Over at Knuckledragger, Kenny tells a couple of funny stories about HR lectures. Seriously; go read them first, and when you’re done laughing, come on back.
Back when I was working in Corporate World, a couple of the wimmins complained about sexual harassment, but the men accused strenuously denied any such wrongdoing. So to show that they were Doing Something, Management arranged for an outside consultant (impartiality, you see) to come and lecture us about the Evils Of Harassment.
All went well until one of the guys (Charlie) stood up and asked permission to speak. When given this, he asked the speaker, “You mean that this is not allowed?”, turned and scanned the room, then called up one of the women (Kimberley) to come to the front of the room with him.
At this point, we all started to shake with suppressed laughter, because Kimberley was an absolute riot — perpetually hung over, always the first with the dirty jokes, and Monday-morning stories about her sex life that would have made Marilyn Chambers blush.
“So,” Charlie asked the consultant, “Would you say this was inappropriate?” and he stroked Kimberley’s ass.
“Yes, of course.”
“How about this?” and he grabbed Kimberley’s boob.
“Absolutely — ”
“But what about this?” Kimberley interrupted, and pulled Charlie into her arms for a kiss that would have given a statue a wet-towel woody.
By this time, of course, we were all howling, as much at their display as at the look on the consultant’s face.
When the demented couple finally disengaged, Kimberley said, “Well, if kissing my husband will get me fired, then I’m outta here.”
Nothing the consultant said after that was taken seriously, and the couple got a semi-serious bollocking from management for making fun of the whole thing. Oh, and shortly after that the three feministicals who’d complained about harassment all quit in a huff, to the relief of everyone (including management).
But these were the Good Old Days, back when people still had a sense of humor. Nowadays, the Robespierres in Human Resources would have the couple fired, and management would acquiesce, the fucking cowards, despite the fact that Charlie was the company’s best salesman, and his wife the second-best programmer.
Excellent!
That was more than excellent. It was given the proper amount of derision that it so aptly needed.
The safety stuff is just as bad. We had a staff member fall asleep at his desk and fall out of his chair. He got a small cut on his forehead. Policy said “all injuries, no matter how slight, must be reported” so our sleeper turned in an accident form. All accidents had to be investigated by our safety guy, so he comes to the office and interviews the victim, a half dozen witnesses, and takes about fifty pictures of the cubicle, desk and chair. The accident report had a section for “corrective action taken” so safety guy lectures the victim for about 45 minutes on the proper way to sit in an office chair.
Safety guy didn’t have a lot to do so that was his entertainment for the week. The next day somebody (who will remain nameless) brought the sleeper a ten dollar Wally World bicycle helmet. Problem solved.
Yes it was a government agency.
Did the pictures have circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one?
Damn! I’m old enough to know where that came from.
I was in a sexual harassment class once. The instructor, a rather nice looking woman, used me for a scenario. She said “If you want to be promoted, you have to have sex with me.” I looked her up and down, smiled, and replied “Okay.”
Niiiiice.
Many years ago I worked for a large corporation (if I told you the name you’d recognize it). New hires had to go to sexual harassment training. All the scenarios we were presented with involved men harassing women. Since at a previous job I’d had a guy after me (which I solved in the time-honored way of telling him if he didn’t keep his hands to himself he’d be picking his teeth out of tomorrow’s bowel movement), I asked about men being harassed by either women or men. The instructors response was “Company policy is that men are not victims of harassment, but only the harassers.”
A few years later, at another company, we got a new female manager. During her introductory meeting she informed us “My priority is to make sure women get promoted.” I considered contacting HR but decided against.
Just flip up your collar and ask them to repeat that for your lapel mike.
In the 80s I worked at a place that had 50 women and 5 guys, literally. Women are the crassest dirtiest minded evilist groupists that ever lived.
Their toilet was filthy (my job was janitor), they sniped at each other face to face and behind each others backs, one girl who definitely fit the bill was nicknamed “Tits” by herself to head off the other women.
The 60+ female VP who did what passed for sexual harassment lectures in those days, felt me up when I was up a ladder replacing a light ballast.
