In the workplace, a sense of informality has crept into the way that colleagues address each other. Especially in continental Europe, where linguistic choices of title come in many forms, the informal "tu" (and the like) appeared to dominate the workplace, being reinforced by company protocols in the 1990s. But academics are now noticing something of a backlash against the seemingly imposed informality of pronouns like "tu" in French and "du" in Swedish and German. Some people now in their 20s and 30s appear ill at ease with this casualness and have reverted to using formal forms like "vous" in French, "sie" in German and "ni" in Swedish.
See "The Workplace: The backlash against enforced informality", Matthew Saltmarsh, International Herald Tribune, April 8, 2007