WORKPLACE CRUELTY AND THOSE WHO PERPETUATE IT
Markus, you're right about the level of malevolent, soulless action to which American employment and hiring policy has sunk. It is a step below pure evil. No one stands up to say: Stop! We aren't a cruel people - because we have become one in the name of "standards," and independent thinking is in short supply. No one bucks the group consensus, which is already in place before anyone opens their mouth to speak.
I've been in many rooms when 3-5 or even 7 people are hacking out a job description for the replacement of a just-departed employee. The hubris, the arrogance, the self-importance, the competitiveness to outdo the other companies on Glass Door or Ed Join or Indeed or wherever -- they ask for 5 years experience, we need 8. Why not 10? asks the newest of the participants, and so it's 10. What about the creative, off-beat 2 year phenom group who my best hires have come from? asks an experienced consultant, and so they agree to go to 7 years - but the phenoms still won't get past the paper screening, and a year of this kind of shit and that group doesn't bother to apply at all. There's more -- 4 levels of interviews, people playing the devil's advocate to intimidate the candidates, obscure technology requirements, background checks by aggressive admin assistants who you'd think were screening for a CIA-level espionage position in Beirut -- and when the job is finally posted, it's back up to 10 years again - the HR chief heard about the discussion and liked the sound of 10 years experience, although she cut the salary by 10%. 'Not a person in this room,' I said at the conclusion of one of these Kafka-esque sessions, 'would have their position right now if these requirements were in place.' No acknowledgment that I had spoken was in evidence.
A poor credit score would have been cause to put out an all-points bulletin to the entire career field that Mr. 515 FICO was a menace and should be stopped at the door. The person finally hired slid right into the culture, played all the politics like a natural from Day One, picked up immediately on who among the current staff was being edged out and was to be dropped from certain memo groups, and perfected the company eye-roll and sigh in their first week.
This scenario is common, with variations. It's executed calmly, matter-of-factly, as banal and unremarkable to most people as, well, paying their bills, the bulk of which are on auto-pay anyway.
Fuck you is justified, excoriating the decision-makers and the sheep who follow along in gutless stupidity is a favor to all of us, and you’re within your rights to point out that advancements in medicine they missed may cause regrets later - but Markus, please, no wishing for people to get sick and die. I'm as pissed as you, but I want to win this battle in the court of ideas and ethics and humanity. It is damned satisfying, even thrilling, on the rare occasions that a humanist prevails.
But change is impossible when we wish out loud for pain and physical harm to come to people and their families. What we get in this case is war. I'm serious. War begins with our actions and statements that create tribal fear and force protectionist reactions .... and we don't want that. We want the self-important to be knocked down a few rungs, a sense of fairness and humanity to prevail, and an acknowledgment that people like you were wronged, and deserve accommodations for past abuse -- I say 'we' in the hope that many of us can agree and move in the direction I suggest when faced with this type of injustice.
