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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve gotten a comment in my annual review, but I don’t think it impacted by bottom line score. And tbf, I was swearing in front of clients, in an industry where a bit more professionalism is the norm.

ITT: American HR vs the world.