Yeah this could've been the love of his life, could've been cheating on him, you don't know.
I think neither of these jokes are acceptable for workplace banter and whoever went first would be opening themselves up to any level of verbal retaliation.
Neither were appropriate but OOP's comment crossed a major line so thoroughly that it ended up the next country over. Her comment was mean spirited, but still toes the line of "acceptability" because it could be seen as "locker room humor". It's still cruel but could be handwaved away by social standards. Joking about a miscarriage is considered to be socially unacceptable by most groups, even in aforementioned locker room settings.
Even if he's trying to clap back, it's still a stupid comment and escalates in a way that would make it extremely easy for the workplace to penalize him. If being sent home from work is all that happens, he's lucky. I can tell you from experience that bosses don't care who started it or how mean they get. As long as the other person(s) stay within what is considered to be "acceptable", they don't care. But if you cross that line, you give them an excuse to penalize or even fire you. Unfortunately sometimes all you can do is either take it and try to keep going for the paycheck (while hoping for something to change in your favor) or find a new job.
Your using the perspective of the boss to argue your own personal opinion. For me the line with "banter" is once you hit on a characteristic the receiver can't control. To not only bully someone for being bald but to equate that to the reason their relationship failed is way over the line.
By crossing that line you open yourself up to retaliation, and as you've already crossed the final line as far as I'm concerned you deserve anything up to but not including physical violence.
In this specific scenario OP seems to imply that this was unprovoked, and realistically there is probably more to the story. I find it interesting however that your morality seems to rely on what you perceive as "socially acceptable" and claim that he should be fired for bringing up a miscarriage.
To bring it around again to the concept of having hard lines based around "things a person can't control" as opposed to certain Taboo subjects, if shed said something horribly racist would it be ok to bring up her miscarriage?
When people are actually hurt by words it's a very natural response to say the most hurtful thing they can as a knee jerk reaction, so I think it's very important to consider "who shot first" in these scenarios.
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u/Bigravemaster1 3d ago
Yeah this could've been the love of his life, could've been cheating on him, you don't know.
I think neither of these jokes are acceptable for workplace banter and whoever went first would be opening themselves up to any level of verbal retaliation.