Thursday, February 28, 2008

Oh yeah, now I remember...

Well blogsters, if you remember the last post, I was about to start the "new" old job back...forgot why I had left...*smacks forehead*. Forgot about the right-wing extremism. The last time I worked for him he literally asked me, and get me ACLU on the phone, if I was a Christian. It's one of those things where you ask yourself, "If I answer 'no', for instance if I were Muslim or a Jew, what would the outcome of the interview be? Do you just keep it under your hat and just smile and nod because you need the money? I know, legally, he can't ask you that question, but the way this guy is, he wouldn't hire you if you weren't. He has speakers up all over the store that play the local religious radio station constantly and he WILL NOT let you change the channel, ever. I really don't know what to do in those type of situations but the smile and nod. Am I a Christian? I once was, I'm in the open-minded state of being right now. As a past president, whose name escapes me at the moment, once said, and I'm paraphrasing a bit: "As bad as this world is with religion, can you imagine what a jungle it would be without it?" Just don't presume I'm a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, or if I worship the Holy Banana Tree on Monkey Island...(edit: check out http://www.freewebs.com/vanuatuorangutanclan for my spoof) I'm there to make product, sell it and go home at the end of the night, hopefully a bit richer. There, rant complete...

1 comment:

k said...

I got my first full-time job when I was barely 17. I worked at a bank in suburban Chicagoland, and it was 1975. Women were not accepted in the workplace, outside of certain traditional jobs.

The bank VP interviewing me asked me all sorts of questions that were not legal to ask. Some of those laws were new. He asked me if I used birth control. If I planned on getting married. On getting pregnant.

It happened many times since then too. Part of that game is a show of power: the boss simply wants to let you know that they don't care what the law says, they'll say what they want, and screw you. If you want that job you'll have to bite your lip and say, --Yessir.

I hear that these days, people are more or less forced to work unpaid overtime, punch out on the clock then go back to work instead of going home, etc. Folks are more apathetic, in a way, about protesting against that kind of treatment.

I'm sorry to hear those things. I'll never know how true the rumors are: I need to be in the workplace, myself, to see. But even so - just the prevalence of those rumors is a sad state of affairs all by itself.