At my past three workplaces spanning more than a decade, such an utterance would get you fired immediately. In fact, I knew of it happening, even though I didn't know the involved parties, because it was such shameful behavior that it was widely talked about.

Almost everything is a real thing that happens every day, but the extent of it and where it occurs is not always easy to know. Do I see people every day have to suffer the indignity of other people's tasteless or outright hostile jokes? No, it is quite rare.

Do I see people treated differently because they are young/old, not meeting an arbitrary standard of beauty, because they are not an extrovert who feels confident in expressing their opinion or uncertainty, because they lost a loved one or are pregnant or have a medical condition that competes with their ability to work 60 hours a week? Nearly every week I see this. But there's no Slack emojis for these things.

I would rather see a broad standard of tolerance and dignity applied in the workplace but in the U.S. at least what we get are empty gestures towards certain groups and those groups go in and out of fashion with the media cycle.