Double Whopper
Here's a quick ironic story for you. Today, we had this marathon staff training session at work. Part of that session includes a mandatory sensitivity/harassment information session given by this attorney. Every single person working as part of our staff must go through this training in order to work. It's company policy.
There's this whole gimmick throughout where the guy gives scenarios that might come up at work. If you think the scenario is okay, you hold up a green "okay" card. If you think the scenario crosses the line of appropriateness, you hold up the red "not okay" card. For about forty-five minutes, you're getting a training-wheels session about how not to offend everyone at work and get fired.
So, the session is taking place about fifteen feet from a group of us, who have already been through the training. There are three of us standing around, talking about how long the day is going to be and what our plans are for after the sessions are through. We start approximating what time we'll be done, and then, the one guy of the three of us, my co-worker/boss, goes, "I'm going to Fuddruckers and getting a burger the size of Elana."
Yeah.
YEAH.
I was like, dumbfounded. First of all, that's a pretty insulting thing to say to someone, but the thing is, I couldn't help but laugh because seriously ten feet away was a group of 200 people getting trained on what's inappropriate to say in the workplace. I think making an analogy between the size of a giant hamburger and the size of your co-worker/subordinate pretty much falls on the far side of the red "definitely definitely NOT OKAY" spectrum. Seriously, I felt like stopping the whole session and asking the attorney, "So, what if your co-worker slash boss says that he's going to a local chain restaurant to eat a hamburger the size of you? Is that okay, or is that not okay?" Ten bucks says all of the red cards would be held waayyyy high in the air and this guy would have a meeting with the head of human resources pronto. Like do not pass go do not collect giant hamburger pronto.
The other thing about this is that the guy had no clue why he was being offensive. He kept saying that if he said he was going to eat a burger the size of my real boss's five-year-old daughter, it would be ridiculous. The point, he argued, was that he was saying he was going to eat a burger the size of a human, not that he meant anything about the size of the human to which he was comparing said burger.
Well, I don't care. I still think comparing a co-worker to the size of a hamburger is offensive, and every single female I've told this story to has reacted in the same, "Oh my god, he did NOT say that" way. It's like this, "Who SAYS that?" reaction. Total horror.
So to sum up, while the company paid an attorney a pretty sizeable chunk of change to talk about sensitivity training, ten feet away, I was being compared to a giant hamburger. Huh. I don't know whether that should be a career highlight (like the ultimate oxymoron moment) or, like, a personal life all-time low. Things to think about.
There's this whole gimmick throughout where the guy gives scenarios that might come up at work. If you think the scenario is okay, you hold up a green "okay" card. If you think the scenario crosses the line of appropriateness, you hold up the red "not okay" card. For about forty-five minutes, you're getting a training-wheels session about how not to offend everyone at work and get fired.
So, the session is taking place about fifteen feet from a group of us, who have already been through the training. There are three of us standing around, talking about how long the day is going to be and what our plans are for after the sessions are through. We start approximating what time we'll be done, and then, the one guy of the three of us, my co-worker/boss, goes, "I'm going to Fuddruckers and getting a burger the size of Elana."
Yeah.
YEAH.
I was like, dumbfounded. First of all, that's a pretty insulting thing to say to someone, but the thing is, I couldn't help but laugh because seriously ten feet away was a group of 200 people getting trained on what's inappropriate to say in the workplace. I think making an analogy between the size of a giant hamburger and the size of your co-worker/subordinate pretty much falls on the far side of the red "definitely definitely NOT OKAY" spectrum. Seriously, I felt like stopping the whole session and asking the attorney, "So, what if your co-worker slash boss says that he's going to a local chain restaurant to eat a hamburger the size of you? Is that okay, or is that not okay?" Ten bucks says all of the red cards would be held waayyyy high in the air and this guy would have a meeting with the head of human resources pronto. Like do not pass go do not collect giant hamburger pronto.
The other thing about this is that the guy had no clue why he was being offensive. He kept saying that if he said he was going to eat a burger the size of my real boss's five-year-old daughter, it would be ridiculous. The point, he argued, was that he was saying he was going to eat a burger the size of a human, not that he meant anything about the size of the human to which he was comparing said burger.
Well, I don't care. I still think comparing a co-worker to the size of a hamburger is offensive, and every single female I've told this story to has reacted in the same, "Oh my god, he did NOT say that" way. It's like this, "Who SAYS that?" reaction. Total horror.
So to sum up, while the company paid an attorney a pretty sizeable chunk of change to talk about sensitivity training, ten feet away, I was being compared to a giant hamburger. Huh. I don't know whether that should be a career highlight (like the ultimate oxymoron moment) or, like, a personal life all-time low. Things to think about.
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