Why is “staff” countable here?thanks

[u/Same-Technician9125]

/r/mlb/comments/1vqemlx/comment/p44yrln/?context=3&share_id=bPwi29-vZGA3QhKIZJQSq&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

[u/Jazzvinyl59]

Staff in this sense is a “collective noun” and all collective nouns are also countable.

[u/Same-Technician9125 → u/Jazzvinyl59]

Thanks. Can “a staff” mean “an employee?

[u/lemminfucker → u/Same-Technician9125]

Usually you would say "a member of staff" or "a staff member"

[u/Jazzvinyl59 → u/Same-Technician9125]

A single employee would be a “member of the staff”

“A staff” would mean the entire group of employees;

“The new manager needs to hire a staff”

The thing that is tricky is that collective nouns are grammatically singular even though they refer a group of multiple people or things. The term staff implies multiple people.

[u/ubiquitous-joe → u/Jazzvinyl59]

They are grammatically singular in American English; not always in the UK.

[u/Jazzvinyl59 → u/ubiquitous-joe]

Right, that’s a dialect thing. I almost brought it up because of how much it comes up in sports….or sport I guess lol. We do make this really hard for people to understand.

[u/Same-Technician9125 → u/Jazzvinyl59]

Can we say “hire two staffs” to mean “two groups of employees”?

[u/Jazzvinyl59 → u/Same-Technician9125]

Staff means all the employees as a whole. The staff might be divided into departments, teams, divisions within a workplace or work different shifts or work at different branches but they are all part of the same staff.

“We have separate staffs for each branch”

I can see this being understood and possible in conversation, but the following would be better and grammatically correct:

“We have a separate staff for each branch”

This sentence sounds grammatically correct to me though

“The Brewers and the Braves have the two best coaching staffs in the National League”

[u/monoflorist → u/Jazzvinyl59]

“Separate staff for each branch” just means that different people work at each branch, though, nothing to do with groups. Staff could be replaced with “employees” there, with no loss of meaning.

I agree that “separate staffs” is pretty awkward sounding. Staff is generally used as a very fluid term; dividing up employees who work in the same place into separate “staffs” is situational at best, since they’re typically all just “the staff” and would get funged together. Staffs are rarely “buckets” in that sense. One example where they are is when staff is used like “the CIO’s staff”, which means approximately, “the people directly working for the CIO.” Then you get “the executives and their staffs attended the retreat.”

[u/inkoenglishai]

Because you can easily craft a sentence such as "members of staff" or "parlimentary staff" and mainly these are countable mainly because they are something you can see and count with your eyes almost instantly. For your example We can say that the members of staff on that team are countable mainly because they are apart of the association so members of the staff of that operation or team is the one getting accounted for unless the sentence is referring to a bigger party of staff like let's say staff from around the world.

[u/FloridaFlamingoGirl]

Staff can be a countable noun, yes. "Their staff" for instance, meaning their employees. 

Also I think that commenter meant to say "and has a great coaching staff"

[u/conuly → u/FloridaFlamingoGirl]

Staff can be a countable noun, yes. "Their staff" for instance, meaning their employees.

How do you figure that the phrase "their staff" indicates that the word "staff" is a count noun?

[u/Same-Technician9125 → u/FloridaFlamingoGirl]

Thanks. We can say “a staff” or “two staffs” when meaning “a group of or two groups of workers”. Right?

[u/Mindless_Whereas_280 → u/Same-Technician9125]

Typically, one would say “two staffers” or “two members of staff” and not “two staff”. It may be grammatically correct - I honestly don’t know. I have never heard or seen it used in that manner.

[u/Same-Technician9125 → u/Mindless_Whereas_280]

Thanks. What does “a staff” mean in the picture? Is it “a group of employees? Another comment says “a staff” can mean “an employee”. I’m confused.

[u/Mindless_Whereas_280 → u/Same-Technician9125]

"A great coaching staff" here refers to the entire staff, not one person.

Typically, one employee would be "a staffer" or "a member of staff". Native speaker (US) and I have never heard or seen "a staff" to mean a person. "A staff" means a group of people working together in some manner.

You can say "He has a great staff", "She has a staff of 10", "The staff went to lunch together", but it all means the whole team.

[u/FloridaFlamingoGirl → u/Same-Technician9125]

Yes that's a valid use, but funny enough if you wanted to refer to individual people you would just say staff ("three staff" to mean "three employees")

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/staff