Chickens, Buffalos, and Stampedes, or Why Black Friday scares the Dickens out of me....

So, not to begin every blog post with “I was listening to NPR”, but I was – more precisely to This America Life’s Thanksgiving special (which apparently is always all about fowl, and which they call a “Poultry Slam” this year). Of particular interest was Act Three. A Pastor and his Flock, an insightful article (or whatever you call a radio newsstory) about how some folks (including local pastors and priests) are trying to bring unions to chicken processing plants in the South (disclosure – I am a very not big fan of chicken, especially the mass-produced kind who never get to stand up outside of their cage- and yes, I do see that as a euphemism for the modern cubical workplace). This American Life is so fantastic anyway that I’m not going to do a recap of the story – honestly, just go and listen to it.

The article brought out great questions about what it means to be an ethical employer. Combine that with the oncoming holiday season and my annual reread of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and I've found myself to be smack dab in the middle of a managerial existential quandary. As an employer, sometimes to you do have to ask your employees to do not-so-nice things – someone has to kill all those geese for all those Christmas dinners. But how you recognize their foray into dangerous situations shouldn’t just be a matter of combat pay.

Being an ethical employer means coming to terms with what you are asking your employees to do, and recognizing that they aren’t doing it because they want to throw caution to the wind – they are doing it because they need the money, have done the risk analysis, and took the job anyway. Take the case of the part-time, temporary contractor who was paid to do maintenance at a Wal-mart outside of Manhattan over the holidays (and if you are easily upset by Wal-mart, you may want to turn away – this is pretty bad). A mob of 2,000 holiday shoppers killed Jdimytai Damour by stampeding him to death. No one had screamed fire in the crowded home-theater department, folks – we’re talking crazed holiday shoppers hoping to get a $750 50-inch plasma screen TV mowed down a 34-year-old man (strange Christmas reference: wasn’t that about the same as age as Jesus when he died?).

Authorities can’t figure out who actually delivered the life-ending blows because most of those 2,000 people didn’t stop to help, and kept on shopping - even after they announced that someone had died over the loudspeaker. I doubt Jdimytai expected that Wal-mart would post him in front of the store on that fateful day. It begs the question, is it ethical for an employer to ask (or not ask) a temporary, season maintenance worker to fill in as a security guard on the busiest shopping day of the year? Or to stand by while 2,000 shoppers horde in front of the store, without having cops and/or crowd control on hand (check out the pictures taken of the gathering crowd– little baby Jesus knows I’d be all 911!)?

Ikea handles crazy (albeit not always crazed) crowds every weekend, and there is something about the coffee and doughnuts they pass out that keeps customers happy and employees safe. And we are already used to waiting in orderly lines for movies, at the post office, waiting for coffee. It’s not just about security – it really is an ethical question. It’s the most intuitive catch 22 around - happy customers make happy employees, who make more happy customers. Black Friday is the busiest, most stressful shopping day of the year – large retail employers should be held accountable to their staffing and security measures, including emergency plans, if they choose to participate in what equates to shopping madness – and besides, it just makes better business sense.

I purposely didn’t go shopping at the big retailers on Black Friday. Instead (and I think I’ll make this tradition), I pawed through my closet, bagged up my old, woefully unworn clothes, and sold them back at Buffalo Exchange. It was a fantastic, streamline experience. The store was fully staffed, even overly staffed, with plenty of buy-back-buyers and folks helping out in the dressing rooms. Everyone was happy to be there, and was chatting about the fabulous food they had made for Thanksgiving and the parties they were going to that weekend. No one was stressed, or ill-informed - it was a well-oiled-fashion-forward machine. If one employee didn’t know the answer, another one was there to back them up.

The difference, as any good boy scout might remind you, is in the preparation. Was there enough staff on hand, security on hand, efforts to do a bit of crowd control? Were the employees empowered to take control of the situation if things got out of hand (or call the cops if things got really ooc)? And did the managers, perhaps in the enhanced spirit of holidays and such, take the time to think through their ethical responsibilities before throwing their employees up against the onslaught of holiday shoppers?

“I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

From A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

Veteran job seekers need basic training...

Whilst listening to my NPR stations local news podcast (KUT's Newspod, November 10th, 2008), I heard an interesting story about servicemen and women returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan who are facing an increasingly difficult time finding employment in the Austin area – more specifically, finding civilian employment that actually matches the workplace habits they’ve picked up on their tour of duty.

My half-brother has recently signed up to serve our country – and while some family members (read: older sister who happens to be in HR) entreated him to consider a specialty like medic or corp of engineers, he had a calling to infantry (and don’t get me wrong, I think he’ll be the best there could be at it). And not just any infantry – he’s on track to be a sniper. My brother the sniper. Honestly, that’s pretty cool.

