Why Can’t They All Be Like Lily and Dave?

Back on the topic of clueless pinheads, here’s something I TOTALLY don’t get -- Human Resources folk who lack people skills. You know, stuff like empathy, self-awareness, being a good listener, keeping an open mind. These things are kind of key. N'cest pas? There's more to the gig than having a nice smile and a firm handshake. No. Rilly!

And why are these frightfully, way-out-of-their depth individuals, seemingly, in the majority within that profession?

I wasn’t aware that HR departments are famous (infamous) for exactly this until I entered the field (as a trainer and then training director for a mid/large size local printing company).

I was at some bar (gee, you in a bar, Donna? Shocking!) chatting with some random fellow about politics, (the evils brought about by Raygun, why Clinton was good but no knight-in-gleaming-liberal-armor), the stone beauty of NIN's The Downward Spiral and the absolute wonders of Cynthia Cosentini when Mister Travelling Biz Man asked me about my job -- what did I do to earn the rent cheddar (painting and nattering on in bars not generally being big spondulick winners). He expressed mega-watt surprise when I told him that I was a trainer in a Human Resources department.

‘You’re in HR? I never would have guessed!’

‘Em...warum? Whyzat?’

His experiences, as a corporate climber dog, had been that the denizens of the field were all pretty checked out -- poorly or completely uninformed as to what was happening within their own company, what bennies were offered and the legally-beagley aspects of employment. They were unengaged and/or flat out uninterested in the rank and file employees. At most, HR’s across the land, according to my pub chum, were filled with smiling, vacant, deadly boring suits.

From the article Why We Hate HR in the mag Fast Company:

"The best and the brightest don't go into HR."
Who does? Intelligent people, sometimes -- but not businesspeople. "HR doesn't tend to hire a lot of independent thinkers or people who stand up as moral compasses," says Garold L. Markle, a longtime human-resources executive at Exxon and Shell Offshore who now runs his own consultancy. Some are exiles from the corporate mainstream: They've fared poorly in meatier roles -- but not poorly enough to be fired. For them, and for their employers, HR represents a relatively low-risk parking spot.

Ouch.

Now, I’d not run into this BUT, at that time, I’d only worked for one company with a Human Resources department. Carnivals, modeling gigs for artists, Mom and Pop print shops tend not to have that sort of set up. My VERY limited experience with HR had been with the most awesome Dave Duncan and Lily Krentzman. These are two folks who solidly know their stuff, have box-car loads of smarts, professionalism, pragmatic-ism, simply mad problem solving chops AND they’re both fun, interesting people too.

I thought all HR types would be like this or close. GodDAMN I’m naive. Or something.

I’ve not met anyone even approaching their equal since. Seriously. The dude who took over after Lily moved on was, on the surface, a smart guy but it became pretty clear to me that he was made the new HR King because the Powers That Be liked him, he’d bombed out of his copy shop management role and, with Lily gone, they had a hole to fill. Shawn most def did NOT have the people skills to rock the gig. He was totally down with rubbing shoulders with the CEO, CFO, the brandy new owner and the more favored middle management sorts but the regular old employee types? Phffft. No time. No time.

Mind you, dude pissed me off big time. He began his ignominious tenure at the same time my hearing was beginning it’s final nose dive into crap-out-itudeness. When I asked him to repeat things (because, duh, I couldn’t hear him) he’d give me shit, saying that I was faking my hearing loss. There was more -- he insisted that my little neurofibromatosis type 2 issue was nothing and I should stop whining about it (I hadn’t been).

Yeah, WHAT a colossal piece of work (AKA a fleet of Portosans worth of excrement)! He was eventually demoted, then fired (yeah, I drank a toast to that). I hear tell he’s an HR manager at some other poor company now. I hope the good fairies of growth, evolution and humanity met him in a dark alley somewhere and schooled him con brio.