I suffer through over three hours of diversity training at work and then get harassed by some offensive fucknuts on the corner as I'm walking to Staples. Shitty, shitty afternoon.
My god. Diversity Training. Oh, I'm sorry, "Navigating Differences in the Workforce." Such crap. Such total crap. Three hours of watching actors act out very obvious scenes, listening to the bullshit my idiotic coworkers feel about issues of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, family and orientation and knowing that none of this makes a difference and this will still be a white American male dominated industry for years to come. You can say it's inappropriate to be abusive and offensive to your coworkers, but we all know that as long as you give the impression of bringing in money and clients you can treat people however you damn well like.
That was actually the one nice moment. Someone basically called management and HR out as being ineffective. One HR representative tried to say that there were meetings and reprimandings we didn't know about but the facilitator called her out on it, saying that those meetings may happen but something is wrong if people all still perceive them as ineffective.
It was just so pointless. And offensive. One jackass kept telling people not to "play the victim", when he's a huge offender himself. Very offensive and rude and abusive and inappropriate. I wanted to make his face a victim to my foot. And one women decided it was a good idea to say that women are too sensitive and defensive to perceived inequalities in the workplace. She needs some attention from my foot as well. And everyone seemed to think it wasn't a big deal to tell a woman to be more charming in the workplace. Charming is a fine word. Yes. But how the hell many times does a man get told he needs to be charming to get ahead compared with a woman. ARGH!!!!! And one skit was so obviously BEGGING the audience to bring of the stereotype of the Angry Black Man it made me want to cry. No one would do it or address it or acknowledge it's affect. And it was so clumsy and inefficient. And folks were actually trying to say that someone with an accent and little grasp of idiom for whom English was a second language should possibly be held back in our industry because they "can't communicate". Despite the fact they they're smart, articulate and able to speak English well. And despite the fact that one of our most popular economists (in the US as well as in Asia) is a Chinese man with a strong Chinese accent for whom English is not his first language and whose verbal communication skills are not the same as our American analysts (though not better or worse, just different).
Such crap. It was three hours of folks talking out their asses for no real purpose. No one learned anything. One of the folks in my group, who is quite sexist, came out of an earlier session saying it was good, but not necessary for him. So anyone who needs work (well, everyone needs work, but anyone who REALLY needs work) comes out of it feeling as smug and entitled as before and nothing changes. It's just the same old abusive, sexist, racist environment as before, where it's safer to be closeted than not.
HATE this place. HATE corporate America. Want to go home and hide.
Instead, I am going to the Opera to hear folks sing about a consumptive hooker. Hopefully that'll perk me up.
1 comment:
Okay, baby, two points --
First off, we had harassment/sensitivity training at my company twice in the past three years. The first time was a few months into a two-year-long torture session for me, from a guy I had declined to date who then groped me in a bar, and when I yelled at him about that, then proceeded to make my life hell.
I sat through this harassment awareness session and listened to all my coworkers either sit in stony silence, or crack jokes, and knew, just knew that no one would get my situation. So I struggled with it for another year, then brought it up a second time to my boss, and still nothing changed.
Last year we had another session, with a much better speaker. Although the coworkers still had a derogaroty attitude, the speaker kept emphasizing our company's "no tolerance" policy. I happenned to be sitting next to her, so she noticed when I scoffed, and we spoke after everyone left. Man did the floodgates open. Now let me make clear that since I'd yelled at him, this guy wasn't admiring my tits or groping me in the hallway. He was undermining my work performance. He would ignore work requests, argue with me about how something should be done, bad-mouth me to the tech department -- in general, he had created the epitome of a hostile work environmnet. The head of HR took a detailed statement (I'd saved every single e-mail from him over two years, so I remembered a lot), my VP called me in to assure me that they did take it seriously and apologized if I had not gotten that impression earlier, the asshole got demoted, and was instructed on pain of death to play nice. And for a year he was watched like a hawk, to catch even the slightest hint of passive aggression, until he finally gave up.
My point being, it's hard to change attitudes, but if your company is holding training sessions, maybe it at least shows a commitment to backing you up if the shit does hit the fan.
In other news, I wanted to go see that Traviata with you. Do me a favor and send me the info so I can still go. And if you're going again, let me know.
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