Tag Archives: Discrimination

If I did that, I’d get fired.

Posted in Employee Relations, HR Policy, Leadership, Management Effectiveness, Radical HR, Workplace by

Can someone explain to me how some people get away with stuff that any regular Joe (can I call you Joe?) would get shit-canned for in a hot minute?

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Let’s take Roger Ailes for example. Prior to this tub of lard’s 20-year reign as CEO at Fox News, good ol’ Rog was a media consultant for the likes of Nixon, Reagan, Dubya and Rudy Guiliani. (No wonder he ended up at Fox, eh’?) After multiple allegations of sexual harassment by on-air talent Gretchen Carlson and other women, Rupert Murdoch and Co. allowed Ailes the opportunity to resign with $40million in his pocket. Any HR professional with classic training will tell you that one, ONE confirmed instance of quid pro quo (“this for that”) sexual harassment and the accused will be terminated. No, they will not be given severance. No, they will not receive unemployment. Yes, they will get escorted out by security. Yet this piece of shit got to negotiate the terms of his departure from the company and left without the need to be gainfully employed ever again. I sure hope he learns his lesson while sitting in his home theatre watching Knute Rockne, All American whilst eating an endless bucket of popcorn.

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How about that asshole derp, John Stumpf, now, former CEO of Wells Fargo? If I presided over the theft of at least one customer, my ass would’ve been tossed on the streets and I would never work in this town again. Who wants to take bets that Stumpf has a high-ranking job at another financial institution within the next two years? As you may have already heard, Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees and was fined $185 million for fake accounts opened by employees since 2011 as a response to the high-pressure sales tactics required and rewarded by an incentive-laced bonus program. Fingers were pointed by Wells Fargo higher-ups at the lowly Wells Fargo associates. When grilled in front of a congressional committee, Stumpf, insisted the culture of the company did not contribute to the unethical practices of management and employees while also testifying that he “did not know that level of detail” when the Committee outlined Wells Fargo’s various public sales tactics. Oh yeah, and also Stumpf dumped a shitload of company stock sometime after he found out about about the accounts. It was the largest stock sale he made to date. If I did that, I’d get fired and I would probably be in jail.

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And the mother of all “Chief Predatory Officers” Dov Charney. Sexual harassment was so ingrained in the culture at American Apparel that the employee handbook actually warned that the company was a “sexually charged” environment. As the name of the company suggests, this was not a company filming porns, this was an apparel design and manufacturing company. Indeed, Dov did his best to create said culture- it has been a matter of fact that Mr. Charney masturbated while being interviewing by a magazine editor, walked around his offices in his underwear and stored videos on company computers of he and company employees and models engaged in sexual acts. Charney also stands accused of misusing company funds. American Apparel finally ousted Charney but now finds itself in bankruptcy proceedings. But don’t you worry, Dov is back on the fashion scene. In August 2016, Dov reported he received a $10 million dollar loan for a new t-shirt venture.

Now excuse me while I take a shower to wash off the sleaze.

Straight Talk on Harassment Training

Posted in HR Policy by

Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation Prevention Training is the worst! How can training employees and managers to contribute to a corporate environment free from discriminatory and harassing behavior be bad or even the worst, you ask? Because harassment training is stale, it begets stupid commentary and it has to exist in the first place. 

First, the content is dry, it’s boring, it’s routine. There is no way to make this training fun. I can’t even sell it as another “tool in your toolbox.” I’ve developed training at two different companies,  created two different presentations and both were exactly 24 Powerpoint slides of the same content. Protected classes- check; history lesson of Federal law- you bet; examples of discrimination- oh yeah; sexual harassment- both hostile environment and quid pro quo- yup, got that. Retaliation, Code of Conduct, verbatim policies copied and pasted from the Employee Handbook- it’s all there. As much as I want to be an HR Extraordinaire, there is no way to brush the wand of innovation over this training. The only thing to hope for is new material. Despite the number of companies where training is mandatory and where hordes of employees have all been trained en masse, the corporate environment year over year miraculously keeps the pipeline of palm-to-forehand dumbshit-tery a-flowing.harassment

Second, the unending number of asinine comments. Not the straight-up ignorant comments that led to the training in the first place, but the inane comments that fly out of the employees’ mouths when the training is announced. You know who are the absolute worst, Managers! Yes, Managers somehow come down with a case of uncontrollable mouth diarrhea as soon as the training invite hits their inbox. “Now that I’m trained, I’m free to harass, right?” “Is this training going to teach me how to harass better?” and “Oooh, you can’t say that, that’s discrimination against (insert any characteristic that’s not actually a protected class)” Hardy-har-har, you witless buffoons.

Third and finally, Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation Prevention Training is the worst because its even a thing.
Why can’t people just come to work, get the job done, have a friendly conversation with his or her colleagues and then go home? Somehow in that basic transaction, we find ways to bash other people for characteristics they can’t even control. Somehow we just have to be better than someone, even at work, to make ourselves feel better. On the other hand, if everyone minded their P’s and Q’s in the workplace, at worst, I probably wouldn’t have a job and at best, I wouldn’t be writing this post.