What Does It Take to Get Fired?

September 25, 2008, 8:17 pm; posted by
Filed under Bwog, Steve  | No Comments

Today everyone in my department was required to attend a multi-hour sexual harassment prevention session. I was already in a combative mood, and once the facilitator steamrolled through our discussion, then made it clear that we were staying an extra half hour, my body language (I am told) began to betray my disgust and impatience. Don’t waste my time, man. Not today.

Some of the things we learned in those first two hours included:
— If an enormous man decides he identifies as “female,” his new status immediately applies in the restroom
— If someone complains about how much skin is displayed in a picture of my baby, I will be asked to remove it from my desk
— The word “manpower” is offensive and wrong

Somewhere around hour 3, slide 34, our trainer told us a story about two court librarians who, while on the clock at work, snuck back to the superseded stacks and, shall we say, commenced an interlibrary loan aboard a table. Everything was captured by security cameras. The tale ended, unbelievably: “They got called in and asked if it was them on the tape, and they admitted it. And, by the way, they still work in the court system today.”

Wait, what?? A lady two seats down said what we were all(?) thinking. “How were they not fired?”

“Wow, you guys are tough!” our trainer answered. “You really think they should have been fired for that? They were transferred and sanctioned…don’t you think it matters that they told the truth?”

I couldn’t resist.

“No! No, it doesn’t matter at all! Of course they should have been fired! They were caught on video, on the clock, having sex on a table — in our library!”

The trainer frowned at me. “Well, maybe you should know that this sort of thing has happened more than once, and–”

I interrupted. “Well, maybe if they’d fired the first people, it wouldn’t keep happening!!”

Lesson learned, though: I can do whatever I want, wherever I want, whenever I want, as whatever gender I want, as long as I don’t lie about it when it’s caught on tape — and as long as it doesn’t involve any baby pictures on my desk.


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