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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