RE: On politeness, that very British proclivity...

Love it! So true so true. A happy turn of phrase or phrases.

I am glad I left the workplace in 2017, it was just about changing for the worse, with all this woke nonsense, that has become an industry in itself. I worked in an industry, a man's industry where a spade was called a spade, where if a sentence did not include the word FUCK you were seen as not normal, I love it when a woman swears!

I would have been , as would most of us, been subject to complaints to personnel. But no one cared being straight and abrupt was normal and it worked.

I recall once having a face to face with the head of personnel, who wanted to imprint into my brain that
"Stephen, it is not personnel any longer, we are known as Human Resources, or HR, please work with us"
"and you can fuck off too, I am not a resource, nor a commodity and your dept is personnel"
Thankfully I only answered to one of the senior directors, who laughed his cock off when I updated him, but that was between him and me. Openly he had to...."play the fucking game" LOL