I have had the exact same conversation with HR. Someone takes offense at something and they use it as leverage to suppress any further potential offenses, despite the fact that trying to avoid offending others is completely futile. Because once you accept that kind of policy, you become a target of abuse from others willing to claim offense at just about anything.

Dumb idea... what if you play the game yourself? They can't proof you are just pretending to be offended.

It's the first mover's advantage. When someone reports you everyone becomes suspicious and if you try to use the same tactics you get scoffed at and ignored.

So what did you say though??

I can't even remember. Certainly, nothing intended to cause offense. And that's where things go off the rails. Intent matters. This is how comedians can get away with saying things that a normal person cannot, because a "performance" puts things in a different context. And this gets to my point: it is easy to take offense at most anything people say, if you twist it out of context and put your own spin on it.

As mentioned in another comment, the "first mover advantage" matters when it comes to these matters. The person that initially frames the issue will be given more credence in most cases, because we as a culture have pretty much taken a shit upon the whole notion of "innocent until proven guilty".

> The person that initially frames the issue will be given more credence in most cases, because we as a culture have pretty much taken a shit upon the whole notion of "innocent until proven guilty".

That's a legal precept, not a cultural one.

We've culturally never adhered to it as a nation, nor really pretended to.

We've really not done that great a job of it even in the legal realm, at the level of policing. The courts are a better story.