Worker in his 50s tells 26-year-old coworker that she’s “overreacting” to his term of endearment: ‘What your coworker is doing is embarrassing’ – FAIL Blog

When people reference unfunny nicknames as “terms of endearment,” they’re forgetting an important part of the phrase. It’s supposed to be endearing… but it’s often just pretty cringy or uncool. So often, the “term of endearment” is just an eye-roll-inducing, lightly veiled insult. In this person’s case, her coworker keeps calling her a phrase that she’s getting the ick from! So often, it’s family members who pull these kinds of shenanigans. When a coworker does it, that’s the kind of thing you can immediately go to HR about. 

Age differences can often spark disagreements between coworkers. Some things just translate differently! This seems especially potent with emoji usage. What does the thumbs-up emoji mean to you? If it means a simple “yes, sounds good,” then welcome, Gen Xers and Boomers! If you interpret a thumbs-up as almost a scoffing “okay, whatever,” then you might be a Millennial or younger. It implies you’re having a conversation that’s then been cut off by a hand gesture. Of course, this is just one tiny example that probably doesn’t really bother anyone… but there are tons of examples of little misunderstandings that can spark workplace squabbling. 

Sassy folks in the comments suggested calling this guy an old-timer or a dinosaur as her own term of endearment. But please, don’t do that! Instead, just take a deep breath and let HR handle it, because there’s no way they’ll put up with this kind of belittling for long. 

After that, read about the business employees who put their heads together and got petty revenge on the 6 phone reps who wouldn’t leave them be: ‘I explained that we didn’t have 500 mobile [phone] accounts.’