Why should calling a co-worker a name be grounds for dismissal? grounds for a warning, or other punishment perhaps, but not ground for immediate dismissal.
It really depends on the jurisdiction's employment rights and very much on the context as to whether it could be grounds for dismissal, but I can certainly see situations where you could be summarily dismissed even in a jurisdiction with relatively strong employment protections, such as the UK.
It's also worth noting that in some cases the employer is placed in a difficult position where they face a difficult choice: do nothing and they run the risk of an employee leaving citing constructive dismissal as management did nothing to handle the bullying; do something and risk retribution from the alleged. In some jurisdictions, sex discrimination in the workplace can lead to a substantial claim, so if you use aggressive language towards a female colleague in a 90% male workplace, HR is going to get twitchy.
Allegations in the form of statements are substantive evidence when it comes to employment disputes and if gross misconduct is defined by your workplace as bullying or harassing co-workers, you can expect to be summarily dismissed.
Also, employers can and frequently are wrong in their interpretation of what they can and cannot lawfully do. Again, this depends on jurisdiction but some jurisdictions have tribunals where you can take your case without the risk of costs being awarded against you.
"Taking complaints to your manager instead of verbally attacking them" has nothing to do with a meritocracy, it's a political action for a political environment. It just happens to be one that will accomplish what you're trying to do much more successfully.
> a coworker that should deserve termination
Isn't that for their employer to decide?
I'm genuinely curious if anybody that reads this thinks it's acceptable or normal behavior to levy a genuine swear-insult at a coworker. That sounds like a fucking awful work environment. Actually contempt for each other? What kind of awful office culture is that?
I've had co-workers piss me off, I'm not pretending to be a saint, but there is always at a bare minimum mutual respect, or even below that an understanding that we have to share the same office at the end of the day, so insulting each other is pissing in the well.
That just doesn't exist. Context is important. In the identity of the caller and the callee, in the nature of their working relationship, and in the nature of the interaction. For example a manager calling a direct report a bitch in anger should be completely unacceptable IMHO, while one colleague calling another a bitch in jest may be just fine.
If we generalize what you've said to race, it shouldn't matter whether a white person is using the n-word. Except some number of white people did use that word for a long time with utmost contempt. If you used that word as a white person in an inclusive workplace today with the full contempt of the word, I doubt you'd still be in post 24 hours later unless you had something like tourettes. [0] I doubt we'd be having such a discussion about that.
In many cultures, women have been treated as second-class citizens and, in many cultures, they are still treated as second-class citizens. Consider that in one canton in Switzerland, women didn't get to vote on local matters until 1990. [1]
In nearly all countries, the distribution of power is still very much skewed towards men. The difference between a woman calling another woman a bitch and a man is the potential for confusion with contempt based purely on gender alone. A woman is perceived as unlikely to hold contemptuous views towards women based on their gender alone. This doesn't mean there are not women who despise women for being women, it's just that it is not perceived as such. It even depends on where it is and how the word is used. As such it's probably one of those words to avoid.
This isn't political-correctness-gone-mad or because of some liberal cultural-marxist conspiracy to turn men into second-class citizens; it's because in a fraction of a second, even though that word may have no connotations of contempt to you, you have potentially reduced that person to an object of that contempt. Some people may not be affected by this, but some people will and be rather hurt. It's simply bad for business, no matter how useless you may perceive that person to be. If men had been treated as second-class citizens for centuries by women and dick was a pejorative term used against men, it would be a problem if a woman used that word against a man.
Consider the following:
- You'll never guess what that bitch has done now.
- You bitch!
- She's a bit of a bitch
- Hey, bitches!
Where I'm from (UK) each has a different level of contempt. I can't see that much in the last one. The first one is almost certainly contemptuous. The second one is very context dependent: if said scornfully it's contemptuous; if said jokingly it's probably not, although it could be confused as such.
[0] Although, if you did have Tourette syndrome or similar, it is unlikely that you would say it with the full contempt unless you actually felt that contempt. Sadly, some people with tourettes do find it hard to keep a job because it is rather poorly understood.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...
I am not a native speaker, so I might be wrong on this. But I believed that "bitch" is the female version of "dick", isn't it? For example in Italian both are rendered with the same word, only flexed by gender.
The word “bitch” however literally means “female dog” and is, in fact, used in a non-derogatory way in dog breeding circles.
Context is everything, but calling a female coworker a “bitch” is not acceptable in a professional environment.
Is this happening? Are people experiencing this? Why is this allowed to happen?
Though usage varies tremendously and is heavily context dependent. In some cases, women use the word bitch in describing themselves to mean they have backbone and are willing to stand up for themselves in the face of a toxic, misogynistic culture.
It's naive and unrealistic to pretend that tempers will never flare, and that if they do, the flarers should be immediately dismissed -- in fact, I'd say depending on the employee's background and the relevant jurisdiction, it may be naive and unrealistic enough to be legally actionable.
I've always worked in high stress environments, if simply because the needs of the workload, is stressful.
Personally, I find yelling, using coarse but not targeted language (say, "fuck this shit") or turning one's back and leaving would be inside the line, but I don't think I could maintain the same respect for a coworker that called me or some other colleague "bitch".