A couple of years ago I wrote a post about email catastrophes. You can read it here.
I want to
draw your attention to the profanity filter I mentioned in that post. The profanity filter is the procedure embedded in the
email software that removes any messages that contain swear words.
I sometimes
swear. I can’t help it. I find myself punctuating sentences occasionally with
words that may offend people but have the effect of totally emphasising the
point, adding humour or expressing my distaste for the subject at hand.
I started
writing a post about the upcoming election in the UK (YES - ANOTHER BLOODY ELECTION!!!!) but I had already
promised myself that I wouldn’t upset anybody (including me!) with politics and threw it into
the cyber bin.
However, the
post was full of expletives and insults that would probably have offended people.
Ditching it was a good thing. Nevertheless, if I had decided to keep it and
send it to my work email address, the message would never have made it into my
inbox thanks to the profanity filter.
And this got
me thinking – always a dangerous thing!
I have a
fantastic idea for a change of career. I want to be the person responsible for
programming the profanity filter.
When I think
of work emails, the message must run through a chunk of software that analyses
every word looking for expletives. In order to identify an expletive, it must
check each word against a list of known expletives.
I want to
write that list, research that list and add new words whenever they come out.
Can you
imagine how much fun that would be?
It would probably only be a part time job,
one day a year – but what a day that would be. New swear words pop into existence
every now again, so I would have to hunt them down with the help of Mr Google.
Furthermore,
I would also extend it.
And - just for fun - I could add stupid words just to confuse people!
My job
involves a lot of foreign customers, and we send out and receive emails in a
variety of different languages. I would love to research the expletives that
the Spanish use, for example. I would love to hunt down Polish profanities and
add them to the list of disallowed words.
The job
satisfaction would be immense – and testing it would be a scream.
All of this leads
me onto another little story.
Many years
ago at work, before the profanity filter existed on emails, a certain employee
noticed that quite a few people were swearing at work on a regular basis. She
wasn’t very happy. We had to listen to her because she was our project manager.
I tried to
explain that sometimes people swear to diffuse or express their frustration but
she wouldn’t listen. I didn’t like to offend her – she is a very nice person –
so I suggested that we have an office swear box.
“I will
personally look after it,” I said, “and we will have a scale of swear words,
charging a small amount for the “safe” ones, rising to more painful fines for
the more offensive words.”
She loved
that idea, particularly when I suggested that the money would be given to
charity at the end of the month.
Even my work
colleagues embraced the idea. And I was targetted as potentially the worst
offender, because at the time (as I am now in fact) I was a grumpy old git,
frustrated by work and life and prone to rants full of expletives.
To get the
ball rolling, I had to create a scale of offense.
Without
thinking things through, I wrote an email to the entire team with a list of
swear words and the cost of using each, ranging from 10p for something
inoffensive like bloody rising up to £2 for the worst word of all (you know
what word that is). In the interests of good taste, I will not reproduce the email here.
I sent the
email to my team.
And promptly
got a bunch of replies back, stating that without any shadow of a doubt, the
mail I had sent was THE MOST OFFENSIVE email they had ever seen.
The
profanity filter we have governing our mails today would have overloaded and
melted the email server software had it encountered such a disgraceful message.
Consequently,
I was the first contributor to the swear box. I was outvoted. I was forced to
pay the fine for each word that I had used and that contribution actually hurt
my wallet. But, in the spirit of comradery, I submitted and transferred the cash from my wallet to the
swear box to get things going.
I was well
and truly hoisted by my own petard!
Worse, one
joker decided to print the email off and put it on his desk so that he could
police us all. He was fined the equivalent amount because, we argued, that
somebody could have intercepted it at the printer. He paid up, but I was
thankful that nobody had picked it up at the printer because I’m sure it would
have found its way to HR – and it had my name plastered all over it.
However,
over the next few weeks, people did contribute to the swear box when they
forgot themselves and the project manager was happy. In fact, she was caught
out a few times when people heard her swearing under her breath.
It lasted
for a couple of months and my contributions were in fact few and far between.
The main contributor was a young lad who swore that he would not swear (if you’ll
pardon the pun).
We finally
got rid of it, when a manager from another area of the building walked in.
“I’m so
fucking pissed off with those bastards!” he said.
This caused
lots of merriment.
“Put your
money in the swear box,” I said. “We don’t allow swearing here.”
“I’m not
putting any fucking money in a fucking swear box!” he said before marching out
again.
At that
point we gave up on the idea but it actually worked – the amount of swearing
was significantly reduced.
Looking back
at this post, it would have cost me £5.10 had I read it aloud in the office at
that time.
I’ll put
some money in my own personal swear box here on my desk. Fear not – the money
will go to my favourite charity – ME!
I will enjoy
the beer I can purchase with it and I promise not to swear in the pub.
