Wednesday, March 18, 2009

HR: A Dirty Acronym

I have previously indicated my distaste for persons of the 'human resources' persuasion. From the reasonably safe vantage point of the employed and also with the discontented flavour of someone who has a cold, I shall further elaborate on that as (hopefully) my last tribute to the quest for employment.

Human resource experts, recruitment agents, and (my personal favourite spin) "intellectual capital specialists" are all terms used to describe one thing. People who make their livelihood from the exchange of other people's labour for money. Can you think of any other occupation that does that?

Yes, that's right. Slave traders. Slave traders also make their money selling the labour of other people. Only the slave traders are more industrious, because they actually have to go out and catch or otherwise buy their product. With the HR folk, all they have to do is wait for naive fish to wander into their nets.

Dramatic? Of course. But not untrue. Like Shylock, they believe that the living flesh of other human beings is valid consideration for a commercial contract. They are sharks. They are bottom feeders. They are not your friends, they are not ever on your side. Although it is your skin and bones that pays their way, it is the 'employer' that writes the cheques, therefore employee interests will always be ranked a distant third.

What causes me to slap my thigh and laugh a little is that they supposedly are the "screening process" for candidates. Unless they screen your DNA by lifting skin and hair samples from the interview room (I wouldn't put it past them, except that it seems a little labour-intensive for your average recruitment agent), there really is not a lot of screening that goes on. I've met with probably eight agents over the past month and the process is all the same. You show up on time, they make you wait. They apologise, fetch you a drink of water and get you to fill out a basic details form. Then you wait some more. Then they talk to you. You both shake hands, and part ways.

This is what they base their decision on. They don't call your referees. (Trust me, I asked.) A few written words and a maximum half hour discussion is the rigorous screening process that the employers are paying such good money for. Some may say that the employer is getting their human resource-related "expertise." Bullshit. I don't care how experienced you are with people, it's not like reading a book. You can't spend ten minutes to half an hour with me and be able to accurately predict my work-related competencies and behaviour. They don't just trade in human labour; they profit off of the lie that they are good at it.

I know this. Yet I sought their assistance in gaining employment anyway, because, as you would all be aware, it is a mega-shitty market at the moment. And because, if you want to apply for a specific job, chances are you have to go through a HR person anyway.

Which unfortunately, I did. it all looked good on the surface. The HR person pushed me through the interview process surprisingly quickly. They got me the rate that I requested, which is the highest rate I've ever earned (legally anyway). I am now employed in the IT section with a French mega-monster of a company working with a pretty fantastic pommy team. Sure, there's a certain percentage of cash that I'm earning that isn't making its way into my bank account, but I can deal with that. If that was all, that would be fine.

But that's not all kids.

First I get dicked around on starting date. I was told I was to start the next day, however, I didn't end up starting until a week later. OK, it wasn't necessarily the guy's fault the fact that I had a delayed start, however, the moral of the story is; don't say that you know something for a certainty when you know that you don't. I was tense for pretty much the entire week with the thinking I knew what was happening, and having the carpet pulled out from under me on that fact.

Also; the induction. The recruitment agency had their own special induction, which was, as all inductions tend to be, a complete wank. Accompanied by a handbook with Big Brother propaganda tones. Where the major problem lay wasn't in the fact that the agency had their own totalitarian induction, but rather that it was unpaid.

Sound illegal? I'm pretty sure it is.

But that's not the worst of the HR fucked-up-ness. Second day of the job, I have a nightmare of a cold that was threatening me on the first day. I go into work anyway and work a half day. Today I convince my workaholic head to stay home and convalesce for a day. Guess who gives me a hard time about it.

What the hell is up with that?!? I am a contractor, not a robot. If I'm sick, then I'm sick. The best thing to do in such a circumstance, when one is coldly informed by the HR leech that getting sick on the second / third day "isn't a good look" is to pleasantly, but formally and just a tiny bit more professionally, remind said leech that one valiantly went into work the previous day when one was actually sick and that one will return to work when one is physically capable. Leaving it unsaid that it wouldn't happen before that. Hopefully in his life before being a leech he cultivated enough intelligence to get that fact.

