Workplace Inequality

A frequent theme lately is women are not paid fairly in the workplace and it's true, they're not.  However, what they are not realizing is no-one is paid fairly in the workplace and that, specifically, is why they will fire you if you talk about your salary with anyone else in the organization.

It was only after I was promoted into my previous boss's position that I could review the salaries being paid in the department and there were gross disparities not explained by ability.  Everyone on the staff was a male so there was no gender inequality but it does show the rampant inequality which exists regardless of gender.

The situation I observed was probably not typical because the boss was bright with numbers but didn't have any more human skills than the average rattlesnake.  There was only one thing he knew:  how to curry favor with the bosses.  Morality has not one damn thing to do with it and, contrary to the screams from all over, gender hasn't much to do with it either.

I was running the operating system department and my partner ran the online department.  My salary was twenty grand less than one on my own staff who was managing a tape system.  I can't scream sexism over a situation like that but I can certainly scream this: ASSHOLE (my ex-boss, not the tape guy.  I never told the tape guy and he never knew.)


The second-rate humans who do these sorts of things are the incompetent legions of the middle managers, the ones who know they will never get to the top and they scuttle about like bugs under a refrigerator to stay where they are.  These are absolutely the first ones to throw overboard on the path to a healthy organization (i.e. keep some of the ones on the top, most of the ones on the bottom, and chuck all the ones in the middle over the side.  The tribe needs their water more than it needs middle managers.)


It was the same kind of situation with Charles Beale, the sleaze who ripped me off on the insurance claim when my kit was stolen in Dallas.  He was just another second-rater in the middle leagues and he was sucking up to his boss by killing me to meet some quota.

After it was clear there was no way to correct things, I would taunt him every so often with such gems as 'you will not ever be promoted because your managers know what you do and they do not trust you either.'  He was really smoking over that one (larfs).


Note:  there were no incompetent trout like that on my staff.  If there had been, I would have fired them.  I wasn't buds with my staff because they still had immense respect for the previous boss and I could not tell them, without blowing any vestige of professionalism, any of what I knew about how much of a prick he was.

(Ed:  he didn't so why should you?)

His standards were rather lower than mine.  For the next couple of years, I worked to bring parity to the salaries in the department and the irony is this removed any trace of what the previous manager had done so no-one else knew but me.


As to why my staff was comprised only of men, these were the only candidates who applied except for one guy who showed up for the interview in a dress, full transgender.  I did offer him the job but it wasn't to achieve any kind of balance in diversity or some such as what possible niche is this guy going to fill.  He was technically talented even if a complete freakshow but most of the people on my staff were freakshows of one kind or another.  That was one of the things which made it interesting.

I do confess I thought it would be amusing to see the upper managers having conniption fits as they pretended to greet diversity.  That would have been comedy you just cannot possibly buy.

(Ed:  just using him?)

Nah, he was using me.  He only did it to punk me and declined when I made the offer.

(Ed:  so it's all studying the species?)

Yep.

(Ed:  what did you learn?)

That it's interesting studying the species.

(Ed:  learn anything else?)

Nope.  Well, I will probably remember don't wear a dress to a job interview.


There was another incident with a guy with a gun and that was unusual.  He nearly transported himself into a deep world of shit and it wasn't intervention from me which prevented it but I was aware of it and decided there was no reason to reveal that at the bank.  I wouldn't tell anyone even what had happened, much less who was involved.  The Silas, he don't rat anyone out, see.

(Ed:  if he ever did cap someone then you would go down with him)

Yes but I also would have destroyed his life if I had told anyone of what happened.  Sometimes you have to make a command decision.  Part of that was based on his knowledge telling me gave the bank all the justification it needed to terminate him and I would be the one who would have to do it.

(Ed:  that's a big bet to place on sentimentality!)

My wager was not on sentimentality but rather risk analysis and honesty.  I'm not going to specify the parameters because it would identify the individual.

(Ed:  I take it you won?)

Yes but there is no way to know whether I made a good read or I was just lucky.  I prefer to think the former.


Note:  none of these positions exist anymore.  All were outsourced to IBM Global Sources.  Draw from that whatever conclusion you will about where the jobs actually went.  I know specifically my partner resisted this mightily but it's upper corporate muscle driving the outsourcing.  It makes great business sense, JB.  Harrumph, harrumph.

Sub-note:  there's immense irony in that as my partner is a staunch Goldwater Republican and yet he supports exactly the people who sell out the jobs in this way and he has had that problem right up in his face (I was already gone by the time this outsourcing travesty took place).  Quite the puzzle, that one.