Human Resources #2
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- Ch: 07 of Wage Slave -
Taking another quick glance at the man taking up two of his waiting room chairs, Jones had the sudden realisation that Billson must be a terribly anxious man.
“This isn’t the first time you have had to have one of these talks, right?” said Jones as he was opening Billson’s file.
“No sir”, Billson replied, blushing. His hand instinctively reaching towards his snacking pocket.
“It says here that you had a similar incident last year.”
Biting down on his lip, Billson nodded.
“Unfortunately, Miller was terrible at documentation. Perhaps that’s why the higher ups transferred her out of Human Resources and into customer service. Regardless we will need to discuss that incident again before we move on to yesterday’s incident. It mentions something here about a discrimination complaint. Something about body fat percentage, objectification of women and public obscenity.”
Billson attempted to swallow, but even this well practiced movement was failing him.
Handing Billson a glass of water, Jones continued,
Look Billson I am going to level with you. I like you, I really do, but the higher ups are pushing to make an example of you. I need to know everything that happened if you want any hope of keeping your job.”
After a prolonged silence, Billson began to speak,
“Well like I said back then, it was all just a misunderstanding … I … I’m all about equality. I believe that we are all equal, regardless of gender. I don’t even care if you are both genders or none, or even if you switch between them as we talk!”
“Then why am I looking at a complaint letter signed by three different women Billson?”
“We ... we were talking about the gender pay gap and general equality. One of the ladies mentioned that at the staff beach party the year before the men were free to go topless, but the women couldn’t.”
“Go on.”
“I don’t remember their words exactly, but they were discussing how the ‘patriarchy’ doesn’t allow them to be as free with their bodies as men can be. I just agreed with them. I told them that everyone should be allowed to walk around topless at all times! I guess that they took offence to that, or thought that I was coming onto them, or something. But I swear I wasn’t. I was just agreeing that they should be allowed to be as free as they like.”
Jones looked at Billson for some time. Instinctively, Billson reached for his snack pocket once more. Finding nothing, he clasped his hands and fidgeted instead.
Eventually Billson continued,
“One of them responded to my comments saying that nobody would want to see me topless. Then everybody laughed, and I laughed with them. You know how it is, if you complain, arch up or make an issue of a joke, it just gets worse. Besides, she was right, who would want to see me topless anyway?”
“It says here that you filed some sort of counter complaint against the women?”
“Only to save my job, if I didn’t counter claim, with witnesses of my own, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Okay, okay, that seems reasonable, but all of this seems relatively harmless. Risque perhaps, but not really terms for disciplinary action. Care to explain?”
Blushing deeply, Billson admitted,
“Well I wanted to get the attention off of myself. You know, take the heat off so to speak. It works, deflection that is, and humour of course.”
Billson paused, gulped and then spoke,
“So I said that there should be a 40% body fat rule. That is that people with 40% body fat or more should be forced to stay clothed, and everyone else was free to choose. Honestly I don’t see an issue with this. It’s a totally fair, gender neutral proposition. Besides, I was the only one in the group fitting that description anyway. But I guess they didn’t like that one.”
Jones shook his head and began rifling the notes. Finding the appropriate part added,
“Not at all, they suggested that your joke was sexist because of a woman’s natural levels of higher body fat. That in fact your suggestion was inherently sexist because it would be significantly easier for a woman to meet your criteria and subsequently be forced into your, and I quote ‘misogynistic ploy for control and domination’.”
Billson shuddered, and once again failed to retrieve another non-existent chocolate bar from his snacking pocket.
‘Human Resources #2’ is part of Wage Slave
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