Some people have been sacked for writing about their work on their blogs. In cases like the flight attendant and the Edinburgh bookshop bloke, this was a very bad thing indeed, but Chig is not stupid. That’s why, in the five years of this blog, he has never done any more than obliquely allude to the day job and would never write anything more specific about it.

Good. Glad we’ve clarified that.

Now, let’s play a little game! It’s rôleplay time. I’m going to set the scene and then give you three purely hypothetical situations. What I’d like you to do is tell me what you would do in each case. There is no prize, other than the immensely gratifying thought that you may have saved the sanity of a hypothetical person or persons whose identity/identities cannot be revealed (because they're not real).

Setting the scene:

Imagine, if you will, that you’ve been out of the office for about six weeks, perhaps due to illness. When you return to work, still feeling like death warmed up, still waiting for the get well card from your colleagues that must have been lost in the post and still feeling ever-so-slightly anti-social, unable to breathe properly due to ten weeks of sinusitis (and a hospital appointment still a month away) and unable to stay alert because you’re still not on a high enough dosage of thyroxine, you find that some things have changed. The radical ‘upgrade’ of the computer software that forms the core of your working day has ‘gone live’ in your absence and your colleagues seem resigned to the fact that it’s made many things worse instead of better. Someone has also been moving the office furniture around… Now, let’s play ‘What Would You Do?’

Scenario 1: The sexist language.

When you were involved in the testing of the ‘upgraded’ software before it ‘went live’, you noticed that a new phrase had been introduced to label certain jobs. Work which requires two people to complete, perhaps because it involves climbing onto a rooftop or up a pylon, or requires heavy machinery, was now labelled ‘two man job’. This concept never existed before. You pointed out to your manager that the phrase ‘two man job’ was perhaps ill-advised in this enlightened day and age, especially when not all of the technicians who would be doing said jobs are male and when your massive, pan-international company has a policy of non-sexist language. You suggested that it may even be illegal to specify which gender should do a job that can be done by any human being, regardless of penis or vagina presence. You suggested that it be changed to ‘two person job’ or just ‘two techs’ for the sake of brevity. Two months later, the system is now in use and the label is still there, looking down at you from your screen as you work, niggling you every day. What would you do?

(a) Just ignore it. It’s political correctness gone mad! Everyone knows what it means, so stop being such a pedant. What are ladies doing climbing pylons anyway? They may smudge their make-up. Now where’s my Daily Mail gone?
(b) Mention it once more, then grin and bear it. It’s annoying, but some of your managers are so stuck in the 1970s that it’s impossible trying to reason with them.
(c) Get all your colleagues on your side, then mention ‘company policy’, ‘sexism’ and ‘legislation’ in a team meeting in an attempt to embarrass your managers into getting it changed, quick smart!
(d) Take the direct route to the senior managers who you rarely meet and the HR people who are a bit more socially aware, suggest to them that this is surely against company policy and insist that your chauvinist manager be disciplined, preferably in front of everyone else.
(e) Something else.


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