So the other day I'm giving a job applicant one of our employment assessments. Whenever we do this we use one of the intern computers, as they only work part time. Now, our producer interns are a raucous group of male college students, mostly Marketing and Comm majors. I'm standing there waiting for the computer to boot up, giving the usual spiel about how professional our company is, when the loading finishes, the desktop pops up on the monitor, and the applicant (a pleasant woman applying for an admin asst job) and I both turn to the screen to behold...
Three strapping young men oiled up and wearing naught but Speedos.
It's been a running prank over the past 4 or 5 years for the interns to log on to their fellow intern's computer and change the desktop wallpaper to some sort of homoerotic image while they're gone. While this is a prank I fully support, this was a very, very, bad time.
So there I am, the poor HR shmuck whose job is basically to ensure that no one is ever offended ever, standing with a female job applicant looking at a picture of three men in banana slings. In that horrible split-second of realization I feel a cold sweat break out as every case study and legal briefing I've ever read regarding harassment flashes through my mind, though part of me is laughing as well, completely aware of the humor of the situation.
Fortunately the lady thought it was funny (she was younger and not from Cedar City, which was a stroke of luck [nothing against Cedarians, of course; it just would have been a far worse situation if she had been 30 years older and a local]). Me and the interns had a laugh the next day as I told them the story and asked them not to do it on that particular computer, and the lady now works here, undoubtedly spending hours on end googling wallpapers of male models.
And may I just say, my proudest accomplishment in this post was pulling off the parenthesis-within-the-parenthesis in the above paragraph. I may even attempt the daunting "Triple-parenthesis" in a future post.
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6 comments:
I only wish they had used this picture instead:
http://a183.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/26/s_6152a71d3ab6e7956a8505f96ed11026.jpg
Haha, good form, Peter Pan, good form! I was also going to let you know that Matsuri was awesome and I think I will make it an annual trip for me. The seminar was also very cool. There is one coming up in Vegas soon (last weekend of Mar.) wanna come? It will involve swords and a really fat guy- I am being serious!
Sorro, I am afraid to even look at that picture.
Shouldn't you put the bigger parentheses on the outside, like so: [words and such(you know)]? ;)
According to the style guides you should put parentheses in this order {[()]}, according to the way people type it should be ([{}]) because you don't know you'll be making a parenthetical comment to your parenthetical comment until it's too late.
As for the pic Mickel, it's The Todd.
I'm opting for the ([{}]) method as, like Sorro said, people don't ever anticipate the parenthesis-within-the-parenthesis. It's just a beautiful thing that spontaneously springs up from within, like Kobe's 81-point game or Ryan Styles' Carol Channing impersonation.
So forget the style guide. Disco Stu doesn't need no style guide.
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