New HR Policy

Normally, if you come to work late, sneak down below the closed circuit TV and try to smudge the time stamp on the punch card – there not many problems unless you missed another staff meeting. Now if you were the leader of this staff meeting and your bosses’ bosses were in attendance, and the meeting was about Professional Conduct and you worked in a small city with no traffic excuses or terrorist bomb threats but you had maybe hit the :::snooze button a few too many times and the coffee wasn't strong enough to fire the imaginative parts of the frontal lobe and the health insurance premium was due but you didn't have spinal meningitis and would probably live….

This is the perfect time to get a size XXX panties out of your attache bag and throw them at your boss. Scream, “Your wife is such a slob!”

Wait for it…

He stretches the red frilly panties out between two arms. Your boss's bosses’ look on in horror because _regular employees_ are not allowed to use the boss bathroom let alone their significant other. The man actually vomits on the conference table as his large body, which was completely obese because he was overly secure, falls into the table edge, cracking his skull.

I drop the attache bag on the floor for sound effect and ask the Human Resource Junior Trainees, “What do you supposed killed the man??”

Pectin doesn't raise his hand but blurts out, “We have to delegate that question to the local authorities using form 3-64z.”

No!

I snap his fingers with a yard stick that only measures in metric units. I turn around like the Furhrer, pacing, pacing. The glass of the room is armored plated but allows two hours of valuable vitamin K to sneak in between the plastic resin bonding. At the window I can see thousands of ant people scurrying to get their lunches because they like diversity in feeding.

I slap down the metric yard stick on the table till it almost breaks and point this relic of corporal punishment at each of them slowly, “Think people. THINK!”

Tenile, whose parents are from Alaska but does not exhibit the behavior of a second generation escaped convict nor oil tycoon, Tenile raises her hand and there are no unsavory spots below the pits. The teeth are not capped like a salesperson. She does not compliment the instructor nor mention that she is pregnant and needs nine months of baby bonding… Tenior looks straight ahead at the dead posies in a vase and says, “I think he died of a broken heart.”

Good.

“Now why do people work here?”

The trainers huddled amongst themselves. As hybrid intern-trainees, they had suspended their civil rights and had less protections than an American Soldier during active conflict. I could tell them to walk out into traffic with heels. I could make them scrub the Janitor's water closet which, incidentally, is the only toilet not scrubbed at a regular interval. Janitors are very endearing because they think of others first.

Smack the stick on the table again. They have huddled too long. “Tell me, my minion babies ‘why do people work here?’”

Tenile and Pectin had no stones to answer the question. Instead a diminutive person called Labia raised its hand and cried, “Because they want to make a lot of money?” Then Labia put his/her/their face in hands and heaved and hollered about the pain of human suffering.

Good. “And why do they want to make a lot of money?”

Bernard knew this and raised his hand to say, “So they can have their pick of who to have sex with.”

It was not rhetorical. Abundantly clear by the adult acne and the broken trifocal glasses that Bernard could see the immense glamour of money. He whispered that it used to just be charisma and power but that Human Resources had taken all those options away.

We took a minute to mourn the loss of charisma and power. Hot plankton green tea was dispersed.

I paced the room because this new generation of Human Resources officers really _needed_ to perfect the work of their predecessors. “Does anyone know how many top level executives we lost last year to small business?”

Pectin put up his hand this time. He was motioned to stand and deliver the facts. Pectin stood at the table, looked down at the table and recited C Level executives had opted to start their own companies 34% of the time last year.

“And Pectorals…. Do you know why??”

The trainees looked at each other but did not huddle because the metric yard stick was ready to strike. “ummm..is it because we couldn't give them what they got at home? Warmth, kisses and stuff?”

Everyone stopped to look at the instructor. To see if Petals had the answer correct. To see if they had learned enough to join the rest of the business community at lunch.

The instructor sighed and told them they could take out their sack lunches. He advised that anyone who needed a cigarette or joint should go to the roof because nicotine was just linked to anti-senility and RJ Reynolds was going to successfully sue for cannabis/tobacco parity in the work space.

“When you come back we are going to become certified on the proper kiss-hug-grope techniques that have been certified by Congress. Dismissed.”

I felt the fever returning in the lifeless room of the conference center. Sure, there were chairs which hadn't been pushed under tables, obvious evidence that the room was well used and shall we say loved. There’s a beauty in the white noise of strangers. The way one might go to a coffee house though they have coffee at home. The quintessential part of being a social mammal. We make products and services for people. People work people. People love people? No, people fear people?

How is it that a 2023 survey showed a high preference euthanizing homeless people over stray biting dogs? Is it as simple as ‘familiarity breeds contempt?_ maybe the new uniform should be a burka. We should simply refer to our Chief Executive Officers as Mr or Mrs. X. Assign everyone random numbers like prisoners so there is no bias.

We have got to really work on this bias. If the Human Resource teams are instructed to only hire ugly people…might we not become a model of efficiency? People actually going to work in warm pajamas bottoms. Brains would become bigger as sweatshirts become baggier. Makeup would become a Halloween Special. No more neckties to hang yourself in the closet. Ideas would be free without the need to breed.

I kicked over the demonstrator model of our new Romantic Robot..it was dressed as a wookie with chemical hand warmers all over its skeleton. Something people could buy at Walmart to replace the real thing. Love should be bought like that.

After fifteen minutes of break the Human Resources traineee returned and took their assigned seatings and asked why the Romance Robot was kicked over. I said that we were going to introduce psychological fulfillment into the workforce. To become more intimate as a company.

Pectin blinked.

“Are you saying that the workers of the future will be romance robots.”

Well, it was true you could kick them and bite them and they wouldn't complain.

Brenda held up her hand because she was the one who could do basic extrapolation. “If all the workers are robots… what will we do for work?”