One of the common complaints about the current generation - right up there with participation trophies and selfies - is a contempt for the idea of "safe spaces". The public sphere, it is argued, is not meant to be a safe space. The Internet isn't "safe", college campuses aren't "safe", and so on. Kids these days need to be exposed to objectionable ideas, so they aren't raised in a bubble, or so goes the dire warning.

As you may have guessed, I disagree. I think that in our modern digital world, where everyone has a customized algorithmic view of news and opinions and even our own friends and family, that every person is developing a personal bubble, and it's entirely that person's responsibility to be aware of that bubble and manage it accordingly. If you want your bubble to be "safe" in certain ways and not in others, that's your prerogative.

I do like the current trend of pro-safe-spacers and pro-trigger-warningers to avoid words like "politically correct" in favour of simply calling people assholes and shitheads. If you say to someone "hey, please don't talk politics" or "hey, don't use male pronouns for me" or "hey, don't flirt with me while I'm trying to work", and then they go ahead and do it anyway for no real reason other than the fact that they want to... yeah, they're an asshole. "Asshole" is accurate.

Like Greg, I'm an able-bodied cis white dude, I'm no more likely to deal with workplace sexual harassment or discrimination than I am to have an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts, but I can understand that there are people who do have those issues. Greg is purely pragmatic here, and I do think that's the right approach to take to campus or workplace or online safe spaces. Regardless of the validity of a complaint - any sort of complaint - it is one that should be addressed if it's making people have traumatic flashbacks or allergic reactions or otherwise making it difficult for them to do their damn jobs. Greg isn't there to make people feel safe, he's there to manage a restaurant. If creating a safe space in which certain kinds of expression are prohibited gets food out the door faster, then so be it.

In such ways, progress is made.