to be careful to do it right.

If the violation was not so severe, they can give you an official warning, usually in writing. You can also go to court against the warning, and the court can nullify it, if it was wrongful.

If you have received a warning and it was valid and afterwards you do the same violation again, then they can also terminate you immediately. And again, you can go to court to have it checked, like above.

ITT: American HR vs the world.