Politically Incorrect Work Banter

Let's say I work at a job with a bunch of Type A frat boys with way too much free time on their hands. Now, take those rowdy jerkoffs and put them in a scenario where they're stuck together for months at a time on what is essentially Gilligan's Island. It gets to be pretty crazy. There are few normal, professional conversations. It's definitely not for those with thin skin. If you put it out there, someone will take a swing at it.

It's probably a lot like living with Jazz.

We've got some really, really colorful one-ups going on here. Things I've heard at work? Oh, we've got it all:

- "I don't want to work with him... he's an all-you-can-hate fag buffet with a triple dick desert stamp."

- *after asking a black subordinate to fuel up a truck* "Sure thing, Grandmaster! What time's the cookout?"

- *to an Arab subordinate* "Hey, it's cold out there, don't forget your suicide vest."

- *to a lesbian coworker* "Gotta be hell for you, huh? Get the itch but you're surrounded by hairy, smelly men. You're a girl and you can't even get laid."

- *boss to supervisors* "Listen, we need you guys to be flexible... as in you gotta fold your legs up behind your heads and dig the sand out of your snatches."

- *Mexican coworker* "Why the hell am I stuck driving a 14-passenger van with 19 people in it? Ooh, I get it... stereotypes in action!"

- *supervisor pep talk* "Now get out there and kill some babies. We've got an image to uphold and you dicklickers have yet to bring me a single fetus."

- "It's not that a woman couldn't do this job, it's just that she'd be too busy filling a dent in a mattress somewhere."

Nothing is sacred.

...

I know some of you work in "hostile environments" like this. Feel free to share some of the zingers you've overheard.

 

I get it. If someone's got thin skin, Rowdy Jerkoff would give them Rawhide.
An offshoot which worries me is the race of 'new men', the NON rowdy ones, who do it where the bruises don't show. I call them the Alfalfa males. They are adept at spin-jitsu, and deliver the Quiche of Death.

I needed to get that off my chest .... OK ...

Here's one from a place I worked at. Political Correctness was causing a lot of problems Lifelong schizophrenics were holding formal protests against being 'forced' to call THEMSELVES 'bi-polar'. They correctly identified it as relabelling rather than delabelling.

There WAS steam to let off on 'both' 'sides'. For example one Christmas, the patients' cooking team was excelling itself working on the Christmas Dinner, but needed an resource.

Mental patient (er .... "resident") to Nurses, "We're baking a Christmas cake ... please may we borrow a hypo to inject it with the alcohol when it's done?"
Nurse, "OK, but we'll have to be present"
Ment ...er .. resident. "Don't you trust us"
Nurse, "Yes. We trust you."
Resident, "Then Why?"
Nurse, forming an Jack's Back grin, "Cos it's Nursie's job to Hold the Cake Down MUAHAHAHAHAHAH!"

 

I work in health care.
Spend a lot of time with cancer patients.
Our humor can get pretty black, that's all I can say.

 

Haven't really overheard anything that comes to mind. One of my former coworkers once told me her mother's rule for birth control when you're dating ... to always keep at least one foot on the floor at all times. I told her that her mother had absolutely NO imagination because I can think of many things to do with at least one foot on the floor.

Not exactly a zinger, but it made her smile and blush.

 

I'd say most of the politically incorrect banter comes from male clients of mine who feel the need to comment on the (quite attractive) nurses who work at our centre. I don't suffer that kind of talk though, so I generally respond with, "Hey, treat her with respect, or she'll mix laxatives in with your evening meds."

 

today at work, we all laughed at the teensy tiny size of a chihuahua's balls. he was laid out on his back and fast asleep on the surgical table waiting to be castrated.
but, I mean, sheesh, they really were remarkably small.

we're all women where I work, from various backgrounds and races. we don't really talk about men or race or anything like that.

I find that politically incorrect banter is an art form only mastered by those who truly have a grasp of the absurdity of what they say. Often it is attempted by people who are simply trying to flex real cultural/racial/sexual insecurities they have and it always comes off as awkward. I hate those moments.

 

Where I work it can be anywhere from 50/50 male/female to being all girls out front and only a 2 guys in the back and one on the grill and griddle up front. A while back you got the occasional off-color comment, especially in the back room or about the customers... then we all were forced to attend sexual harassment sensitivity training.

After that I found out the girls I work with have filthy minds.

 

We just had a superintendent drop the "N bomb" on a job site for the second time. Great guy, knew what he was doing, long time employee, and they shitcanned him for it. We have some pretty crude and politically incorrect humor that we use in the office, but sometimes we have to nudge each other to remind ourselves to look over our shoulder before we say it.

 

to be honest I dont even understand a lot of the comments above

there is a fair bit of banter in my work (although Ive tried to tone down a lot of the gay shit)... but mostly it is pretty tame and very private jokes that make no sense to anyone else:

If any used the word curious, instantly ask "bi-curious?"

"Your mum" comments (ie - "What did you do last night" "Your mum")

References to "pork swords" and Turkish wrestling.

_

On reflection, maybe the gay banter still is a bit much.

I would stay away from racial stuff because I think it just is a bit taboo. Maybe if I was a more sensitive person I'd think more about comments that portray homosexuality as comical... I am very cautious not to ever cross the line with sexual harrasment with any female employee's - but then again where is the line? If I am having a bit of banter with female employee's I'll make comments about how handsome and strong I am, suggest that they have my picture laminated and stuck up in their shower at home, talk about my 4 Y chromosones, etc etc... maybe some people would consider that too much and at the end of the day you only have to say it to one person who doesnt take it as a joke and you'd lose your job potentially (and I suppose rightly... people have a right not to be made uncomfortable in their job).

