Horrid Phrase of the Day

Any doubts I ever had as to the fundamentally evil character of Human Resources departments were erased today in a lunch conversation with an old friend, an executive at a certain large corporation. My friend manages a group of employees.

"My boss told me to Manage Them Out," my friend said.

"What does that mean?"

"Get rid of them."

My friend's boss had rejected performance evaluations of these employees and asked my friend to write more negative ones that would lay the groundwork their eventual firing.

I've seen this process at work in more than one corporation, and it's sickening. An employee receives great performance evaluations and raises over a period of years, a new boss comes in and wants to make a mark, and the once-respected employee suddenly finds himself on the "to-go" list.

The worst part of the process is that nobody ever tells the employee of the writing on the wall.

"Managing them out" is part of the general cynicism and soullessness embodied in the phrase "Human Resources." There are material resources, information resources ... and human resources. The phrase puts people on the same level as property and in fact reflects an estimation of employees as slaves, human property.

It takes a certain sort of egotist to be part of such an evil structure.