There’s No Offensiveness Without Fire

Our office is being visited by a Fire Marshall to update our emergency training.

Fire Marshall: “So, you take this, which is flame retardant, and—”

My boss suddenly sticks his hand up but speaks anyway, not waiting to be called upon. 

Boss: “That is an offensive word! You can’t say that!”

The Fire Marshall sighs; he’s had this conversation before.

Fire Marshall: “So, that is not an offensive word. If you are offended by it then that’s on you, but it is the official and correct word, and—”

Boss: “Just call it fireproof without using such damaging language!” 

Fire Marshall: “You wanna talk about damaging language? Calling it ‘fireproof’ would actually be dangerous because flame retardant does not equal fireproof! Using the wrong word in a fire emergency can possibly result in the further propagation of that emergency! So would you rather be arguing the semantics of how a real word sounds similar to an offensive one but is not that word, or would you rather not be on fire?”

Boss: “…it’s still an awful word.”

Luckily, we moved on!