I think the important thing is sometimes even the biggest joker isnt in the mood and you have to know when not to come on with any jokes, and some people dont like it all. I'd never throw out comments to someone who didnt give them back, or anyone that told me they didnt like it.

 

Lucky me, I work with guys who only make gay jokes as if they mean them. I throw up a little in my pants & carry on...

 

these were remarkably small even for a chihuahua. they were about the size of two Le Sueur peas.

 

I once worked near an accounting department that was all female save one lone guy. The women in that department were crude to the point of being malicious at times, and woe to any man with a thin skin who walked through there. I, on the other hand, threatened to lodge a complaint because I was being insufficiently sexually-harrassed there, and I felt I deserved my fair share.

 

Sooo...

Seeing that this has clearly turned into one of my typical "Nice try, Plan9! (that guy, what a fucking moron)" threads, could you elaborate on the 'new men' you spoke of? Are you referring to smarmy, piranha-toothed individuals armed with email grenades and general passive-aggressiveness?

I find these kind of stories just as entertaining. Care to share?

 

Strange Famous - there are a lot of things you can get away with in the UK that you can't get away with in the US. I'm reminded of that whenever I talk with one of my cohorts over there.

Plan9 - I think she's talking about me.

 

the_jazz,

Bullshit. You're about as passive-aggressive as a bear trap.

We've got some real masters of the sideway jab here, though.

...

Strange Famous,

Is it weird that I want to visit you for a week, buy a bunch of booze and beef jerky and just listen to you talk?

Seriously the most entertaining person on here lately. 5-dates thread almost put me in the hospital laughing.

 

If I have to see one more passive aggressive email fights, I'm going to pull what little hair I have out by the roots. Passive aggressive shit makes me start throwing things around the room like a Whirling Dervishe on crack. Fuck passive aggression, fuck it in the ass.

Say what you need to and don't sugar coat shit.

Then again, I've been lectured every week on my "bad attitude" because I'm not passive aggressive in a office full of passive aggressive people.

 

HI Plan

Yup, that's pretty much what I mean.

I don't have any good stories, because the passive aggression I've witnessed is an indirect, often slow choke procedure which, when effectively deployed, stays below the radar and is only observable in its effects. I might as well search for my 10 favourite plate-tectonics stories.

However, I can elaborate: One generic example, in committees I've been in - a passive-aggressive email grenader or boardroom speaker will typically mention no names, but mis-describe behaviours well enough that the 'targets' are easily identifiable. The target is then stuffed if they stay silent, or seemingly defensive/aggressive if they do a direct refute. The difficulty of the direct refute is added to on account of the identifying behaviour being misdescribed in the first place.

Specific structural example: "A committee cannot properly perform it's function as representatives of a membership who pays its subscription and who we, in effect are employed by, when directors do A, B, C, D, E, F and G, all of which are Bad & Wrong tend not to support solutions in the area of the crucial issues which, according our remit, we are obliged to address"

The target Does do A, B, C and D, does not consider them bad, and is ready to refute the negative judgement. However, the target did not do E, F or G and therefore has the additional job of disentangling. A good Email bomb will choose an 'E, F and G' which live in the ballpark of A, B etc, and thus be more difficult to unentangle. Target will come across as floundering and trying to 'cherry-pick' and 'justify' him or herself.

The bomber, however, has a clean nose, because the email has the outer form of addressing the behaviour rather than the person = tick box. And by diffusing it into the status of a 'group problem', intimidates people who are not, but wonder if they might be the targets, and their silence, if the bomber knows how to take ownership of it, becomes a silent assent to the passive aggression. (Loads of sub-routines can be added here).



Mind you, if you succeed in calling the bomber out, they can be entertaining, because, like most people who rely on being indirect, they do not know how to survive the light, since they have not practiced being in it. However, the language of expression for political correctness supports its insidiousness more directly than, say, the highly specific language of Victorian morality. Also makes it less manageable into pithy anecdote-sized chunks.

Hmmmm .... checking for typos, I notice my low opinion of political correctness leads me to tend to lump it in with 'indirectness'. This is because I see it as embracing enslavement to maps (indirect) rather than responsibility in the moment, which is, to me, the more direct course, and more respectful to the other's experience of themselves in the universe.
--- merged: Aug 22, 2011 3:12 PM ---

Lord Eden ... just wondering ... when they get on Your case, about your 'bad attitude', do they let their passive agressive pose slip? Or have they got some safe-formula way of sticking it to you?

 

The only person that is a manager around here is the owner. He's less passive aggressive and more laissez-faire. He has no idea what is going on and is more than a week behind at all times. When the email fights and boardroom under the table finger pointing gets to a boil where people actually want to fight in public, he very gently puts his foot down and tells people he will fix it. He never does and it starts over again.

He's been telling the other co-workers he is going to "work" on my attitude problem for months. I still have a bad attitude and nothing will change. There was a Dilbert comic hung up about my attitude, but that's about the biggest thing pointed out about it.

I did get the biggest passive agressive tech to say, "Eden you are an asshole." It tooks me 30 mintues of him dancing around the issue with "rough around the edges","abrasive", ect to say it.

"I'm not trying to say you are an asshole."

"Yes you are, *I'M* saying it. I. Am. An. Asshole. Now you say it. Eden, you are an asshole."

"No no no, I'm trying to imply you are an asshole..."

"Fucking say it!"

"FINE, you are an asshole."

"Thank you, now let's eat lunch."

Give a man a fish and all that ancient advice.