If you would like to advertise on this blog, please email me at yo@thecynicalgirl.com — I accept text links.

I have no idea if I will be able to post over the next few days, so I’ll run a contest.

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Ellen Gordon Reeves sent me two copies of Can I Wear My Nose Ring to the Interview?

I haven’t read it — but you can win a copy if you tell me about your most surreal interview experience as either a candidate or Human Resources professional.

I once had a contract recruiter interview me for the role of a Corporate Recruiter. She ask me to role play, which rubs me the wrong way. She handed me a sheet of paper and said, “Pretend that you are a recruiter and I’m the Vice President of IT. I am hiring a data center operator. What questions would you ask if you read this job description?”

I looked down at the sheet of paper and said, “I’m not playing this game.”

She protested. “How am I supposed to know if you know how to recruit?”

I said, “Check my references.”

That was pretty much the end of our discussion, and I came home and laughed about the interview. Who role plays? What kind of Vice President of IT cares about hiring a data center operator?

Well I got an offer, and I accepted the job. I’ll tell you this much: the VP of IT was all over me like a rash about those stupid data center operators. I should have known better, but I was so young. Lesson learned.

What’s your story?

If you have a t-shirt from your business and you want some free advertising, send me an email and we can work out a deal. I would be happy to wear your shirt in a vlog or in a picture at one of my appearances.

Rules.

• The shirt must be new and unworn.
• I’m a size SMALL ADULT or MEDIUM/HUSKY CHILD. Yes, I’m built like a 12 year-old boy.
• I’m serious. I don’t want your old, gross, germy shirts. I will hunt you down and stab you in the face if you send me something nasty.

If you don’t have a size SMALL ADULT or MEDIUM/HUSKY CHILD shirt but want to give something away on my blog, please send me an email, too! We’re in a recession, people, and I’m all about connecting my readers to free stuff.

I don’t know about you, but I only take my environmental advice from multinational conglomerates who create tax havens in the Cayman Islands and outsource their manufacturing needs to juntas in Burma and The Northern Mariana Islands.

The most obnoxious email messages on Earth Day were the ones that wanted to educate me — as if going green would somehow improve my life. Take, for example, this email from Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Go Green! Enroll in Horizon BCBSNJ’s Paperless EOB option today.

So let me just say a couple of things. I haven’t belonged to BCBS NJ since 2003, which makes me question BCBS’s member database, let alone their ability to deliver electronic information. Furthermore, I would be happy to receive my explanation of benefits via email in a PDF format — but let’s not pretend that you’re doing me a favor. This has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with trying to reduce costs related to paper, processing, and postage.

So if BCBS wants you to ‘go green’ and enroll in the paperless EOB option, ask them for something in return. Suggest a quid pro quo. You want me to save you some money? Show me some love.

• Reduce my copayments.
• Improve your customer service.
• Give me a Macy’s gift card.

Hey, whatever.

I am all for reducing costs and implementing smart electronic medical billing systems, but we will address climate change through smart legislation and business regulations — not through stupid email messages urging me to go green.

Go green? Go f — yourself.

If you haven’t seen it, you should really watch it.

Mike Rowe talks about the myth of ‘doing what you love’ and examines the way America has devalued work to the point where we have huge infrastructure needs and a shortage of skilled workers.

So I wonder — How do you define real work? Do you think we devalue real work? Do we learn this from the media? From our family? As many of us in America move further and further away from our immigrant roots, do we start to equate work with a lower class of citizens?

A new Department of Labor report finds personal outsourcing is revolutionizing how Americans don’t do their own work.

Thank goodness we have The Onion. It’s what makes America great.

It’s been my experience at my big corporate employer that no one ever gets fired for poor performance. Is this common at all big corporations? Is it because they don’t want to deal with lawsuits? Is it just my employer?

Here’s my take. Most companies and HR departments are afraid to fire employees for valid reasons.

1. Employees will sue you.
2. Firing is easy (sorta) and employers may not have given their workers a fair chance to succeed.
3. Many managers who want to fire employees are bad managers and ought to be fired themselves.

I will say this much: I have a low tolerance for bad managers and stupid employees who game the system. Throughout my career, I have fired poor performers. I always had a great team of employment lawyers and broad authority to offer money in exchange for a signed release & waiver.

That’s right. I’m the kind of HR woman who pays people to go away.

Under my watch, poorly performing employees left with some dignity. It’s a good way to turn an otherwise difficult & unproductive situation into an encounter with a positive ending.

You suck at your job? You’re not happy? We’re not happy, either, and we made a mistake in hiring you in the first place. Here’s some money. Let’s all get on with our lives.

Anyone else have opinions or experiences to share? Is your HR department risk averse? Does it take forever to fire an employee at your office?

I did, however, watch The Beastie Boys video at the end of his post.

Kris and I are huge fans of The Beastie Boys. Music unites us. As members of the recording industry and union members themselves, I think The Beasite Boys have a vested interest in seeing unions succeed in a smart and thoughtful way. I want to direct Human Resources professionals who are interested in thoughtful union reform, smart health care reform, and The Beastie Boys to some interesting links.

1. Andy Stern and Jeff Kindler: Why Health Care Reform Can’t Wait
2. Analyzing the ‘Next Social Contract’ — Human Resources Executive Online
3. The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go Of The Old Ways Of Thinking To Unleash A New Prosperity by Matt Miller

This is America, and I would like to stop sabotaging our future and move the discussion beyond the old debates of sinister unions and paternalistic corporations. I don’t know about you, but I am done fighting over the entitlement of lazy, stupid, unmotivated workers. Let’s act like adults, fire employees who don’t perform, and have a new discussion:

• How do we compensate 21st century American workers?
• How do we create fair & innovative total rewards packages when we compete against workers in Canada, China, Burma, and the Northern Mariana Islands?

If we can include The Beastie Boys in that discussion, even better.

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I spoke with Gary Rubin, last week, and gave him a ton of things to think about — but I forgot to tell him that I don’t know anything about social media and I’m just pretending to be an expert. I just like to talk. (Mostly out of my butt.)

Here’s what I said.

• You need to give people a reason to visit SHRM on a daily basis. Migrating content and ongoing conversations from the existing website into a new, fancy user interface isn’t going to help create a destination.
• SHRM’s social network needs a face, and Lon O’Neil isn’t it. You can’t even get to his biography unless you are a member, which is problem #1. So much of the site is locked behind a wall, and SHRM would benefit from creating a community manager position that operates like a true community manager — someone who is big enough to have a personality that drives traffic to the site but small enough to be a guide. I cited Jason Davis as a good example of a leader, a moderator, and a mediator when his community needs it.
• I think the most important part of building a community is creating a space for important conversation and interactions that you can’t get anywhere else. Don’t try to be Facebook because even Facebook sucks at being Facebook. Focus on the purpose of the community — and create a user interface that is flexible enough to adapt and grow as the community matures.

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So here’s the winner of Greater Than Yourself by Steve Farber.