HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2010-11-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2010. PAGE 5.
“Well there’s good news and bad
news. The bad news is that
Neil will be taking over both
branches, and some of you will lose your
jobs…On a more positive note, the good news
is, I’ve been promoted, so…every cloud,
etcetera….”
“You’re still thinking about the bad news,
aren’t you?”
That’s David Brent, the bonehead boss
in the BBC’s The Office. Did it make you
laugh?
Too bad. You’re fired.
Seriously. If you laughed at a joke like that
in an office setting in Great Britain these days,
chances are very good that you’d be clearing
out your desk before quitting time. Britain’s
government has just booted a piece of
legislation called The Equality Act through the
uprights. Final score: Political Correctness
one; office humour nil.
As of this month any staff member in any
British office telling a joke can be fired, and or,
sued if said joke “violates the dignity” or
creates “an intimidating, hostile, degrading,
humiliating or offensive environment” for any
other staff member or members.
That slurping you hear is the sound of
British barristers and solicitors collectively
licking their chops.
It gets worse. A staff member is open to
being sued if he or she tells a tasteless or
politically incorrect joke to another staff
member who laughs it off – but mentions it to
a third party who takes offense.
Not only that, the entire firm can be found
liable and charged with violating the Equality
Act.
All because of a joke? Bummer. Have you
ever worked in an office? Telling jokes is
usually about as good as it gets. William
Faulkner said it best. “One of the saddest
things a man can do for eight hours a day, day
after day, is work” said Faulkner. “You can’t
eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours
a day, nor make love for eight hours – all you
can do is work”.
And what makes office work uniquely
deadly is the fact that you don’t get a sore back
or callused hands or a sweaty brow doing it –
which would at least remind you that you’d
accomplished something. Mostly all you do in
an office is move information around – in
meetings or in memos, by phone or by fax; by
Canada Post or by e-mail.
Eight hours a day, day after day after day.
I used to work for a publishing house off
Fleet Street in downtown London. There were
three of us in the office: a sociopath, a
functioning alcoholic and me. The atmosphere
varied from turgid to toxic. The only thing that
made it bearable? Unscheduled outbursts of
laughter.
If it hadn’t been for telling jokes at least
one of us would be serving a murder rap
today.
Jokes are the gobbets of lubrication that
grease the wheels and cogs of workaday life.
George Mikes, a Hungarian/British author,
thought it was even bigger than that. “Jokes
are better than war,” said Mikes. “Even the
most aggressive jokes are better than the least
aggressive wars. Even the longest jokes are
better than the shortest wars.”
Amen to that. Let me leave you with an e-
mail I received from an office worker a couple
of weeks ago. It’s a facetious (I think) series of
memos concerning one office and its
experience with the concept of Casual Fridays.
MEMO 1 TO ALL STAFF: Effective
immediately, the company is adopting Fridays
as Casual Day so that employees may express
their diversity.
MEMO 2 TO ALL STAFF: Spandex and
leather micro-miniskirts are not appropriate
attire for Casual Day. Neither are string ties,
rodeo belt buckles or moccasins.
MEMO 3 TO ALL STAFF: Casual Day
refers to dress only, not attitude. When
planning Friday’s wardrobe, remember image
is a key to our success.
ALL STAFF MEMO 4: A seminar on how
to dress for Casual Day will be held at 4 p.m.
Friday in the cafeteria. Fashion show to follow.
Attendance is mandatory.
ALL STAFF MEMO 5: As an outgrowth of
Friday’s seminar, the Committee On
Committees has appointed a 14-member
Casual Day Task Force (CDTF) to prepare
guidelines for proper dress.
ALL STAFF MEMO 6: The Casual Day
Task Force has completed a 30-page manual.
A copy of “Relaxing Dress Without Relaxing
Company Standards” has been mailed to each
employee. Please review the chapter “You Are
What You Wear” and consult the “Home
Casual” versus “Business Casual” checklist
before leaving for work each Friday. If
you have doubts about the appropriateness of
an item of clothing, contact your CDTF
representative before 7 a.m. on Friday.
ALL STAFF MEMO 7: Because of lack of
participation, Casual Day has been
discontinued, effective immediately.
I got that e-mail from an ex-colleague – the
functioning alcoholic I mentioned earlier. He
still…functions…in that publisher’s office in
London.
I hope he didn’t spread it around the office.
It could get him fired.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Office work not always a joke
It certainly is fair to say that when I was
younger and going through school that I
hadn’t been shown the true importance of
Remembrance Day. It wasn’t until I began
working for The Citizen and became a resident
of the area that I realized how important Nov.
11 is to all of us.
When I went through public school and high
school, our Remembrance Day activities
weren’t as informational as they are here, and
it goes without saying that in a larger city
centre, there was nowhere near the outreach
and involvement that I have seen since
becoming a member of the community.
In Pickering we had Remembrance Day
assemblies, but I didn’t know where the
Legion was and I didn’t know where the
Cenotaph was either.
Until I moved here, I had never knowingly
met a veteran, I had no friends who were
fighting for our country overseas and I
certainly had never been told stories of warfare
from those who had lived it.
Since moving to Huron County my level of
patriotism has been rejuvenated. I have a love
for my country that had maybe been laying
dormant in me for quite some time. This is not
to say that I ever didn’t like my country, but I
was never quite the flag-waver that I have
become in the last four years.