There is one extremely positive aspect regarding HR flesh-dealers that must not be overlooked: they are powerful motivation to further ones plans for freelancing work.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Happy Jan

A state of visualisation. Followed by a purposeful state of action. Resulting in a state of actualisation.

I got me a jawb! Not only a jawb, but a job with a Melburnian employmer!

I now meet at least one of the criteria for residency - gainful employment.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Sweet 'N' Sour: Combination

***Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!!!!*****


****BIG GIANT SPOILER ALERT!!*****


Seriously, if you haven't seen this Aussie movie, and you want to - do NOT continue reading this post.

All non-wanting-to-have-film-spoiled readers gone? (Yes, son. I'm talking to you.)

Good. Then we can get right down to it.

OK. So. About this movie.

It was beautifully made film, a real credit to the Lebanese-Australian writer, but it really packed a punch. I can confidently say that, no matter what background you came from, the filmmakers were not kind to you. They certainly weren't kind to me. But, considering the lot of the characters in the story, I think that I got off pretty easy....

Yes, the blonde racist teenage was a little fuck job. He was an angry tosspot, ill-educated, and very prejudiced. His introduction to the audience was aggressively pushing the very anti-social line that people of Lebanese descent were "not Australian" and "wogs that should go back to where they came from." Quite uncool behaviour, effectively sneering at other teenage boys that their cultural identity as an Australian is not valid, that he is not welcome in the country he grew up in. That he is basically living a lie.

However, does the admittedly very fucked up behaviour of blonde teenage boy warrant a death sentence? His story was pretty sad, with his mother gunned down by Sydney p'liceman, and him being addicted to drugs. And recently dumped to boot The film didn't explicitly say so, but I don't believe that he would have have devised the racial stereotypes all on his own. He was extremely angry, wrongly pouring angry shit on other kids in a very detrimental fashion to them, but conditioned by family and community to do so. I don't have the magic medicine, I don't know wht you do with teenage boys who are that troubled and trained to hate - but killing would not even make it onto the table as an option.

To the individual in the cinema today who applauded when blonde kid died - wtf? The event was not a victory. No cause for celebration. Just another life that never really had a chance. I will admit it was troubling as all fuck to see this kid in such a mental state that he was willing and able to shoot the blonde kid - just because the blonde considered him and his mates to not qualify as Australians. However, one racist kid's tragic death doesn't solve anything. And if you looked a little closer, you might just see the film maker making this very valid point. If you applaud the murder, you also applaud the Leb-Aussie kid going to jail. You applaud the use of violence to solve complex and deeply embedded social problems. In other words, you aren't doing much better than these morons.

I must convince, hearing people I was in a cinema with applaud the murder of a teenager, gave me pause. It made it just a tiny bit real, brought home the fact that this was based on real cultural dynamics, really present in Australian society. Definitely made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a bit.

But, getting back to unreality.. the film would not have been such a shock to the system if there hadn't have been some really positive heartwarming aspects. The open family love between the two Lebanese boys/men and their mother. The beautiful subtly yet strikingly done interracial romance between the blonde woman and the older Lebanese guy. The rough but honest goodness of character demonstrated by the Aboriginal characters in the film. The rich cultural display of Lebanese language, food and dance within Australia. The film had some pretty sweet highs, for sure.

But the lows. Oh, they went pretty low. For example....

WHY DID THE BEAUTIFUL LEBANESE BOY HAVE TO DIE!!!!! The pusher man got his money. Seriously. Lebanese boy had to put up with so much crap. Dead father, brother in prison for the past couple of years, fucked up social circle, racism, and then some more racism. WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE?!?!?!?! Don't they understand that he was too beautiful to die?

*sigh*

Despite the fact that it was a bit of a jagged pill, I am glad I saw the film. It was well-done, and very relevant. It raised some interesting points, such as whether women of minority groups tend to be less a victim of racism than men (one instance where a girl was referred to as a 'wog', as distinct from the boy being a 'dirty wog'), how cultural difference isn't a death sentence for partnership and also how easy it is to be blind to racism (both in how prolific it is and how detrimental) when it's not targeted at you.