Pretty cool for now, but I worry about the time when he heads back to the good ol’ USA, opens the local newspaper, and finds no civilian job listings under Senior Sniper Specialist. The ROI for all that time he spends on highly specialized training - certifications on various weapons, time in the combat field, actual targets eliminated – will be slim at best. It’s invaluable now – the service he is doing for all of us can’t even be measured – but after war is over (if its ever over), there won’t be a ton of jobs available where the exactness of his aim will be directly applicable.

The army instills all sorts of other valuable skills into the men and women who choose to join up – discipline, leadership, ability to think on your feet. I’ve had the privilege of working alongside several veterans, and damn, do they have their shit together. But those skills alone can’t make up for what a solder on the newspod pointed out – skills like how to successfully navigate the doldrums and political correctness of the modern workplace. How to go from busting through doors and interrogating possible terrorists to staring at a computer screen for eight hours a day, typing memos and tactically-worded emails. How to communicate effectively in a workplace democracy or how to transition from the locker room mentality of the infantry squad to the legal jungle gym of the coed workplace. Solders need some basic workplace training before launching a full assault on the slipping job market.

Turns out that the military contracts out this type of transition training (and you thought it was all just Blackwater and Halliburton). The KUT podcast mentioned a company called Bradley Morris, Inc, so I checked out their website:

Bradley-Morris is dedicated to providing individualized service to job seekers undergoing military separation as we introduce them to job opportunities in corporate America. More than 90% of our military job seekers receive interest from client companies by taking advantage of our no cost job seeker service.

I thought it was particularly interesting to describe the process as a “military separation” vs. a “transition back to your civilian life”. And they offer a lot of good information and support – take this blog post for example:

An Assessment Tool for Transitioning Career Seekers (exert):

The O*Net website allows you to search occupations by keyword, high growth industries, career clusters, and more. Let’s say that I served as a Logistics Manager in the Army with an MOS of 92A. If I type “Logistics Manager” into the keyword field, the top 3 relevant occupations - Logistician, Storage and Distribution Manger, and Transportation Manager - are the search result. If I click on “Logistician”, it gives me a detailed description of the occupation in terms of knowledge (in this case knowledge of production processes, costs, transportation, clerical procedures, etc.), skills (service orientation, time management, etc.), abilities (inductive and deductive reasoning for example), work activities, work context, job zone (the experience, training, and education needed), work styles, interests, work values, wages and employment trends (national or by state).

There’s also a website for employers who want more info on hiring military folks, at http://www.hiremilitary.com/, with quality insight like How Hiring Military Veterans Helps Your Company Save Money – Part 1: No-cost Relocation to Where the Job Is. – turns out the government will pay for it! Smart, smart blog. Your orders are to go and visit it, and to think about how you might help a serviceperson transition into your workplace.

The topic of veterans and reintroduction to the workforce brings to mind the super-long last episode of MASH, where you realized that for all that humor and sexual tension and fun times of Hawkeye Pierce (and yes, I have a super crush on old school Alan Alda), the only time he really, really broke down was when the show ended and he had to face coming back to the reality of home.

"Don't mind Pierce and Hunnicutt, they're both first rate surgeons. Sure, they'll show up to role call in their bathrobes. They keep a still in their tent. Once they ran all my underwear up the flagpole. But I want you to understand it's an honor to serve with these men." - Maj. Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan

I like to think that Houlihan might have come back to civilian life and had a long, productive career in Human Resources...

How I spent my LOA, or Uh-oh Kino!

So, some dear friends of mine finally called me out on my extended personal leave - you know, that awkward "so, when ya thinking of coming back in?" conversation. It has been a productive LOA from the ol' blog - a trip to Europe, electing an African-American as president, major renovations on the house, a quick bereavement trip back to the home country, and that ultimate time-suckage event, mid-year review season at work. But I think I'm finally ready to punch that time clock again. So thanks for sticking around, checking in on me every once in a while. Now I've just got to make it through the hundreds of hilarious workplace stories that have popped up over the last two months, and tell you all about them!

Starting with - Uh-oh Kino!

You may remember that my last post was a bit of a rant against one southern Texas politician who didn't think to check his employee's immigration status because the worker in question "looked Preppy." Our friend Kino Flores is back in the news, and it appears that he's still a bit confused about that little detail of lawmakers needing to actually follow the law.

Kino, who heads up the Texas House committee that oversees gambling regulations, has hitched some rides to Austin in a private plane owned by the developer of a horse track in Kino's area of the state - and this ain't no pony show - it's a $23 million horse racetrack in Hidalgo County built by the LaMantia family, who also own a Budweiser distributorship in South Texas. Alcohol and gambling - this really is like No Country for Old Men!...

