Hiring follies
Apr. 13th, 2007 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantOne day a week, I work for a nutty and irascible family-owned a floor-refinishing business. This week they're trying to hire a couple of people for the sand-and-finish crews, and man, this is a tragedy -- or at least a lawsuit -- waiting to happen. (Any of y'all want to run a sander? I think it would be cool to be able to do it, but when I use the weight machines at the gym, I'm going, "Isn't there anything lighter than 12.5 pounds?" so probably not.)
I've never told y'all about this place, have I? The business is run out of a garage -- half for the office, half for storing wood and sanders and suchlike -- and they're not allowed to have a sign because they're technically in violation of the zoning ordinance, so they have a big red trailer parked in their lawn with the name of their business on it. Also, a very bored chocolate labrador is usually sprawled out over the entire floorspace, so that you can't put anything in a file without making him shift positions and move his tail to the other side.
Linda, the office manager -- the owner's wife -- is a nice person, but she's also a writhing mass of unacknowledged prejudice. I'm betting she would be genuinely friendly to any individual person she met, but she has a lot of very firm misconceptions about the groups these people may belong to. I'm sure she'd be shocked to hear that this makes her a bigot, but it does.
For instance, one of the guys who came in to fill out an application had a Spanish surname. When he left, she said to me and the bookkeeper, "He'd be good. Those people are always very hard-working."
Then she went on: "The one just before you arrived might be good, too. Black guy -- but he sounded like he had a good work ethic."
Then there's the gender problem. Now, operating a 200-pound belt sander eight hours a day (plus lifting it in and out of a truck) is obviously a job that requires a great deal of physical strength, and evidently it's easier if you weigh more than the sander. Relatively few women are going to meet both those conditions, and it seems to me that it would be perfectly reasonable to say to female applicants, "This job requires you to be very strong, and it helps if you're also very big."
But this isn't what Linda says. What Linda says is, "Well, it's a pretty intense job, and not a lot of girls want to work that hard." She doesn't understand why this caused one female caller to hang up on her. "I didn't mean anything bad by it! I don't want to work that hard, either!"
When the Department of Employement Security called, checking out the job for a female client who's an ex-marine and doesn't want a desk job, the bookkeeper all but grabbed the phone out of Linda's hand. She may save the business yet.
As long as nobody gay applies.
I've never told y'all about this place, have I? The business is run out of a garage -- half for the office, half for storing wood and sanders and suchlike -- and they're not allowed to have a sign because they're technically in violation of the zoning ordinance, so they have a big red trailer parked in their lawn with the name of their business on it. Also, a very bored chocolate labrador is usually sprawled out over the entire floorspace, so that you can't put anything in a file without making him shift positions and move his tail to the other side.
Linda, the office manager -- the owner's wife -- is a nice person, but she's also a writhing mass of unacknowledged prejudice. I'm betting she would be genuinely friendly to any individual person she met, but she has a lot of very firm misconceptions about the groups these people may belong to. I'm sure she'd be shocked to hear that this makes her a bigot, but it does.
For instance, one of the guys who came in to fill out an application had a Spanish surname. When he left, she said to me and the bookkeeper, "He'd be good. Those people are always very hard-working."
Then she went on: "The one just before you arrived might be good, too. Black guy -- but he sounded like he had a good work ethic."
Then there's the gender problem. Now, operating a 200-pound belt sander eight hours a day (plus lifting it in and out of a truck) is obviously a job that requires a great deal of physical strength, and evidently it's easier if you weigh more than the sander. Relatively few women are going to meet both those conditions, and it seems to me that it would be perfectly reasonable to say to female applicants, "This job requires you to be very strong, and it helps if you're also very big."
But this isn't what Linda says. What Linda says is, "Well, it's a pretty intense job, and not a lot of girls want to work that hard." She doesn't understand why this caused one female caller to hang up on her. "I didn't mean anything bad by it! I don't want to work that hard, either!"
When the Department of Employement Security called, checking out the job for a female client who's an ex-marine and doesn't want a desk job, the bookkeeper all but grabbed the phone out of Linda's hand. She may save the business yet.
As long as nobody gay applies.