Friday, January 06, 2006

Here's Another Cut at P.C.

You may know that in an earlier incarnation of my life I was an Affirmative Action and Employee Relations officer. I spent much of my time dealing with race, sex and age discrimination and watching as our efforts to educate our workforce lead, invariably, to a chilling of workplace relationships. People were striving to be "cool" rather than authentic.

Over the holidays, my brother, Perry, a very interesting police officer with a twisty sense of the amusing, showed me these links. They depict "Office Linebacker," Terry Tate as a key contributor in a fictional company's HR department. Being an HR refugee, I found this uncomfortably funny. Take a look. Just don't spend too much time on the Milk and Cookies website: http://www.milkandcookies.com/keywords/terrytate/.

Consider this: its much better to tell the plain, unvarnished truth about what you think than to try to make it presentable so people will think better of you. If you think it, be responsible for it. Change your mind rather than just how you talk.