Saturday, March 13, 2010

Where Does the Work Life End & Private Life Begin?

This post in the Punk Rock HR blog is a great sum up of what I'm concerned about w/respect to working in a day job.

Basically, where do you draw the line b/t someone's personal privacy & their abilities to do a job? I've asked this of HR bloggers since it seems that some HR employees are too busy playing Grammar Nazi w/someone's Twitter posts & berating people for having pictures of themselves w/beer bottles to do any ACTUAL WORK.

My boss recently friended me on Facebook. I asked whether I was going to have to worry about being fired b/c of anything I post there (since my profile does pertain to aspects of my private life). He says "No," and seemed shocked I'd even ask the question. I explained my reasoning & he seemed to think it was as messed up as I think it is.

That's just one reason why this guy is a good boss, at least to me. Most other bosses want to micromanage & stick their noses into your private business; at least, that's what I'm seeing today w/more technology. Let's fact it, if you're a business owner you'd need a boss like mine or you'd be miserable. It's great having a job where you're expected to be honest & deliver straight talk, no matter what the person wants to hear.

Thank God I did my low level work before Facebook, MySpace & Twitter became popular. I'm also glad I dated before that time; ironically, it was my husband who introduced me to MySpace. This was back before Rupert Murdoch owned it.

I have some very personal beliefs concerning abortion.

First off, unless you've been in the situation you need to shut the hell up! Men, until you can get pregnant don't even speak to me. As long as you can't contractually obligate a man to care for a baby once it's born & take him to court for damages to your body, medical appointments, etc. they're going to have fewer rights in those decisions than the woman who's carrying the fetus. The men who agree w/this basic reality are golden w/me. I made sure never to date a man who'd dare tell me what to do w/my own body if I were faced w/that situation; pro-lifers were out.

It would be like me trying to tell rape victims how to cope; I've never been in that situation so I know better than to open my mouth on that subject.

Second, I beg to differ on the "all women regret it" argument. There are people who don't take it that seriously & think like Sethe in the book Beloved: basically, that the embryo/fetus is better off not being born than being born into a drug den, abuse, poverty, rape victim, etc. I think we should reward people who make responsible choices & know when they shouldn't be bringing innocent children into the world to face abuse, diseases, ridicule, unfit parents, lives in the court system, excessive therapy, etc. It's the same reason why grown ups should make their own decisions on sterilization w/out pompous, know it all doctors trying to play God with their lives.

I personally had to fight tooth & nail to get a tubal ligation at 26 years old. Here's what's wrong w/that:

A) I'm a grown up
B) I agreed to sign a statement waiving liability to the doctor performing the surgery if I "changed my mind" since that would be my problem & mine alone
C) I'm a professional person who really loves her career & would resent a child for taking it away from me, thus negating my fitness to be a proper parent
D) My husband & I made the mutual decision not to have kids
E) It's MY FUCKING LIFE!!!!! MY body, MY life, MY marriage & MY family being affected. Not some doctor's. I don't have to play "Mother, May I" when it comes to my body, okay?
F) Legally speaking, I have every right to make my own decision on this one. The Supreme Court & the Constitution protect me & my marriage from this kind of intrusion via rulings on contraception.

If voluntary sterilization were more widely available to women who wanted it and agreed to waive liability for "changing their minds", I think we could start dealing w/the abortion issue. Until that time, women are stuck paying a lot of money for birth control, popping out at least 2 kids (and sometimes even that's not enough) or remaining life long virgins if they don't want kids.

Finally, the religious issue. For God's sake, don't quote the Bible to me.

Not everyone is a Christian & not everyone is a member of YOUR faith.

No one's making YOU get an abortion so unless you are going to adopt the child of the pregnant person you're berating for going to an abortion clinic, shut your pie hole & keep your Bible at your church. This is the essence of a free country; if you want a religious dictatorship, get out of America & form your own on some island no one is ruling over. Better yet, go live in Iraq.

If any employer at a job having nothing to do with the issue tried to disparage me at work or fire me for my views, there'd be some serious problems. I have to wonder when we're going to see some constitutional lawsuits on things like this since this is a free speech & expression issue. I predict that once we get some lawsuits on this kind of thing, employers won't get to use employees' personal lives in workplace matters when those stances or actions have ZERO to do w/the business or the employee's job title.

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