I love the 90s and I love this video of the single worst boss in America.

Check out that tie & the hair.

For another view, here’s a video that shows us exactly what was happening through the eyes of his ‘producer’ (who looks like Chris Elliott).

I also love this video from Countdown, last night.

Finally, here’s the O’Reilly dance mix for your Friday night viewing pleasure. Get your freak on, yo.

I’m jammin’ on the one.

WE’LL DO IT LIVE! WE’LL DO IT LIVE!

(H/T to Scholars & Rogues!)

Quick post. Here’s a lovely article on a nineteen-year-old flight attendant for a partner of Northwest Airlines who didn’t want to fly a specific route at work — so he allegedly started a fire inside a paper towel compartment in the rear bathroom of the plane.

• Flight attendant accused of setting fire on airplane - Yahoo! News

Things that bother me:

• He allegedly boarded the plane with extra paper towels and a lighter. Excuse me, where the hell is TSA? Why do I have to take off my shoes but this tool can walk through the airport with Quilted Northern and a lighter?
• He didn’t just call in sick with the blue flu like most employees who want to send a message — he just got even.
• He’s a nineteen-year-old flight attendant.

Doesn’t 19 seem a little young to be responsible for the safety & security of 40+ passengers on an airplane, by the way? You can’t even drink but you can be a flight attendant? Weird.

In any case, there seems to be a new math in the airline industry.

• Low wages + horrible work environment = fire on planes.

I miss the good old days of crappy airplane food & stale peanuts.

This for my HR Scrabulous buddies out there — most of whom I’ve met through this blog.

LTS&R ain’t gonna get you very far.

As a side note, my pformer employer blocked Facebook almost immediately after I left the organization. Coincidence? Happenstance? Divine intervention from Baby Jesus?

I’m curious about the level of access to Web 2.0 in Corporate America. Does your organization block The MyFace? How about the Twitters? It seems pretty clear to me: if they don’t see the value in web2pointohs, they won’t see the value in your employment.

I worked as a recruiter back in the 90s. I was in my office, minding my own business, when I heard a knock at my door. I looked up and saw an administrative assistant in tears.

• She accidentally stabbed herself in the thigh
• with a pencil
• while trying to open a box.

For reals.

She was in pain and asked, “Should I go to the hospital?”

I had one thought:

• Thank god the pencil isn’t still in your thigh.

There wasn’t any blood so I improvised and suggested a trip to the employee medical department instead of a hysterical call to 911. Human Resources is all about flexibility and creativity. I just rolled with my instincts, yo.

In the spirit of office accidents, I’m sharing an article that lists America’s eight unhealthiest jobs. The list isn’t shocking or odd except that it leaves out firefighters and police officers. (I guess fire and guns aren’t as dangerous as I thought.)

Here’s the list.

1. Construction Worker
2. Office/Administrative Staff
3. Sales Staff (too many donuts?)
4. Nursing Aides, Orderlies, and Attendants
5. Janitors and Housekeepers
6. Registered Nurses
7. Waiters
8. Computer Specialists

I’ve seen accidents at work, and most of them are related to employees who are taking a shortcuts or ‘zoning out’ on the job; however, employees have rights (for now) and the article suggests the importance of understanding your options. Get to know the OSHA website, understand your work comp rights & responsibilities, and have a full understanding of your safety-related responsibilities at the office.

Yes, even the most cynical HR bloggers among us have attend compulsory ‘office safety’ seminars. It’s not so bad. There are always donuts.

Dear Laurie,

As a prefatory note, you don’t look very punk rocker-ish which, for my money, is a much more satisfactory state of affairs.

I’m writing to solicit your opinion on the use of the Briggs-Myer and FIRO-B in a OD-team building day and half session for my employer which is a state special district. We’re a small group and I would be fairly described as low in rank and have little or no influence on operations or strategy; however, the session was mandatory for all 22 of us including a couple who are ranked even lower then I am. I am not in Human Resources.

