Goldman Sachs to Employees: Keep it Clean

Goldman Sachs, embarrassed by the revelation of emails littered with dirty words, has ordered its employees to clean up their language online.

So the investment banking giant’s 34,000 employees will have to avoid the words you can’t say on TV in their emails, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The move is a reaction to the revelation of an internal email from Thomas Montag, former head of sales and trading at Goldman Sachs, who called an investment, “one sh**y deal.” Senator Carl Levin got a hold of the email and blasted the company over it in Congressional hearings.

So what’s the lesson for small businesses and entrepreneurs from the banking giant? It’s this: The new rule is a good one. Don’t say something online you’d be embarrassed to have read back to you by a U.S. Senator.

True, most entrepreneurs aren’t likely to wind up in the same position as Goldman Sachs. But you still don’t want your online ramblings to come back and hurt your business--especially when it comes so something as trivial as cussing in e-mails.

So if you wouldn’t say it to your grandmother, don’t write it in e-mails.