I’m over 60 and this is the first time I’ve heard that, too.
Maybe it was a Canada draft thing?
I associate “Greetings” with the follow-on phrase “people of Earth “, but I had never heard it associated with the draft.
Meanwhile, a reminder that you can watch the school committee meeting tonight if you want!
It was an American draft thing - but the draft ended somewhere around 1973 which means the last people who got draft notices are around 67 or so. I’m 58 and I’ve only heard of it from movies/TV shows/books that were set while there was still a draft.
In other words, you’ll only accept linguistic change once it already happened?
Lots of people used that same exact argument to argue that there’s no good reason for gender neutral pronouns either.
Anyways, there seems to be a great reason not to use “ladies” in the workplace: many women find it demeaning, for a host of reasons already provided.
Really? Maybe it’s a generational thing but I can’t even imagine saying “ladies and gentlemen” in any setting (maybe outside of a roleplaying game), because I live in 2023 and work in a tech field, I’m not the Ringmaster in an interwar era circus. Ladies and gentlemen sounds incredibly stilted and awkward to me.
Anyways, I don’t think people are so much objecting to “ladies and gentlemen”(it wasn’t what set this story off, at least!). Awkwardness aside, “ladies and gentlemen” is probably the least cringey way to use “ladies”.
Ha! I was replying while still catching up, and I had the same exact reaction.
Ooooh, he meant THAT KIND of draft? Yeah, I was thinking “draft” notices, like letters that aren’t done yet 
Yeah, I don’t think the “greetings = draft notice” connection exista anymore; I’m about 20 years younger than the last draft, and that’s not something I’ve ever heard of.
I’m 59 and while I’m vaguely aware of the Greetings being associated with draft notices, I would never have thought of it when seeing an email starting that way. I’m pretty certain that even back then it wasn’t the only context where it was used. Most of today’s working world would have no idea about that connection.
I started emails with Greetings, Team, Hello, Hey or nothing at all. In fairness, engineers tend to be informal. That said, I can’t recall ever seeing Ladies or Gentlemen ever used since the start of my career in 1990. I may have used Ladies in spoken form in a very informal joking way with work friends that I knew well. Never ever ever as part of the interview process. I would be way out of line.
The guy whose job was rescinded was an ass.
Yeah, after he went crying to the newspaper because he didn’t get a job, and brought a ton of attention to this school board, to the point where they couldn’t even have a meeting, I’m sure they are just sick that they didn’t hire this totally reasonable, non-attention hog person.
And don’t forget, the guy just used Ladies. There was a glaring lie in the OP claiming he used Ladies and Gentlemen.
Exactly. Emails start with “Good day Name”; “Good day Name, Name” is an acceptable alternative; then it’s “Good day all”.
There’s a guy in my bridge group who sometimes addresses the women as “ladies”. He generally does it when he is jokingly asserting his male privilege. That would be totally inappropriate at work.
My emails start
Name, …
When i have a question or request and just dive right in when i don’t.
I don’t know if you were saying that I was being inappropriate but if I did something like this, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. It would have been in a context where we were all joking around and all knew each other for many years and I can’t even think of a specific instance. I was just trying to think of anytime where it may have been acceptable. Your point is taken though and I’m retired now anyway.
Is that no longer appropriate?
I’m in my 50s and in 34 years of being in the corporate world, I’ve never seen it used outside some bizarre legal jargon loving lawyers, and that was in the 1990s.
I’m pretty sure the only times I’ve seen “Ladies” used as a greeting in the 21st century has been from guys who were on the verge of retirement and constantly complained about the business world going to hell with “executives” having to do their own correspondence.
It’s not clear from the school committee agenda, but you can actually watch the school committee meeting live on YouTube at 6 PM on the Easthampton Media channel.
Inappropriate - I don’t know, I guess it might still be appropriate if you were addressing a letter/memo to multiple people , all of whom were men - but I haven’t actually seen it since the 80s
“I now call this meeting to order . . .”
“Board members and members of the public . . .”
"Let me introduce our first speaker . . . "
"Thank you all for coming . . . "
“Ladies and gentlemen” has a distinctly old-fashioned sound to me. And it definitely jams everybody into one of two boxes. But even that doesn’t grate on me the way “ladies” on its own does – probably because it’s at least addressing both of its genders in the same fashion. Which, as has been noted, is a social fashion; not a business one. “Ladies” on its own, even when the group addressed is all female, loses that connotation and comes across as condescending. “Ladies” to the women in a group, when anything other than “gentlemen” is used to apply to the men, or when the women are being called out separately from the men, is even worse.
“Ladies” in a social group may or may not be annoying, depending on the particular group, the context, and the tone of voice.
I had friends getting those draft notices in the early 70’s; but I don’t think it was ever associated only or specifically with draft notices. It was used in draft notices because it was a standard, uh, greeting at the time, in a wide variety of contexts.
(My father used to say “Greetings and salutations!” – but that was in a joking social context, he wouldn’t have used that in a business letter. Business letters in the 1950’s and '60’s were very precise about what to use when. Less so now; probably the main remaining leftover is addressing people as “dear” who are most definitely not dear to the letter writer. But that’s done to anybody.)
No, if you are joking with friends, your group gets to set whatever rules they like. If you addressed me “ladies” at work, I’d be pretty annoyed, though.