Staff and board members (the latter did not participate in the team building session) took both tests via the internet and I am almost sure that an explanatory section assured us that individual results would not be identified as such. In other words, there would be no way that my results would be public knowledge or discussed. However, that’s exactly what happened. Everybody’s personal results were made public and something of synanon-like session was tacked on to the part of the Briggs-Myer fest. We are expected to do the FIRO-B part today and some of it has already taken place where small teams were asked to evaluate several anonymous FIRO-B profiles which turned out to be our own!

Would you consider this an ethical use of these tests? What legal obligation am I under to participate in this process, especially when I strenuously object to the public display of the test results, even if I thought they were accurate? The psychologist leading this exercise is a well-respected individual and has apparently written a couple of books on team building.

Thanks for any insight you might offer.

Regards.

- Anonymous

**

Dear Anonymous,

Oh boy, I feel your pain. I believe that personality tests in the workforce are bullshit. Plain & simple. Here are other things that I believe –

• I believe that it’s important to understand your strengths & weaknesses as a human being.
• I believe that it’s important for you to understand how your behaviors & actions impact your team.
• I believe in self-improvement.
• I believe that you can learn to be more self-aware and conscious of your behaviors through activities other than pseudo-Jungian psychology.

I haven’t found anyone who can clearly articulate the true difference between Myers-Briggs (which is rooted in a subjective, post-Freudian psychology) and astrology. You can cast my astrological chart as a Capricorn or you can call me an INFJ. There’s not much difference in the pseudo-scientific results from the MBTI exercise (in my humble and non-PhD opinion).

• For a discussion on the MBTI/Myers-Briggs test and its conflict with science and reason, you can visit the discussion board on the Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe.

Back to your questions:

• Your team building activity seems poorly executed, confusing & vague. (Go figure.) Generally, personal MBTI results are complied and presented to you in a private manner so you can review the data. The data of your team is aggregated and rolled up into a larger report that is used in a session to discuss the team’s strengths and weaknesses.

As to the legality of being compelled to participate, I always defer to common sense. This is America and you are not required to participate in an activity and/or keep a job that you find objectionable or unethical. Unfortunately, your organization is not compelled to employ you as a low-ranking colleague (as you described yourself) if you’re not meeting performance expectations. Most companies link performance, funny enough, to the act of responding to the feedback from faux-scientific personality tests based on a flawed, oppressive, and subjective Jungian psychology.

For my money, the issues of team building and personality tests are smokescreens for a bigger discussion you should have with yourself. Is it time to look for a new job when time & effort at your current job is spent dissecting MBTI and FIRO-B results instead of focusing on activities that are linked to performance, your team’s abilities, and the financial results of the company?

I’d be curious to read comments from other HR bloggers & professionals. Evil HR Lady and HR Wench also provide excellent legal & technical HR advice.

Best of luck,
Laurie

PS - I’m age-appropriate punk rock, which really means that I’m lame and I wear comfortable shoes.

Per Cute Overload’s suggestion, I made a demotivator poster for my office at Team Building Is For Suckers, Inc.

Our new brand slogan?

“Building teams through the power of NOM.”

I rarely write about math or compensation because neither are my strong suit; however, I’m here to testify to the dangers of tapping into your 401(k), your pension plan, and other retirement investments.

A former employer of mine allowed employees to borrow money from their 401(k)s and repay the loans through payroll deductions; however, my employer was also engaged in a massive restructuring effort. Many employees lost their jobs.

As the on-site HR Generalist, I was exposed to the unfortunate financial illiteracy in my otherwise educated workforce. When accepting the terms & conditions of the 401(k) loans, far too many employees ignored the important fine print: they were required to repay the 401(k) loan in full within 90 days of their termination date or the loan would be treated like a cash withdrawal (where they would face an early termination penalty and taxes).

As the on-site HR Generalist, I was expressly forbidden from counseling employees on financial decisions (it was a policy and not just because I’m bad at math). I was only allowed to offer comfort and advise our employees to talk to the benefits department or speak with our employee assistance program. It was heartbreaking to hear the panicked voices of my colleagues because I knew that their hard work & financial planning was placed at risk by a decision to borrow against their retirement savings

(This is why people hate HR, by the way. We’re not staffed with experts, nor are we empowered to speak or think like an expert. We are nothing more than an inefficient referral system.)

