Does Anyone Else Think That Women In The Workplace

[Netpackrat]

"Women in the Workplace"?! I know what those words mean individually, but together, they make no sense.

Quote of the day.

[SoupOrMan]

Having it sent by strip-o-gram

I now know how I'm going to [strike]hand carry[/strike] send in any transfer paperwork to my HR team if an opportunity to get the fuck off the phones arises.

[skb12172]

I agree, but you can still play the game to win…for now, at least.

[Netpackrat]

The real problem on this, is that, literally, HR staff are trained... and are writing into rules and guidelines, that some people are "protected classes".

I can confirm that those are the exact two words used by one of my professors in the HR program at UAF. And that was nearly 20 years ago.

[HTRN]

"Women in the Workplace"?! I know what those words mean individually, but together, they make no sense.

Quote of the day.

I'm 100 percent serious - while there are women in the company, none of them work in the same building I do. There was briefly, a couple months ago, but one worked upstairs soldering, and I only saw her when she was leaving for the day(AFAIK, she she now works at the other building), and a young woman who was one of the semiskilled "minions" that was transferred to the new building and has since left the company.

It comes with working in one of the most male dominated fields...

[Greg]

The real problem on this, is that, literally, HR staff are trained... and are writing into rules and guidelines, that some people are "protected classes".

I can confirm that those are the exact two words used by one of my professors in the HR program at UAF. And that was nearly 20 years ago.

And don't think shameless and/or opportunistic members of those protected classes aren't going to test for ways to take advantage of that status.

[Netpackrat]

The real problem on this, is that, literally, HR staff are trained... and are writing into rules and guidelines, that some people are "protected classes".

I can confirm that those are the exact two words used by one of my professors in the HR program at UAF. And that was nearly 20 years ago.

And don't think shameless and/or opportunistic members of those protected classes aren't going to test for ways to take advantage of that status.

That being said, the class wasn't specific to HR majors; IIRC, all management majors were required to take it (the only HR major specific courses were in training and compensation management). Ironically enough, I think that the rest of the HR majors were the students least likely to grasp the point of those lectures, which was simply to teach how to keep yourself and your employer out of legal trouble. They were simply of the mentality to take it as gospel just because that's what they were taught. I doubt if any of the ones I knew were sharp enough even to really grasp the potential of "weaponizing" the knowledge. Nice people, for the most part, but with a couple of exceptions, not overly possessed of intelligence.

An example, I had a class on "managerial accounting" (aka cost accounting) that I had to take, which ended up being filled with basically the entire HR cohort. After a rough start (original prof died of a heart attack 1 week in), it ended up being a great class, and I ate the material up. I'd drudged my way through the lower division accounting classes like everyone else, but here was something that was not only not boring, but could provide information crucial to making good decisions. I did well on the tests, and by any measure, I would have had a solid A in the class. Except they didn't use any old measure... In order to keep most of the class from failing, the professor had to tweak the numbers such that my final (adjusted) percentage score was well into the triple digits. It wasn't that I was so great, just that the rest of them couldn't grasp some basic concepts or apply simple arithmetic to them. The classes that required group projects were simply excruciating. I am pretty sure on one of those I got stuck with a couple of the dumbest, just to make sure they didn't fail, and because the prof and I didn't have much use for each other by that point.

So yeah, HR becomes dominated not only by those few who use their position to further their own "kind", but also by the dregs of management schools. I occasionally wonder what the hell I was thinking picking that major, but then I run through the reasoning I used and I don't think my logic was flawed, given the assumptions. It's just that my assumptions about what I would want to be doing in the future were pretty far off. If I were still running the family business as head cook and bottle washer, that education would have been invaluable.

One thing I have always wondered about, is that all management majors were required to pass a 200 level course in calculus. I don't know how in the fuck some of them could possibly have accomplished that. I did my first year or two without any declared major, and I took the general calc 200 with all the engineering and science majors. I later had to submit paperwork to get that accepted to fulfill the School of Management's math requirement. So I didn't get to see the difference, and since the class I did take was basically a repeat of what I'd gotten my senior year of high school, I would have known the difference.

[MarkD]

For the record, women earn 75% of men because they increase everyone's non-work workload by 25%.

Far more than that in large corporate environments.

The creation of women-centric risk avoidant, "consensus" culture in organizations, is part of what has made the once great american corporation solidly mediocre.

This.

Compromise doesn't work if person A is right and person B is wrong.

And you don't keep good people around by saying "I know you did your job and Susan's for the last eight months while Susan was on Maternity Leave, but I only have so much in the budget for bonuses and Susan just had a baby, she needs the money."

[skb12172]

Which might be part of the reason that company went out of business. By losing the best people, I mean. They were a MEDICAL SUPPLY COMPANY, for pete's sake. With Gubment contracts!!! Seriously, how do you fuck THAT up???

[Jericho941]

Meh. There's always some total bullshit touchy-feely unfairness, even in an entirely male workcenter.

"Hey, can you take over Frank's project at the end of the day? He's gotta leave early for the next few weeks."
"What? Why?"
"He's gotta take his kids to soccer practice."
"So why doesn't he come in early?"
"He's gotta take his kids to school."
"How about his wife?"
"She's sick, or working strange hours or something. I forget. But she can't do it."
"All right, fine."
"Oh, by the way, be sure to tell Frank congrats on the raise."
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah, I mean, he's such a great guy, and he's got kids, so he needs the money."
"What about me?"
"You? You're single, got no kids. You don't need it."

You even see the same crap in the military. Even just being married gives you a leg up on all those single guys, whose time is suddenly far less important, because reasons. (Those reasons being reality kicking in and wrecking their marriage will turn him into a useless emo kid).