I’m fairly good at thinking up insulting nicknames, but I only ever give them to people above me in the work hierarchy. A boss where I currently work is called Jan, and he’s always fucking whinging about one thing or another, so I call him Jankerd (crybaby). A boss I had last year was called Onno, and he was fucking disorganised, so I called him Onnoverzichtelijk (disorganised). One of the managers there was a fucking idiot but he always walked around like the cock of the walk, so I called him Schaakduif (chess pigeon). His name was Abel so I’d also call him Incapabel. There was a lad there called Pepijn who I called Hoofdpijn (headache) for a laugh once or twice. You have to make your fun where you can, sometimes.
I hate people who decide after dealing with the first problem caused by a lack of a rule that hasn’t existed for however long things were going on before the problem that it calls for a very general rule to prevent it from ever happening again. And somehow these assholes often end up in positions where they can set rules like that.
Zero tolerance policies in schools are another example. Suspending a kid for making finger guns isn’t going to prevent school shootings. Banning nicknames isn’t going to prevent anyone from ever insulting someone. It’s just lazy and comes from a desire to reduce complex situations that require thought and maybe complex solutions to simple situations that don’t require much thought and have a simple solution.
General rules aren’t great when they end up banning benign things along with bad things because they are too broad. Like no nicknames vs don’t keep using a nickname if the person asks you to stop.
Reminds me of that story were someone apparently had a document with Sesame Street nicknames for everyone, and almost got fired before the owners intervined.
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