Well, if, as you said, no offense is intended, then it’s all the same.
“Well, Ladies, < sneer > it looks like you’re not wiling to negotiate with me to give me what I clearly deserve. Good day!”
Later: “They rescinded my job because I called them ladies!”
That’s my take on it. They realized the guy was a douche.
An excellent conclusion based on a fine guess.
Yes, of course it’s a guess. We have information only from the aggrieved party.
As has been said repeatedly in this thread, when there is only a single side of a situation presented, and that side is from the party who is pissed off, it is reasonable to think that the “story” is not completely 100% accurate, and is in fact slanted to make the aggrieved party look good and not at fault.
This is human nature. The guy may not have even fully realized he came across as a patronizing asshole douche… because that’s just how he rolls, and is rarely called on it.
So yes, A Guess. More accurately a theory based on the scant evidence available, and on past experience with patronizing asshole douches, who put others down and then lie about it afterwards.
That’s this entire thread. When the facts aren’t known, it’s all speculation. The only thing speculation proves is our own biases. In absence of facts – who we side with says it all.
@Miller was right. The only logical argument to make at this point is Occam’s razor.
In some contexts and/or in some tones of voice, it sure as hell is.
Three possibilities come to mind:
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Your tone of voice and the general context combine to make it seem respectful rather than disrespectful.
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The particular groups of women you address directly are used to this and have no problem with it.
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At least some of the women you have so addressed didn’t like it at all, but they have more than enough such work to do in their lives already and they weren’t going to bother with this particular incident.
Or, of course, some combination of the above.
– way back in the 1970’s or '80’s, I had a friend who was at school training to be a chef. The men’s restroom door said “Men” on it. The women’s restroom door said “Ladies” on it. She hung a sign on the door that read “Women Against Ladies.”
This is not a new issue.
Maybe one or more of the women complained to the male boss. It’s his job to deal with such things. It isn’t theirs; and the particular workplace may strongly discourage trying to deal with complaints by having arguments between/among employees who are on the same level of the hierarchy. Or the complainant(s) may just have wanted to not have your wife know who complained because of not wanting to get into a direct argument with her.
I would find it straight out rude. The men are given a courtesy title and the woman is first-named?
I would use “man” and “woman” in that sentence. Or possibly “person” for both – if I were in any doubt as to gender, or knew that one of them identified other than as male or female, I would definitely use “person”; but I might do that anyway.
That was where I got into “trouble” - and I wouldn’t say it was trouble, someone just pointed out to me that it sounded mocking. I worked in IT and am a woman and usually worked in the weird “non-official in charge job” - project manager, team lead, group chair, that sort of thing. So I’d address the team as “gentlemen” - and apparently one of my team members thought I was mocking him. He was known for having a thin skin, being not fond of me, resenting my “in change” roles, and being anti feminist (and I was a pretty out feminist). One of my teammates and work friends pointed out “Ted thinks you are mocking us when you refer to us as gentlemen” So I wasn’t going to win anyway. It was an easy word to drop from my vocabulary. Ted wasn’t easy to work with, but I didn’t need to do things that made him any more difficult to work with.
That was my reaction. But I don’t think that “Gentlemen and Lady” would have been an acceptable alternative. And I don’t recall if the group size was too unwieldly to first-name everyone individually, but it sometimes is.
I presume the preferred approach is to just eliminate all personalization and go with “Good Morning.” (I can’t think of a workable gender-neutral equivalent that is appropriately formal).
Interesting. It’s not uncommon for me to hear a woman refer to a group of men as “gentlemen” (or to address them as such). It wouldn’t occur to me that it was mocking (but maybe it is).
But I assume that there is a different dynamic when the speaker is not a member of the group. I would imagine it’s not considered offensive for a woman to address a group of woman as “Ladies” (or is it?).
(There’s also the socio-economic element to both the terms “ladies” and “gentleman.” I don’t know how that plays out in IT or with your specific coworkers, but I can where it could be seen as mocking if someone was speaking to a group of clearly lower social status).
I typically use “Hello all” for my messages if there are more than 3 people, regardless of their genders. In many cases the names are Indian and I haven’t met many of them in person so I’m not clear on their genders anyway.
I have to admit, this is where Y’all and All y’all come in handy.
Here’s an update from the Boston Globe with new statements from the “other side” of the issue. I wish I could provide a gift link, but it seems that is not an option at the Globe. Here are some relevant quotes:
Following Vito Perrone’s claim that his offer to become the next Easthampton superintendent was rescinded for addressing his future colleagues as “ladies” in a negotiation e-mail, School Committee Chair Cynthia Kwiecinski has spoken out, saying there were other factors in the decision.
Kwiecinski told the Daily Hampshire Gazette in an e-mailed statement on Thursday there were “too many concerns” before the committee had begun negotiating the rest of Perrone’s contract for the position and “alarm bells were going off.”
Kwiecinski told the Gazette on Thursday it is true that she was insulted by the way Perrone addressed her and Colby in the correspondence, and that while she speaks informally most of the time, she uses formal titles when addressing a public official.
