Working support in a college means developing an intimate relationship with three things: malfunctioning printers, passive-aggressive post-it notes, and mail that somehow vanishes into thin air.
On this particular day, it was the franking machine pushing me to the brink. It had chewed up the post, jammed for the fourth time in an hour, and was now flashing a cryptic error message that may as well have been in ancient Sumerian.
I was mid-rant. Full vent mode. Letters everywhere, a bin full of shredded envelopes, and a string of swearing that could have made a sailor take notes. Nothing violent—just the usual “bloody this,” “f***ing that,” and a few extras for flavour.
What I didn’t realise was that one of the lecturers was already in the room, quietly working on something in the corner. Clearly unimpressed, they looked up mid-rant with the expression of someone who’d just witnessed a cathedral being graffitied.
“You really shouldn’t be using that kind of language,” they said, with the stiff concern of someone who irons their socks.
Then came the cherry on top:
“I might have to inform your line manager.”
Without missing a beat:
“Well, go f***ing right ahead—he’s over in Stores.”
Then Things Got Pedantic
Before I could go back to wrestling the cursed franking machine, the lecturer decided to double down.
They gestured around the room and said something along the lines of, “Well, this is technically a public space—students could walk in at any time. You need to watch what you’re saying.”
Except… no. That wasn’t true.
I had to set the record straight:
“No, they can’t. The person who first managed this room when I started made it very clear students weren’t allowed in here—and they used to actively chase them out.”
In fact, the only people who swore more than me were the students outside the room—usually while failing to connect to the Wi-Fi or complaining about essay deadlines. If anything, I was the PG version of campus vocabulary that day.
Also — yes, in case anyone’s wondering — autistic people swear too. Quite a lot, actually. It’s often a coping mechanism, a way to vent frustration, or just part of how we process overwhelming situations (like being trapped in a battle with rogue postal equipment). The idea that we’re all overly formal, emotionless, or rule-bound is outdated and flat wrong.
What I Got Instead of a Complaint? A Lecture.
Rather than leaving it there, the lecturer decided to shift gears into a linguistic sermon. Apparently, swearing wasn’t just unprofessional—it was historically blasphemous.
They launched into a brief but intense history lesson on the word “fuck.” According to them, it wasn’t just vulgar; it was a direct reference to sex, once considered so taboo that just uttering it would have earned you a public flogging—or at least a stern letter from the bishop.
And yes, they had sources.
Swearing: From Scandal to Syntax
To be fair, they weren’t wrong. The word fuck does have roots going back centuries. It originally referred to sexual activity in the most unfiltered sense and was once so offensive it didn’t appear in writing for a long time—except in legal punishments or crude graffiti.
But language isn’t a museum. It’s messy, it evolves, and it reflects the tone of the times.
These days, fuck is less about corruption of the soul and more about everyday agony—like when the franking machine eats a whole batch of mail, or someone orders 300 envelopes to the wrong department.
It’s punctuation. It’s emotional shorthand. It’s therapy, without the invoice.
The Aftermath? Surprisingly Chill.
My line manager—legend that he is—laughed when I told him what happened. “Well, at least you’re not bottling it up,” he said, balancing a stack of mislabelled boxes and a cup of vending machine tea.
So no, I didn’t get written up. But I did gain a strange appreciation for how much weight words used to carry—and how little they actually do now, unless you’re determined to give them that power.
It’s just a shame the lecturer never seemed to gain the same appreciation for how little impact swearing actually has these days. You could argue that the world’s changed, but some people are still trying to protect the sanctity of “bloody hell” like it’s the last unicorn.
The franking machine still hates me, by the way.
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