Singular "they" should be accepted in formal English.

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Will singular "they" be acceptable in formal English in the future? I wish it would. In a commercial I heard "You wouldn't do your doctor's job, so why should you do hers.". They apparently had to pick a gender for the doctor since singular "they" was considered unacceptable. And apparently they couldn't "his" because that would apparently be sexist by saying that women shouldn't be doctors. And saying "his or hers" would be cumbersome. So that picked the female gender for the doctor. They should just start accepting singular "they". Then a gender doesn't need to be picked.

I do it as much as possible in my language use

Yes.a it is a conundrum.

Like a frantic homeowner who needs to fix something, and grabs a butter knife to use as a flat headed screwdriver we English speakers will grab "they" (the pronoun for third person plural), and use it as the makeshift tool for third person singular when don't know the gender of the person being talked about.

It's what people do already. I wish we'd gone with some new word, but I don't see a consensus forming.

And as to the inspiration for the thread, random criminals are always 'he.'

I think the singular they should have been accepted into the English language a long time ago.

What was said in the commercial was actually "Your doctor wouldn't do your job, so why should you do hers?"

I struggled with it for a while because the idea of it being plural is just so damned ingrained, but I use it in the absence of anything else. I really look forward to the day when there are no gendered pronouns and a people are just people.
And while we're at it, isn't it time that 'other/prefer not to say' was an option when you register on this site?
I am happy with the body that I was born with, but that doesn't mean I identify as a woman! I don't care what pronouns people use to refer to me, but I don't believe in binary gender either.
Non-binary is the only way we will ever defeat the machines...

Not having seen the commercial in question I can't say for sure, but wouldn't "theirs" be perfectly acceptable in this context; referring to the doctors of all the respective viewers of the ad?

A much more pressing concern would be making the royal we acceptable in common parlance. Because it would be funny.

My step-father uses the royal we all the time (properly called nosism) - he was born and raised in a part of London where this has long been a part of the working class dialect (the origin is probably different to the proper royal we, English pronouns have been through some bizarre changes over the centuries. You still hear thou and thee sometimes here in Yorkshire.)

Funny? Yeah, we used to take the mickey out of him all the time; "Taking your imaginary friend to the toilet again?"
Confusing? You bet! I was already in my teens when he moved in with us, and had only ever heard the royal we from the Queen on TV. I never had the faintest idea whether my step-dad had done things alone or with company.

Absolutely perfect!

Perfect for this forum.