Getting away with being offensive

Table of Contents

• Overview
• A few words about my brand
• What do I mean by ‘getting away with it’?
• The most common response: nothing
• What happens if someone does complain?
• So what does this mean for us?
• How likely is any action going to be taken?

Overview

In summary, you can get away with being offensive by considering the social context, understanding if you are in a private or public situation and observing how people respond to your behaviour. It is also important to know what you can do if someone does object.

A few words about my brand

I run a gift brand called Mr. Inappropriate. We sell all sorts of things, but I expect you know that already.

I think this demonstrates that yes, it is possible to get away with being offensive, but only if you do it in the right way.

What do I mean by ‘getting away with it’?

In my experience there are three things that can happen when you say something inappropriate:

• Nothing: either nobody objects or nobody notices.
• You’re told off: someone asks you not to say it again.
• You’re punished: something else happens which could be anything from being thrown out of a shop, having your payment processor account blocked (as I often am), or even being banned from something else.

The most common response: nothing

Of all the things that could happen when you say something inappropriate, the most likely outcome is that nothing happens at all. People pretend not to hear you (even though they usually have) and just ignore it in the hope that the feeling of awkwardness goes away.

This is usually true even if what you said was actually very unpleasant and not just a silly joke.

So why does this happen? Why don’t people speak up more?

I think there are two reasons:

1. Pretending not to notice is much easier than saying something. If you stand up and challenge someone about their behaviour it makes you feel awkward too. Even more so if nobody supports you (which they probably won’t).
2. If someone does say something about it, they risk making themselves look silly, especially if nobody agrees with them. Imagine being the only person asking for someone to be punished for saying something which nobody else thinks is wrong!

Being a trouble-maker is risky because of course it can be great fun but also can lead to looking silly or even getting into trouble.

What happens if someone does complain?

If someone does complain or report something (which is increasingly common) what happens next depends on who deals with it and how much authority they have as well as whether the complaint was reasonable or not.

• If a staff member sees or hears something that looks like bad behaviour (which includes selling funny t-shirts) they will usually do nothing and pretend not to notice it. This makes sense really – if they can get away with doing nothing then why would they bother wasting their time dealing with it? Especially as it could make them look silly if they’re wrong.
• If someone reports a complaint their boss will ask them for details and evidence and will then consider whether any action needs taking. This means that there are two people who need to decide whether action should be taken.

So what does this mean for us?

It means that to get into trouble for doing or saying something inappropriate:

• The victim needs to notice what happened and feel like they want to report it.
• The witness needs to notice that something happened which they think was wrong, then decide whether or not they're going to do anything about it.
• The witness's manager needs to decide whether it's worth pursuing further - which depends on whether it's clear what happened as well as how serious an issue it was.

If whoever observes it decides it's worth investigating further they'll need some kind of evidence like an order number so they'll need access log files which isn't always possible depending on what tools they're using.
Also they'll want some kind of proof that whatever happened was actually 'bad'.
I've had many complaints about me selling offensive t-shirts but I've never been told exactly why it's bad - I'm just told that I'm breaking the rules.
I think this proves my point!

How likely is any action going to be taken?

• The short answer is 'very unlikely'.

The only time anyone has actually done anything about me selling funny clothes was when one of my competitors reported me.
It seems like he did a good job convincing Stripe that I was doing something really terrible because within an hour of him reporting me they'd closed my account.
This meant all orders stopped coming in so once again I couldn't sell anything.
Luckily after a few hours Stripe saw sense realised that they're just harmless jokes so let me carry on selling them again.
If you're interested in seeing these clothes take a look at the shop page - you'll see they're really not very bad at all and I bet you've seen far worse yourself many times before!