A Key Problem With Corporate 'Murica

[Disciple]

There was a tragedy day before last in Mississippi. Some nutjob waltzed into his employers facility, Lockheed Martin, a massive corporate entity, and began blasting away. Six or so lost their lives and he killed himself. There is no doubting any of that tragedy, and its seriousness should never be minimized.

But it is very interesting to note he didn't begin blasting away until right after his employer forced him to attend a sensitivity training seminar.

If I ever owned a big company, the FIRST department I'd cut would be 'Human Resources.' All such people are the single biggest threat to sanity in the workplace. I'd replace them with a person(s) to facilitate payroll, a person(s) to handle the insurance and benefit liaison duties, and a person to handle miscellaneous things, such as accepting expense reports. But none of them would be allowed to intrude into the behavior of any employee.

Strong management can and would eliminate the problems quickly, and without lawyers or HR 'professionals.'

[skypigeon]

While I see your point, Defender, I wouldn't launch into a blanket condemnation of all human resource departments. Some of them, including where I work, are quite good. I know this from personal experience. Really all I can say about it ethically, but if you want to PM me I'll tell you more.

[Truth Detector]

Sounds great on the surface, Defender, but a good HR department is necessary to avoid substantial lawsuits.

Of course the way the laws are written the lawsuits not only go against the perpetrator and the company but also reach the individual supervisors who didn't report every joke that some hyper-sensitive creep found offensive.

[Lucky161]

TD, you are right on that. What hasn't been mentioned here is this guy had already been sent to sensitivity training a few years ago and was said to have benefited from it.
Some may not like it, but employees and employers do not have the right to violate other employees rights.
Defender you imply that you think the training was what caused this jerk to become a murderer. It could have been the training that kept this from happening before it did. We'll never know the answer to that one.

[Disciple]

You guys are right. Sorry for the broad brush. I've been victimized by some of the worst.

Two egregious examples:

In a former company, one guy was overheard telling a joke that included the 'N' word. It's not a good idea to do something like that, particularly at work. So instead of pulling the guy into a private office, shutting the door, letting him know the 'N' word was not a good thing, then possibly sending him to racial sensitivity training, they didn't say a word to him, but sent all 208 employees to a racial sensitivity seminar, wasting THOUSANDS of dollars and countless man hours because one guy was heard uttering the 'N' word.

Same company. Different scenario. They announced business casual for everyone. Some clueless goober wore overalls one day. So instead of reiterating the dress do's and don'ts to the one offender, they subjected the entire company to hundreds of pointless memos with attire tips, and pictures all over the walls of the place, like a third grade classroom.

I realize they serve a valuable puprose, but what do you do when they are unprofessional?

That guy going postal after being forced to attend a sensitivity seminar reminded me of how utterly insulted I felt when being forced into that kind of nonsense over someone else's problem, then having management too wimpy to effectively deal with the situation one on one.

[trac-champ]

originally posted by Defender


That guy going postal after being forced to attend a sensitivity seminar reminded me of how utterly insulted I felt when being forced into that kind of nonsense over someone else's problem, then having management too wimpy to effectively deal with the situation one on one.

Have you been insulted to the point of pulling a gun and putting a cap up the *ss of a half dozen fellow employee's? He'll get no sympathy from me.

BTW, I tried getting a guy fired in my Dept. for months. He had broken just about every rule we could make up and the HR Dept. at Corporate could only keep responding with "We need to be more understanding of his needs"' "Maybe there's something bothering him causing him to act this way."

Geez, that's his problem, meanwhile I have a dept. to run and he's undermining my authority and the financial well being of the department. Political correctness should never replace common sense.

[Disciple]

Have you been insulted to the point of pulling a gun and putting a cap up the *ss of a half dozen fellow employee's? He'll get no sympathy from me.

Nope. Never that insulted. I may play a nut on the Internet, but there are more effective ways of dealing with hostility.

[Lucky161]

Happens at small companies too. One of my best ever employers a dad and son, would about once a week call us all together and chew us out royally. Within 30 minutes of each meeting I would be called in the office to be told, "you know we weren't talking about you." In a way it was good to know that they appreciated my work, but I always wished I could have just skipped those meetings.

[Truth Detector]

Don't get me wrong.

Sensitivity training is PC hogwash.

Especially the way its utilized by gutless managers.

[trac-champ]

Interesting note on this topic. Best Buy is about to begin out-sourcing all laptop PC repairs. Along with a recent change to In-store Desktop PC repairs, it is all but eliminating 70% of the PC tech jobs in our shop. The announcement was made mid last week. Tech supervisors were called into a meeting Tuesday to see how the overall "tone" of effected techs was. I didn't need a road map to understand that upper management was trying to feel out if we thought anyone might be so inclined to walk in and start blazing. Especially after the recent incident if Jeff. City, Mo. at Modine Inc when that guy came in and popped off a half dozen co-workers.

Somehow, come mid next month when the firings start taking place, I have a feeling that the smell of kevlar will be in the air.

[skypigeon]

Originally posted by trac-champ; snipped:

BTW, I tried getting a guy fired in my Dept. for months. He had broken just about every rule we could make up and the HR Dept. at Corporate could only keep responding with "We need to be more understanding of his needs"' "Maybe there's something bothering him causing him to act this way." [/B]

Translation: "Mr. trac-champ, if he's a-hole enough to break every rule in your department, he's a-hole enough to sue us if we fire him, and he's a-hole enough to hire a legal team that'll make us waste a boatload of money defending our decision. So, before we do fire him, please let us cover our a$$es and be able to say we did everything in our power to make him a valuable, contributing employee. Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll just quit."



I don't envy you. I can ethically say, without getting into specifics on a public forum, that where I work, our HR department encourages us to handle problems from within. This makes our HR department much easier to work with than many others out there.

On the other hand, due to the many lovely government regulations that make the workplace a happy, productive place for all , there are occasions of behavior that require staff-wide training.

I'm not in HR myself, but what I do (customer service monitoring to ensure quality) is very much a human-resources style job. So occasionally I get to deal with these things. And I am VERY glad to work where I do.

[trac-champ]

originally posted by skypigeon
Translation: "Mr. trac-champ, if he's a-hole enough to break every rule in your department, he's a-hole enough to sue us if we fire him, and he's a-hole enough to hire a legal team that'll make us waste a boatload of money defending our decision. So, before we do fire him, please let us cover our a$$es and be able to say we did everything in our power to make him a valuable, contributing employee. Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll just quit."

Unfortunately, the incident that got me involved with corporate HR involved this person commiting fraud against one of our suppliers in order to boost one of his production numbers. Had I not caught it, my Dept. would've been charged a significant sum of money. He had previously been caught fraudulately filing time on his time card when he wasn't working. The list was long and I found out about some of the write-ups at his termination that I didn't even know about. The company had every right to terminate this guy, it was open and shut.

[skypigeon]

Yet they didn't? Now I'm wondering what he's "got" on somebody. Sheeeeeeeesh!