What has also become clear is that Kino needs to do a little bit more investigation into the credentials of all the folks he associates with, including (in my opinion), his lawyer, who quipped:

"He is not going to resign," attorney Roy Minton said. "There ain't any reason for him to resign." (quote from the Associated Press)

Maybe it's just me (and my sorted personal acquaintances who are attorneys), but I'm fairly sure that "ain't" isn't a word I want used to proclaim my innocence...

Doesn't it make you wish that governments could, maybe just every once in a while, RIF elected officials? You know, "trim the low-hanging fruit" for the sake of, let's say, cost savings during times of economic hardship? Because I think Kino may have a profitable career ahead of him as either a screenwriter for the Coen Brothers, or casino owner in Las Vegas (maybe he could call it Kino's Keno and More!)....

Looking the part is a political statement

Surveying the local news this morning, I came across what should have been your sadly semi-common There-Will-Be-Blood tale of murder in the wild borderlands of West Texas - a young Hispanic male was found dead on a ranch along the border.

But then this story got a bit weird. Seems that the ranch belonged to a Texas state lawman - Kino Flores - and the murder suspect had been an employee of the ranch. And to add insult to, well, murder, it turns out that the murder suspect was an illegal immigrant employed by the ranch.

Kino is chairman of the Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee, which has oversight on issues related to businesses, industries, general trades, and occupations regulated by the State. And yet for all his time spent commiserating Texas's industries and occupations, Flores forgot to make sure that his employees had documentation to prove they were able to legally work in the United States. A background check might not have hurt either...

My political views on immigration tend to be similar to my (full disclosure) West Coast views on gay marriage - Love and let Love, Work and let Work. That said, as a dutiful HR generalist, I'll follow the laws of the land, and if I have to check each employee's legal documention, I will. Despite the fact that it takes buckets of extra time and paperwork and makes most new employees call up their mothers to ask the whereabouts of 30-year-old birth certificates.

But don't pledge to uphold the laws and then toss them aside at will. This wasn't a babysitter watching kids every so often, or even a day laborer you pick up at Home Depot to help out with a quick project - this was a ranch hand who lived on your ranch. Really, what excuse could you have not to follow correct legal hiring practices, lawman?

From the McAllen Monitor newspaper:

Flores, who has owned the ranch for eight years and uses it to ride his horses, said he hired the man without checking his background because he didn't appear to be an illegal immigrant.

"He was preppy. He looked the part. No indication. He fit in extremely well, he had family members here," the Democrat from Palmview said. "It just looks bad in general ... of course it's going to grab more traction. I certainly don't want to go around challenging people's status."

A statement like this might be understandable - a legislator who took a misstep and judged a book by its cover. Forgot a law or two - no big whoop. Except this murder thing happened. And it's not like Kino is a Jessie Spano pacifist who can't tell his Zack Morris Preppies from exchange students:

From an interview Kino gave to Texas Observer:

Easing back in a chair in his Mission office, Flores didn’t deny he’s a browbeater, but he said he doesn’t use that tactic on people in the district. “There are some people I can bully, and I can beat the dog shit out of, and I can run off—like the lottery directors. I’ve gone through two lottery directors that I had squeezed their nuts and fired them, but not the guy on First and Matamoros.

“Cojones,” he said, is his political style in Austin. “I use them. I am not afraid to use them.”

Which is funny, because any HR generalist will tell you that is what is feels like to have to turn away a worker because their social security number didn't come back as a match. When you have to renege on a job offer, one that you know the applicant needed, that they would happily do, and instead have to hire a lackluster worker because 'at least they had good papers'. Like dog shit, like a bully, like you squeezed their nuts. When you look across your desk at an eager, earnest potential employee, and know that you have to run them off like a common criminal because the state and federal lawmakers can't figure out a better solution to the immigration issue.

I'll continue to gather social security cards, from preppies, sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, and even dickheads, and examine them for offset printing and missing perforated edges. When necessary, I'll have those difficult conversations, and hand out the directions to the local social security office. Because that's what human resources folks are paid to do - whatever the government says we have to do to hire people.

If I had conjones like Kino's, I might have just skipped that ugly scene all together, too. As a representative from the front lines of the immigration debate, he had so much opportunity to do the right thing - to encourage legal immigration and drive immigration reform. It's just too bad that it took a murder to expose how little those conjones really are...

Back to School with your Workplace Horseplay!

This week there was an interesting forum about how to address horseplay in the office on one of the HR blog sites I follow. I think it fortuitous that schools in Texas also started this week, because if you ask any elementary teacher how to mitigate horseplay in the classroom, the answer often involves monkey bars and four square. Awh, the by-gone days of recess...

The perception that puberty somehow eliminates the need for fun, pointless, physical activity from our daily lives is at the heart of work by performance artist/industrial designer Bruno Taylor.

