Forty Years in Personnel Will Do This to You
Copyright © 2009 by Ethan A. Winning
As I near the end of my fortieth year in what used to be more aptly called personnel, I am indeed wondering, whatever happened to this profession? Certainly, the fact that women have taken over the human resources directorships has something to do with it, although I have to add the Seinfeld dictum, "not that there's anything wrong with that."
Forty years ago, when I joined Wells Fargo, with 35 employees in the bank in the Southern California division, there wasn't one male teller. Everybody smoked, drank, and played dominoes. And every once in a while, a senior VP would get caught dating a (hottie) teller. We didn't use "hottie," of course, not because it was inappropriate, but because we didn't have the term. Instead, we used "cutie" which was bad enough. "Cute" alone could get you killed just by the daggers stared at you.
As women became more powerful - and tellers disappeared entirely to be replaced by ugly ATMs - we men had to be more careful. But it wasn't just the glass ceiling which was crocked, it was also diversity, the big "D!" Why if it weren't for harassment and diversity, there might have been a 20 year period with no HR at all 'cept maybe for a little hiring and a lot of downsizing and tiptoeing around discrimination in both areas.
So I think the first thing that happened to Personnel was political correctness. It was bad enough that people of color (I myself am "Mediterranean Peach"), but they kept changing what they wanted to be called. It is now 2009 and we have reached the acme of PCityness.
There is a flu going around - which is why it is called flu although corrupted from its original flew - which came from Mexico. Well, when we called it Mexican flu, Mexico revolted. Even the drug lords were upset. So we switched to "swine flu," which really didn't work because we already had a swine flu in 1957, but that came from Asian pigs, and it wasn't fair to blame this flu on the same pigs, especially since the Chinese chickens had already taken the heat for the bird flu of three or four years ago. Besides, ultra-conservative Jews in Israel refused to call it swine flu because ... because ... I don't know why, but they did.
What were we to do? I know: call it "H1N1 Virus" and then "H1N1 Flu," although I'm sure there was some research into tribes in the Amazon or Borneo who may call themselves, the "H1N1s" and would take umbrage at having a virus named after them.
In a period of three weeks, we went from swine flue to h1n1 virus (it doesn't have to be capitalized because there are no H1N1 people), and we went from 19 cases to 160 in a country with 300 million people! While we were closing schools, the American Medical Association was onto more important matters: what do we tell people they have if they have the flu? For that matter, what if they have Alzheimer's or some other disease named after a person when there may be other people with the same surname?
It was decided that they would number the diseases instead. You no longer have Mexican... uh, swine .... no H1N1 flu, you have 14!
I went to my doctor when I was feeling a little aguey, but he told me I only had 7. I asked, "What's the difference between 7 and 14," and he told me that 14 was twice as bad and 7 was really just a 3 with a mild temperature. "But," he continued, "you do have a 66, and that's a devil of a disease to cure. However, we have some ointment that should help."
All of a sudden on TV drug commercials were changed. You do know that there are people with the job of staying up all night and thinking of names for these drugs. Well, now they had to match the drug to a number. So Caduet now helps with both 27 and 30, but those with 55 or who are pregnant should not take it. Lipitor helps with 80, but not with 79 which is just gas.
And all of a sudden, even my usual spam changed. Why if I had 111, then have they got a Canadian pharmacy for me!
Back to the HR aspects. At the same time that pharmaceuticals were cioming up with new diseases made easier by the numbering system, at a company like BaBY, they've decided that there's been entirely too much swearing. What has one to do with the other? Ah, that's a 44.
Even some women in high tech are known to swear like sailors who now don't swear at all except under combat conditions. Swearing makes a workplace a hostile work environment, so a company like BaBY has instituted a policy that, instead of swearing, you are to use a letter for the word or phrase that you want to use, but it cannot be the letter that everyone knows you wanted to use. So, if you are going to refer to someone as an ag_ing w_h, you should say "She's a GW, and a lousy one at that!" No word can start with an "F," a rule which destroyed Comedy Central and most of Vegas.
All warddrobe malfunctions, by the way, must be referred to the Human Resources Department and then to the U.S. Supreme Court where experts on such things sit on their XLBs. The FCC, Federal Clothing Checkers, can be bypassed.
When I got into the office this morning, one of my clients wanted help with his EEO-1 form. We decided that, as with diseases, we should just send in the form using numbers, sometimes combined with letters, to designate ethnicity and sexual preference. As it turns out, my client has 23 4's, but only 2 9's, and one of those is a 9C, and exempt to boot. We're fairly certain that no one will be able to say that we used inappropriate terms to describe them and, even if the EEOC or OFCCP were to unable to interpret the statistics, it really wouldn't matter because we've been lying with statistics for at least 50 years.
In fact, upon hearing of the new system, and having no rationale whatsoever, the market went up 783 points, unfortunate since a 783 can kill you.
So what's happened to personnel in 40 years? Not much except that we seem to have lost our identity, and maybe even our direction. That doesn't mean we've become "R's." Most HR managers are still "L's," and some may even still walk the tightrope of representing both Ee's and Er's interests, but usually that's in the smaller ... er ... petite companies.
As we used to say in ham radio, 73's. I still think we ought to 86 the whole *&^*!@# thing.