[evilduck]

Digestible maybe, but swapping "friendly" in for "fucking" changes the tone and intent of someone's statement. At least "freaking" expresses similar, if muted, exclamation.

A recipient who is being not-so-subtly reproached with an F-bomb acronym might misunderstand what is being implied.

[hinkley]

But when the person asking was management, and asking for the tenth time, there was a decided advantage to changing the tone.

All of that is now wrapped up in the initialism.