They all flirted with the men offering plenty and delivering nothing. Not that we minded.
One marketing manager who was model lovely (she had been one until an accident scarred her face. Did not show to the eye, but a camera picked it up. End of her career) used her allure to keep the men off balance.
We were close in age, so she used a little less with me, but still was suggestive. When a conversation turned to prostitution and costs there of, I mentioned when she asked if I ever, I said no, it would cost me at least 100. She said for 100 she would have sex with me. I happened to have my rent money on me, so I took out my wallet and dropped 100 on her desk.
No sex, but we became good friends.
OVer the years, where ever I have worked, the sex harassment rules have always been used to punish men, and sometimes, beautiful women. MOstly though people ignore them and we would quietly flirt away.
One fine Sunday morning in the [redacted} Air National Guard, I was told I was overdue Sexual Harassment Training, and I should attend that afternoon with my branch chief. My secondary duty was to keep said Chief out of trouble.
I failed.
I did fairly well at first, by appealing to his sense of community (Don’t ask her that, we all just want to get out of here), bribery (beer’s on me at the NCO Club if you keep your mouth shut) and threats of bodily harm (We’ve both know what pepper spray is like, and you know I’ll do it – shut the fuck up, now!). Unfortunately, I relaxed a bit too much towards the end of the briefing. I had just turned a bit to check my phone just as our instructor had stated “… and under no circumstances is it ever acceptable to have sex in the workplace”, and saw my Chief’s hand go up. Awww shiiiittt…….
“Chief [redacted}, did you have a question on that?”
“Yeah. What if you work in porn??”
Go directly to the commanders office – Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Leave Drill On Time. The Chief found it quite funny that he had been written up more as an E9 than at any lower rank.
Was at an HR orientation for new hires. Female instructor had us role play being members of other cultures. She picked my buddy (ex-SF 2nd gen Polish) to role play an Arab.
He got up front and proceeded to tell her to shut up, because she is a woman and a man was talking, get behind him and cover up her whorish hair.
Half the class was shocked into silence, the other half (mostly ex-military with actual experience living in and around non US cultures) where trying to hold it together. to her credit the instructor took it well and did not retaliate.
She did get a little miffed with me as, during introductions and discussion of our “ethnic and cultural”backgrounds I stated that I was a generic Mid-Western American, I didn’t know where my ancestors came from (not entirely true) and did not care as it was irrelevant.
My boss and his admin assistant were looking over plans on a table when he asked me to come take a look.
I walked up between them, put a hand on each of their backs to lean in.
Two weeks later I got a letter from corp. attorney of a complaint of sexual harassment from her.
My boss backed me up to no avail.
Corp. settled with her with a new Volvo, $15,000, and a permanent job.
Six months of completely ignoring her by everyone, including all of the women, she quit.
Forty-years of self-employment and sole-proprietorship has left me bereft of anything to say,
except I haven’t missed anything.
Early 70″s I worked for a Large Consultant Engineering Firm. Each floor had a secretarial pool. The turnover was constant mostly because it served as the best place for young engineers to meet girls who didn’t immediately write you off as a hopelessly socially inept nerd. There were no female engineers at the time….. Well at least none that didn’t play for the same team.
I miss the 70’s. It was much more fun before girls were allowed to wear pants. Watch Mad Men if you weren’t around at the time. It wasn’t just at the Ad Agency’s where offices used to be fun places to work.
To paraphrase Stephen Fry; it’s clear there are many people in the world who need to be killed, and most of them work for HR.
I used to say that about IT.
I used to fly for a well known international airline. When all the harassment stuff started to kick in a bunch of pilots were trapped in a classroom being lectured by a thin-lipped feminist on the evils of sexual harassment. They needed to change their habits or else.
After a while a gruff old captain asked a question: ‘Just last week I had a stewardess trying to kick my room door down at 2AM. Would that be considered harassment?’
The HR type grudgingly admitted that it would.
‘That what I thought, so I let her out’, replied the captain.
The room erupted with laughter and that was the end of the lesson.