Sometimes, working in the land of corporate stupid can be entertaining.
Work just pushed out some online training about EEOC, Diversity and Harrassment.
Seems that people can't call me things like "old timer", "grandpa" or "senior", but there is nothing preventing me from calling them "junior", "child", "kid" or "youngin".
I plan on having fun with this company policy.
Good for you alan1. I hope you do a bang-up job of it all.
PC run a mock.
One of the guys I work with (for privacy sake, I'll call him Alex) is the same age as my oldest daughter. He's smart, driven, works hard and has an excellent sense of humor. We get along great. He also sometimes calls me "Pappy" as a reference to my age and I sometimes call him "kiddo" or "junior" in refernce to his age, it's all in fun.
So, on Friday we had a team meeting and while waiting for everybody to arrive we were bantering about the recent training pushed down to us. Alex called me Pappy. I looked over at the director of our department and stated. "I feel offended that junior here called me a disrespective term, pappy. It violates the company policies on EEOC, Diversity and Harrassment." Alex piped up, "But I mean it as a term of endearment, and you just called me junior, which I find offensive". "Sorry Alex", I say, "But there is nothing in the company policies about referring to young age, only elder folks like me. Also, harrassment and EEOC only address age as it pertains to old age, not young age. Additionally, offensive behavior is determined by my feelings, not your intent." I look over at the department director and say, "I find the term 'pappy' to be highly offensive because it is obviously an ageism remark and it is unacceptable in the work environment. Please bring this child's inappropriate comments to the attention of HR."
People walking into the conferance room late and only catching the last part of the conversation were looking nervous. It's not my nature to snivel about things and they all know that Alex and I get along great so they were also confused. The director said, "Alex, company policy says I have to get HR involved". All of this was impromptu and all of us were just making fun of the EEOC, Diversity and Harrassment training we just had to suffer through.
I stood up, pointed across the table at Alex and loudly exclaimed, "BOOYAH, take that Junior. You'll be in a company re-education gulag come Monday morning and I'll be sipping coffee and laughing about your misfortune".
Fact is, it was all about poking fun at corporate dumb, HR won't get contacted, we all laughed and we all get along.
Alex recently applied for an open position on our team that is a higher pay grade. I was part of the team that conducted the interviews for him and the other candidates. He is by far, the best qualified person. Some of the senior management was concerned about his "maturity level" (read young age) for the position, since he will be leading people older than him in the new position. I was a strong advocate to promote him and I found out Friday evening that the offer was extended to him. He'll do fine and I'll continue to mentor him as I've done in the past for him and others.
I also told him a little secret about negotiation for the new job. The new pay grade can allow an additional week of vacation beyond company standard vacation based on years of service, if you ask for it. My promotion into that pay grade is how I got my extra week of vacation.