According to Pixelsumo.com (a website dedicated to all things play):

Bruno Taylor (no website) sent in two of his projects. The first is hijacking public spaces to make them more playful, in this case adding swings to London bus stops.

“71% of adults used to play on the streets when they were young. 21% of children do so now. Are we designing children and play out of the public realm?

This project is a study into different ways of bringing play back into public space. It focuses on ways of incorporating incidental play in the public realm by not so much as having separate play equipment that dictates the users but by using existing furniture and architectural elements that indicate playful behaviour for all.

It asks us to question the current framework for public space and whether it is sufficient while also giving permission for young people to play in public.
Play as you go…” Bruno Taylor.

When no play structures exist, the natural human tendency is to take out pent-up physical energy on each other (how else do you explain the invention of the game "leap-frog", or the "slap game" as featured on commercials for The Office that aired during the Olympics?).

Play never hurt anyone (ok, maybe a few people have broken their arm on a slide or merry-go-round, but we're speaking generally here...), and remember, people file worker's comp claims all the time that are the direct result of nothing more than sitting at their desk clicking their mice.

And this isn't just playground talk - Google's office in Zurich used play as a design principal.

Stairs are so low-tech...seriously. Good HR policy (and a doctrine straight from the Teaching 101 handbook) is that it's not enough to say "Don't do that!" - it's also important to give another outlet. If not a slippery-slide, then maybe at least a punching bag in the break room...

Sweet Rejection

This link made the rounds at my office this week, under the subject "Best 404 page eva!"

http://www.thenorthface.com/best404pageever

Everyone loves goats! This got me thinking about rejections in general - because let's be honest, 404 pages are basically there to remind us that (cue Ashton Kutcher voice) "You think this page should be here, but it's not - you're totally rejected! Burn!"

Most rejection letters focus try to get across the message that "it's not that you aren't good, it's just that someone else is better...", which is a bit of a misnomer, because sometimes, you truly just aren't that good. We're just not that into you...

"Samantha had the kind of deluded self confidence that caused men like Ross Perot to run for president." (Carrie said that on Sex in the City - yes, I totally went there...)

The reality of the rejection letter is that it would take too much time and emotional energy to help someone with an over-inflated sense of self to understand the nuances of why they aren't good at what they think they are. It's one thing to have confidence in yourself and your abilities; it's another to assume that your sparkling personality and strategic use of "The Secret" will help the employer overlook your lack of qualification for the role.

So rather than tell someone they were considered when they really weren't, I stick by this trusty line:

"You have a lot to offer an employer, and we wish you success".

Let's break this down, shall we? I believe that every person, of legal working age and reasonable mental faculties, has something to offer an employer. I love Goodwill and the fabulous folks that work in those stores - I always get stellar customer service when I shop the Well of Goodness (full disclosure - Goodwill is a family religion). Despite impairments and disabilities, Goodwill employees seem more engaged and dedicated to their job than their fully-functioning counterparts as establishments like Wal-mart. Maybe I'm a bit of an optimist, but I do believe that there is a good job out there for every person - a job where they can bring something to the employment table.

And I'm the first to admit that the places I've worked have had strong cultures that aren’t a match for everyone. I also know that there are some corporate cultures that I would fail miserably in -*caugh*marriott*caugh* - but I pushed forward and found a culture that worked for me. So while my culture might not be a fit for you, I do genuinely hope that you will realize where you fit, and will seek out that place.

So to recap, my stance when rejecting:

"You have a lot to offer an employer (not this employer, but another employer out there somewhere that you will eventually discover), and we wish you success (some other place, where you are a better match to the position expectations and/or the company culture)".

And if that doesn't work, totally blame a goat...

Catch me a catch...

Here's an interesting tid-bit from China. In the spirit of free-market matchmaking, some resourceful (and perhaps desperate) parents are taking their children's matramonial causes to the streets. According to a "blink" on IDEO's newly redesigned website (really, a must see - great for random bits of inspirational information):

In Shanghai, parents gather in Ren Min Park on weekends to play matchmaker for their adult children. Parents start by casually chatting with one another, and in the case of shared interests, will exchange contact information and schedule meeting times for their kids.

If only job hunting could be this casual. Instead of the incognito interviews scheduled in the rush of lunch hour, instead of power suits and panel interrogations, wouldn't it be great if it was really just our parents - those who are the most proud of us - wondering around a park, chit-chatting with one another about how great we all are?

Think of the fantastic questions they'd ask - '"Are you going to allow my son extra time off to make it home for the holidays?" or "You know, our daughter has her heart set on a position in management - and she is so very bright - you do see her management potential, don't you?"

And in the spirit of ironical twists, you have to think that the reason that these industrious in-laws-to-be are hitting up the park circuit is because their adult children are too busy – and most likely working too hard – to play the field themselves…