In between bouts of wanting to punch Senator Bill Frist in the face, I’ve been thinking about back to back conversations at work that couldn’t have been scripted better to remind that the past is the past is the past.
Yesterday, the topic was conformity with the boss mentioning that as of late, based on some peer to peer conversations, she realized she was on the freakish side of liberal when it came to tolerance in hiring. Well, yeah, duh, not surprising since you tend toward jeans in a more structured environment, academic feel or no, and like to tweak the old establishment your own damn self.
The weird, looking backward aspect was her example, she would indeed, she said, hire an otherwise qualified and capable job candidate with visible piercings or tattoos or blue hair or maybe a gothic fashion sense. Actually, I got the feeling she would relish having a bad-ass looking goth freakishly minding the store.
The hair, tattoo, piercing thang was a familiar theme, dissected in the old world of the old job. The consensus–fuck no, no job, get out you weirdo. Seriously, the same example, unnatural colored hair, tattoos or piercing were the standard for what not to hire in conversations around the cliched water cooler.
My old boss stated it baldly, “If someone came in looking like that, I would have to assume it was a reflection of poor judgment, and I would have to wonder how that judgment would be for the job.” In other words, can you really trust those people? (Never mind that a quick trip to a local mall would suggest almost all people 25 show some sign of that so-called impaired judgment.)
The other conversation which echoed back was about dating musicians. In one of the fine examples of fucked up line blurring the ex-boss counseled an underling to dump her beau, instead of marrying him, because she was throwing her life away on a deadbeat. She opined that the underling had a bright and successful academic future and deserved one of their own to complete her happy picture of domesticity, some wonderful bright boy, full of earning potential and solid, earthbound dreams.
Maybe fair enough, but the flaw of the existant boy who was being dismissed amounted to only that he was a musician, a writer and, therefore, a poor earner. Nevermind that he founded a band that garnered some critical notice and a bit of CD sales and some touring. Forget that he is sweet-tempered, and at least when I knew them, absolutely devoted to his woman.
Many conversations in the workplace focused on the waste of this girl with this boy, this boy who would amount to nothing but a scruffy ne’er-do-well with sideburns and a guitar.
In my new, spooky world, the new spooky boss also talked about a musician with no earning potential in contrast to a promising academic girlfriend. Yeah, only she married him.