‘You can’t say anything these days’

That’s right. You can't say anything these days.

You can't belittle a colleague and call it banter. You can't ‘just be honest’ in a way that happens to humiliate someone. You can't make a joke at someone else's expense and then claim the moral high ground when they don't laugh.

What a terrible loss that is.

The phrase ‘you can't say anything these days’ rarely means anything was silenced. It usually means someone said something, and someone else felt it. And the speaker found that feeling inconvenient.

Words land somewhere. They always did and always will.

The workplaces worth working in aren't the ones where people say whatever they like. They're the ones where people think before they speak. Not because they're told to, but because they actually care about the person they're speaking to.