SHRM says that one in four employees will make an early withdrawal from their retirement savings. The reasons for the early withdrawals were never simple, and I wish that my HR department could have offered more proactive guidance to these employees. SHRM suggests that HR managers have a role in educating employees on why loans against retirement savings should be considered as a last resort; however, much of HR is now outsourced and specialized, thus requiring employees to make financial decisions through the anonymity of the internet — or a call center in Bangalore.

Had I been able to provide proactive advice, it would have gone something like this:

• Don’t take a loan against your 401(k).
• Don’t do it.
• Just don’t.

I’m not naive and I know that life is tough for many people, but there are resources and other unexplored avenues out there. Instead of offering lunch & learn sessions on employee wellness programs, maybe HR leaders ought to work with local management teams to schedule relevant sessions on how to manage an out-of-shape financial portfolio. At the end of a long work day, who cares about high cholesterol if your house is in foreclosure and you’re borrowing money against your 401(k)?

Food for thought.

Deb Owen, one of the first people who actually read my blog when I started writing about Human Resources, is quoted on The Shine network on Yahoo.

Check it out, yo:

Words of wisdom for entrepreneurs from the pros on Shine: For those contemplating taking what Thoreau called ‘the leap in the dark to our success’, it’s necessary to gather data, including seeking out advice from several sources. Too often, though, you’ll find that people may not be so excited about your idea or may not believe in you. Don’t listen to them. You must know with absolute certainty that you are going to make this thing work, one way or another. Once you have that confidence and determination, nothing will stop you. — Deb Owen “8 hours & a Lunch: A Search for Balance and Sanity”

Deb is the total package: brains, heart, and passion. If you don’t read her blog, check her out now! Do it!

Scott Adams is trying to come up with the ultimate Catbert t-shirt design.

Go vote here (correct link!).

I could never be a funeral director.

Being the human resources geek that I am, I visited the BLS website in the aftermath of my great aunt’s death. I wanted to learn a little more about the funeral services industry. It turns out that being a funeral director is a hot job. (You Baby Boomers out there — the ones who don’t trust anyone over 40 — are singlehandedly responsible for expanding the market. Way to go!)

I learned that the job of a funeral director is quite scientific and technical. Funeral directors are licensed; there are serious compliance issues related to federal & local regulations; and most employees in the field have four-year degrees. Furthermore, the job of a funeral director is quite complicated and requires a working knowledge of laws, ethics, and various religious traditions. There’s also a psychological component built into the job and the successful candidate must be able to guide a grieving family through a series of very important financial & emotional decisions.

Oy.

The National Funeral Directors Association has a fascinating website, too, with interesting resources and statistics. (Did you know that a cremation chamber reaches between 1400 degrees to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit? Neither did I.)

Here are some significant points about the job from the BLS website:

• Job opportunities should be good, particularly for those who also embalm.
• Funeral directors are licensed by the State in which they practice.
• Funeral directors need the ability to communicate easily and compassionately and to comfort people in a time of sorrow.

You can also visit the NFDA website and learn more about being a funeral director. What surprises me most is that only 20% of the people who work in the funeral services industry are self-employed. (I thought that number would be higher but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a corporatist movement in the field.)

Also, I was surprised to learn that the median annual earnings for wage and salary funeral directors were $49,620 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $37,200 and $65,260. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $28,410 and the top 10 percent earned more than $91,800.

Only $91,800? Really, I thought they’d earn more — especially because they are asked to work with both dead people and the grieving, emotional relatives. I don’t know anyone in the field of funeral services, so I can’t ask if there are other perks with the job beyond the emotional satisfaction of assisting people during a crisis.

I am attending my great aunt’s funeral services on Monday & Tuesday. I won’t be live-blogging the endeavor (although I might be on Twitter); however, I will attempt to seek out the owners of the funeral home and ask them if they want to talk about their jobs. I’m curious, yo. I will report back to you in the evening and provide any additional facts/stories from the funeral home proprietors. I might also have some family tidbits to share, too.