She also told the Gazette that after sharing Perrone’s counterproposal with the School Committee, “most members” thought addressing the chair “with a familiarity that he had not earned” was “extremely unprofessional” and “inappropriate.”
“The salutation ‘Ladies’ raised concerns among most that the candidate might make administrators and teachers feel uncomfortable if used in the future instead of calling them by their names or titles,” Kwiecinski told the Gazette.
Kwiecinski also said the School Committee had concerns with Perrone’s requests for paid time off and that his salary demands were “unreasonable,” according to the Gazette.
And on the whole “wellness check” by police thing:
Perrone told the Gazette he was informed the committee had chosen him after the members sent a police officer to his Westhampton home for a well-being check shortly after midnight on the day of his interview.
“The police officer asked if I was OK because the School Committee was trying to get a hold of me,” he told the Gazette. “My interview ended at 8 o’clock and I ended up falling asleep around 10:15 … I thought my phone was on, but I guess it wasn’t.”
In her statement to the Gazette, Kwiecinski said the School Committee tried “every means to reach the applicant” and eventually requested the wellness check after an hour because there was genuine concern about his well-being. She told the Gazette that a superintendent should be “available as needed 24/7, with reasonable allowances for personal matters and other obligations,” and that members were “troubled by his lack of response and by his explanation.”
That part still blows my mind and it seems like Perrone was telling the truth about it. Kwiecinski does not come off good here with that “available 24/7” nonsense. That seems completely unreasonable for a job candidate, sorry.
I’m not “taking“ offense. It is offensive to me.
In this case I factor in intent and level of offensiveness in my response. I choose not to pursue it since I assume the intent is benign and I’m in a position of authority over the person, so my professional response is to prioritize the working relationship. However, if someone else asked me to act on it I’d approach him from a growth mindset and not an angry/offended/punitive one. In contrast, a racial slur would provoke a more serious and immediate response.
However, it’s easy to understand why it’s offensive to many professional women. It is offensive to many of us whose professional ambitions had roadblocks placed in the way because of our gender or were told being ambitious wasn’t ladylike. I avoid gendered language as much as possible, as my gender was used as an excuse to block or derail women’s progress in the workforce for generations before me, and to me personally.
“Ladies” is at best archaic and at worst patronizing in the workplace, it’s easily avoided with no one even noticing you’re avoiding it. It’s trivially easy to err on the side of professionalism in this case.
Need a nongendered salutation? I use “colleagues”, “team”, “faculty”, “good morning” etc routinely to good effect.
So now you know and you can’t say you haven’t been told.
I use “All --”
Just chiming in to agree with @IvoryTowerDenizen . I was chatting with a non-binary person at a party, (call them alex) who said their department meetings began, “ladies, gentlemen, and Alex”.
I thought about it, and i can’t remember the last time i was at a department meeting that began with any kind of salutation. My department meetings tend to begin more like, “welcome to our quarterly get together”
That’s so much cleaner. No one is called out. No one’s gender is being treated as relevant.
Yeah, there are dozens of options to choose among, that abandoning Ladies is trivially easy unless you want to dig your heels in the sand on some point you’re trying to make.
I’d say it depends on the group, the relationship, and the tone. It can be just fine. Or it can come off as condescending – even if the speaker’s including herself in the group being condescended to; maybe “minimizing” is a better word in that case. ‘While the men are off doing something important, we ladies are going to make the sandwiches . . .’ – I don’t mean that would be the literal sense, but that it may give that sort of impression.
I’d give it more leeway in a private context than in a professional one. It’s generally not appropriate in a professional context, from any gender.
– @IvoryTowerDenizen, nicely said.
It does make me wonder if the whole story is that some of the women that she worked with asked the boss to ask her to stop calling them “ladies”, rather than the boss just coming up with it out of the blue.
Yes, quite.
It also could be that the boss went to a training and was told to stop using “ladies” because some women don’t like it, and it can be gender-role-reinforcing, which can contribute to a hostile work environment, and then he took the opportunity to mansplain (inaccurately) what he “learned” from the training. I.e., “women are offended by the use of ‘ladies’”.
Let me mansplain just how dumb us men can be sometimes… 
Part of the reason I used “gentlemen” was because it was archaic, and that amused me. But my amusement certainly doesn’t take priority over someone’s discomfort with the word - even if he was a pain in my ass and even if I suspect he was offended more by my existence in the role than my words.
I often get a little cautious about throwing the word “offensive” around. But there are many people who consider themselves women, who strongly do not consider themselves ladies, and are at the least made uncomfortable by that term.
For myself, if it was said by someone who knows me well, I would assume they were excluding me. When it’s said by a stranger, like a server, I think either they are saying it pointedly, in which case it is rude, or they are saying it reflexively, in which case it’s a misguided attempt to be polite. In the latter case, it’s still a bit rude, but I may or may not be bothered by it depending on other factors.