He’s the manager of a store, in a customer service industry. I’d bloody well HOPE that it’s part of his job to let ignorant/unprofessional staff know that they are communicating with (or in front of) their customers in an improper manner.
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But using grammar as a weapon is using grammar as a tool! Not a friendly, polite, communicate-with-thy-neighbor sort of tool; but weapons are tools too!
Why the discrimination, Pinker? Why the equipment prescriptivism?
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Isn’t “bae” a gigantic British arms dealer, if you don’t know how to capitalize your acronyms properly?
Ohhhh, got it. Now I’m up to speed. Thank you 
The more I talk to my young nephew(s), the more I realize that 99% of their slang comes from YouTubes/Vines of various sassy black women inventing new words. It’s actually really amazing seeing language change so fast.
I’m sure they can say “this food is too salty”, but he doesn’t want employees talking about how irritated something made them (“Did you see that list of forbidden words? I’m feeling salty.”)
This whole list can basically be boiled down to “you will speak like a honky and you will pretend to like it.”
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It can mean lover, best friend, buddy, awesome, cute, wonderful, etc.
- I went to the movies with my bae (could be a friend or a sexual partner).
- My lab partner copied the notes for me when I was sick. He’s my bae.
- That stuffed moose is so bae.
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apparently, in Danish it means poop.
This juxtaposition amuses me.
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I’m pretty sure it means they can’t describe their fried potatoes as salty. Check the bullet for chill.
I’m not sure if you’re joking or not. Sorry.
The term ‘salty’ in this context refers to being annoyed or irritated.
What a perfect example for rationalizing the use of language/grammar as a gatekeeper for social status. You win the unintentionally ironic award for this thread.
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I’m surprised there isn’t just a volume of Slang words and/or obscure synonyms for “very good” and/or “a lot.” I would keep it right next to my book of 1001 fun sex euphemisms…
I can kind of see where the manager is coming from, but just the fact that they’re all there on a list gives me an uncontrollable urge to try and fit as many of them as possible into a cromulent sentence.
Clearly written by someone who’s never met a teenager, I bet if he started using those phrases the kids would have dropped all of them within a week.
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Oh… piffle & bunk. We’re not talking about immigrants having trouble learning a new language, or developmentally disabled people suffering from bigotry. This is about an attempt to teach ignorant kids how to communicate in a socially acceptable manner. It’s a basic part of growing up; always has been, always will be, plain and simple. Yes, in it’s way it is about social status. When you want to fit into the adult world, and be treated as an adult, you need to behave as one. We all have to conform to some degree.
This particular situation really does seem to be an adult/manager-vs-kid/employee one, though (I guess I’m assuming the employees were teenagers…). I say that only because the terms that the employees were using are all not just slang, but in-jokes, memes and references. To me, this means that the problem being addressed isn’t ignorance or culturally-based patterns of speaking, it’s the commitment to the work at hand. (Now, it’s certainly debatable how much focus a task like flipping chicken breasts takes) The requirement doesn’t seem much more soul-crushing than the uniforms kids have to wear at these places. I’d see the racial/status/class component a bit more starkly if the poster was about verb conjugation, alternate words or other cultural-linguistic grammar differences, but peppering your language with memes is pretty cross-cultural, and seems to be much more strongly tied to age and internet-obsession than anything else.
All told though, he’s handling the situation absolutely wrong, is very unlikely to achieve the desired result and needs to be retrained himself.
This is version 2 of the list. Version 1 ended at “ratchet”.
First reaction to version 1 was “Isn’t this a little childish?”
Second reaction was for everybody to start using a bunch more words.
These all went on the list.
Employees next gambit: Canvas their friends/family for somebody named Felicia. Get her to apply for a job. If they’re approved, they’ve won back a word. If they’re rejected, get the media to report that he wouldn’t hire girls named Felicia.
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It’s a Schrodinger joke. It’s simultaneously funny and not funny until you look at it.
…there are some statements that can be both at once even when you look - two (or even more) interpretations and all are correct.
Manager–“Yo bae, if you clean up this salty mess you’ll totes be fleek in my book!”
From that point forward it will Queens English exclusively.
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I’m going to credit that as deliberately ironic 
If the manager is attempting
He could hardly go about it in a way less likely to be successful. By making a list of forbidden words, he’s already changed a teaching opportunity into a power struggle, which he seems to be losing.
His message has already moved from what it should have been: [quote]Some of your vocabulary is likely to make some of our customers uncomfortable. That’s bad for business. Here is a list of some of the words most likely to cause discomfort.[/quote] to what it has become: [quote]RESPECT MAH AUTHORITEH![/quote]
I consider it wildly unlikely that any of the customers complained about the meme density in the language of the staff.
What’s far more likely, IMO, is that he, the manager, didn’t like the way they were talking amongst themselves and used his position of authority to attempt to enforce a linguistic standard that has less to do with business success than with his own comfort level.
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If you haven’t been in a Chik-fil-A, here’s some 411 for you. Imagine if Ned Flanders from the Simpsons ran a fast food chain what that would be like.
They are usually maintained to meticulous standards of cleanliness compared to most fast food places. There is a sense that employees must meet a certain ideal of plain vanilla normalcy. There would be no, for example, ear plugs like I see commonly in my Starbucks servers. So this does not shock me one whit.
Before the whole gay hating thing blew up, I used to like going there, even though sometimes the toys were overtly Christian and I am not (like the horrible Veggie Tales). The food was good and I liked that the toys were educational and not just movie tie-ins. However, now I make my own Chik-fil-gay sandiwches at home.
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