Well, last weekend brought another romantic date night for Dan and me; dinner at the local diner. If you must know I had a tuna melt. As usual I wouldn’t let Dan talk because a couple I’m going to call Bob and Betty were in the booth behind us, talking loudly. This is, by the way, the whole reason I go out to eat. Eavesdropping is one of my hobbies.
Bob and Betty opined on many things over the course of their meal, but inevitably the talk turned to careers. Bob is unemployed, but Betty points that out as a blessing. The company he used to work for sucked. Before we go any further, I want to point out that I knew what was coming next. It’s always the next thing people talk about. The gloom and doom of Human Resources. Loathing HR is a very popular parlor game.
Betty has it all figured out. What HR does, is spend all their time figuring out how to get more paper in everyone’s file so they can fire them without getting sued. Bob adds that HR didn’t believe he was an honest, hardworking guy. That’s why those SOBs watched him all the time.
For the record (and Mimi and Kate, please jump in as necessary), most HR people with a lick of sense try very hard not to watch anyone, ever. I don’t want to know what you’re doing, because once I know I have to do something. But sometimes I can’t help it-I suddenly know stuff I don’t want to know. And if I call you into my office and say something has “come to my attention,” that is not an open invitation for you to interrogate me about who told on you. You’re missing the point. If I can’t get you to stop, I will lean over and whisper “it was Zelda in accounting” and you will say “I don’t know any Zelda in accounting” and I’ll say “hmmm” and pretend to make a note in your file. If you’re really annoying I’ll tilt my head to one side and stare at you for a full 15 seconds and then say “hmmm” again.
I don’t know where people keep getting the idea that HR is a bad thing…
Credit: Scott Adams
I never could find a copy of the Evil HR Digest, but I learned everything I know from Catbert:
With the help of his “random policy generator” he comes up with sadistic, illogical, and often evil policies to enforce on the employees, such as permanently branding employees, requiring employees to schedule sick time before they actually get sick, replacing the health plan with Google and making time spent in the bathroom count as “vacation.” He also has the help of his “Life Suck 3000” (to suck the life force out of employees faster than normal) …Catbert typically celebrates the creation of a new evil policy by purring loudly, hugging himself, doing the “evil dance” or by occasionally laughing himself fuzzy.
Credit: Wikipedia
The key is to walk around, be perceived as perpetually available and then apologize for an unforgivable deadline that precludes time for a chat. This of course sounds absolutely brilliant to me, and I’m now self-flagellating for never having thought of it until now.
Well I was never that clever. I liked to walk around with a clip board and tell people I was doing a time and motion study. Productivity skyrocketed!
I stopped going to company happy hours because I didn’t want to see anything I had to address! We had a big roulette wheel with everyone’s name on it and every month we would turn it to see who got canned! So much easier than watching people. We were truly evil. We made people wear shoes and cover their boobs too. Long live Catbert!
Oh yes, you have inspired me to write another HR memories post! Thanks for that!
I love it! Shirts AND shoes? Pretty tight ship you ran. I want to hear more of your stories.
I also found it interesting that you go out to dinner with your husband and don’t let him speak. Not a bad idea!
It’s not as hard as you think. Dan is a man of few words; he loves the peace and quiet when I finally shut up for a change!