I’ve made it no secret that Huron County and
I have turned out to be a great match for each
other, despite how unlikely a marriage it may
have seemed four years ago. And as is often the
case, some of my best education on a subject
has come from about as far away as you can
get from my childhood classrooms at St.
Anthony Daniel and St. Mary.
Area soldier Matthew Dinning lost his life in
2006 and his Wingham funeral was one of the
biggest the community had ever seen. One of
my first brushes with the armed forces came at
Blyth Public School, when Matthew’s father
Lincoln was there speaking to the students. I
was there to cover his appearance, but I just sat
there and listened; and learned.
When local veteran Russell Cook was
featured in a documentary series, he told me
his story. He told me about how he was
wounded twice, about how he felt the touch of
God while fighting overseas when his life was
saved and what went through his mind while
his fellow soldiers struggled to keep him warm
and alive while wounded and on the verge of
slipping into shock.
I have spoken with Jim Rutledge about his
extensive work on his book The Men of Huron
and how fulfilling he found the research to be,
hearing the stories of hundreds of soldiers from
the area who fought, and died, for their
country.
I spoke with the Mullin family from Blyth
just before Christmas in 2008, just after they
said goodbye to their son Tom as he departed
for Afghanistan.
Local veteran Stewart Ament also did his
part to open my eyes, telling me about his time
overseas, the feeling that he would never return
to Canada and the jubilation of setting foot on
Canadian soil once again to see his family
waiting for him. Meeting with Stewart has
touched me so much that I feel lucky to count
him as one of my friends, visiting him in
Wingham when I can.
So on Remembrance Day, I count the
opportunities I’ve had to meet these people as
one of the greatest honours of my life, and I
remember those I wasn’t able to meet,
knowing that, without even meeting them, our
world is better for their sacrifice, but worse for
having lost them.
Support our troops
Ajournalism student visiting the
Ontario legislature recently asked
reporters who cover it how they feel
now that they no longer set its agenda.
His question was understandable, because
the Ontario Press Gallery for decades had a
reputation for exposing issues that
embarrassed governments, but has been
reduced by half over recent years.
These cutbacks are mainly because half-a-
dozen daily newspapers in Ontario which once
sent their own reporters to cover the legislature
are now owned by Toronto papers and no
longer do so and 10 private radio stations once
assigned reporters to the legislature, but now
employ people who sit in their offices and
pontificate.
News coverage has been reduced, but oddly,
news media recently have exposed faults by
government as much or more than they ever
did and they deserve some credit for it.
The remnants still at the legislature have dug
out extra details showing how Premier Dalton
McGuinty’s Liberal government failed to
protect taxpayers’ money in such programs as
building an electronic health records system,
which have helped place it in danger of losing
the 2011 election.
But news media have revealed many other
failings which have and will hurt the Liberals.
In the latest, the Toronto Star, through an
investigative team in its downtown office, has
started asking why the province’s Special
Investigations Unit, supposed to look into
police officers’ failings, rarely charges any of
them.
It has cited as early examples a police driver
suddenly making an illegal turn and running
down and killing a grandmother, but later
promoted; a policeman sucker-punching a
handcuffed prisoner and breaking his jaw in
two places; and a police car running over two
teenagers chatting on the grass in a public park
and seriously injuring them.
Many have wondered why SIU
investigations so consistently exonerate
police, but it takes huge resources to research
all these cases and the Toronto Star, Canada’s
biggest newspaper, has these and may now
find answers.
The Toronto Star also sent one of its
reporters to work undercover in a privately-
owned retirement home, over which the
province is supposed to have some oversight,
and found elderly residents lying on its
floor in filth. This will force the McGuinty
government soon to announce much
stricter rules on operating and monitoring the
homes.
To mention just a few more: in what must
have taken a huge amount of leg work, the
Toronto Star found so many healthy-looking
people getting in and out of cars displaying
disabled parking permits, to which they were
not entitled, it forced the province to tighten
the rules on who gets the permits and their
enforcement.
The Toronto Star has exposed rogue
colleges, privately owned and claiming
to educate adults for careers, which
promised much better training than they
delivered.
One certified a Toronto Star reporter to work
as a security guard after only one day’s
training and another as a personal support
worker and nursing assistant after two weeks
of classes, and both pieces of paper were
worthless in the job market.
The McGuinty government later announced
tougher rules on the training schools
must provide and stricter supervision of
them.
The Toronto Star got inside a provincially-
funded treatment centre, supposedly holding
mentally troubled children, some younger than
12, and discovered many had only minor
behavioural problems, and its investigations
have forced closure of inadequately-
monitored daycare centres and a hospital to
instruct staff to avoid sexually harassing
visible minorities, and the list could
go on.
Other Toronto newspapers have exposed
failings by the McGuinty government, the
Toronto Sun, for example, focusing on its
wasteful spending and the National Post
revealing Crown prosecutors improperly used
police files to select juries to suit their cause,
and television has played a role in revealing
failure to protect lottery ticket purchasers
among other issues.
The Toronto Star deserves an extra
cheer because it has exposed failings by
a government its editorials enthusiasti-
cally support, but the main thing is media
again are more of a watchdog on
government.
Eric
Dowd
From
Queen’s Park
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Media bark at Dalton McGuinty