A coworker was asked in a meeting how he was holding up after pulling an epic two day sprint to deliver a project that saved our butts. He replied “I felt like jumping out of a window.”

Someone reported him for not warning the room about suicidal ideation before saying it and not considering that it might be triggering. He was actually reprimanded.

Unfortunately typical of the place. I left soon after.

Reminds me of that one time my partner mentioned "Latino" in a meeting, referring to people from Central and South America in broad terms (this was a marketing meeting, where customers are naturally grouped together along various dimensions).

She was told to not use "Latino"; but to use "LatinX" instead. What hurt more was the implication that she was being insensitive.

When I learned of it, I asked my Mexican friends which one they preferred. None of them had heard of "LatinX" and were as confused as I was.

> I think if an employee can't handle simple constructive criticism or clarifications maybe they should not be employed.

and then

> I was encouraged to use "y'all" [..] I thought that was a bridge too far.

I wonder if there might be a small bias on your part. The criticism you deem constructive everyone shall endure, but the other criticism you deem a bridge too far you yourself shall not endure.

Both of these issues come because our ancestors messed up changing the language.

Centuries ago, "thou" was singular second person and "you" was plural second person.

"Thou" got abandoned and "you" lost its original meaning to replace "thou" as the new singular second person.

"You guys" or "y'all" are simply attempts to re-introduce a needed pronoun.

I go for “yinz” then, and tell them not to discriminate against my Pittsburgh area heritage

Odd, the dictionary definition (here: webster's) is literally:

> guy: (...) person —used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex

Just holler

> I'm all for inclusive language but I thought that was a bridge too far.

Presumably you haven’t been living on “the other side” for a whole life. Try living decades in environments where you’re constantly devalued in little ways, and you too may grow to become resentful.

Now, maybe you were chastised, or maybe you were just asked politely and interpreted it as a reprimand. I wasn’t there, I can’t say, all I have is your side. But let’s say the person did chastise you. They could probably have been more polite about it, but how many times have they been polite before with no results? That’s maybe not your fault, but you did unwillingly contribute to that person’s exasperation that day.

All I’m saying is let’s have a little empathy towards others, even when they don’t have it towards us, because we all have days when we’re our best and days when we aren’t, and we don’t know what the other person is going through.

Edit: I want to thank the downvoters for not letting me forget HN has turned into a cesspool and spending long here isn’t healthy. This is the website where calling other people subhuman and cheering for their extermination is upvoted (I’m not referring to the parent comment, but something I’ve seen more than once) and calling for empathy and union is downvoted. With such a backwards inhumane cheering squad, it’s no wonder tech companies are what they are.

If we want to trace back the etymology of the term "guy" we would unearth some interesting facts. The most infamous "Guy" of the 17th century is Guy Fawkes, would-be Catholic terrorist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

Guy Fawkes is most notorious in the UK today as the progenitor of Guy Fawkes Night, where children solicit "a penny for the Guy?" and the funds raised ostensibly go to construct and burn a large straw effigy of Guy, in order to celebrate his defeat and the survival of the Parliament. He was executed, not by burning but by hanging, but nevertheless Guy Fawkes is the original Burning Man.

Guy Fawkes Night was imported to the United States during our independence, and it became Pope Night, a night of mayhem and anti-Catholic vandalism and hooliganism. George Washington once told his military troops to knock it off with the Pope Night shenanigans, because it was alienating Canadians.

So the term "guy" became genericized, beginning in Australia it seems, to refer to a grubby lower-class Catholic boy. After a few centuries of circulating in this way, it lost most of its derogatory connotation and became a generic way to refer to men or boys, and by extension, girls and women.

I don't take offense at being called "guy", nor would I if I were female, and especially because today in the USA, it is so generic and inoffensive. Nobody recalls its sordid roots, even if Pope Night is making a resurgence around here.

Can you use "hey everyone" or does that offend schizophrenics?

The Gen Z and Alphas will save us. As a late Gen X, most of our cohorts were bogged down eating for boomers to die and are lost causes in big companies.