Keywords: diversity
970 words, About 2 ½ pages.
Diversity Shmersity: or Herbal Tea on the Job
Fresh from a non-profit board
meeting, I’m happy to report on an eye-opening event. Someone said, “I’m all for any new program
for us that doesn’t involve the word ‘millennial’.” I heard shouts of amen. “Millenial shmennial,” I said. Soon followed by “diversity,
shmersity,” from someone. Now that I’ve got your
attention, let me explain.
I’ve
had to fire several millennials already unfortunately. I hope it helped them out in the long run. I did see one really good one: a young lady, marketing major from
Auburn. She grew up with a no-nonsense
old school dad. She showed up for work
dressed nicely, said yes sir, no sir, was on time, worked hard, no fooling
around. She never asked about a
ping-pong table or a chocolate fountain for the office or tried to skip out of
work for a ropes course. She didn’t
waste time with personal stuff on the computer and respectfully made occasional
suggestions for improvement. We promoted
her so much, she left the organization for a well-paying management job
elsewhere. They exist, ready-for-the-workplace
millennials.
She
came in the first day for her fist real job out of college. I told her about my first day on my first
real office job: the boss said, “here’s
your desk, here’s your phone, here are your goals, and, of course, your
secretary who knows everything. Oh, and
there’s the coffee maker. I’ll check
back with you in a month and you better have reached your goals.” No namby-pamby worry about where you came
from or your inner child profile or any hot tub talk, herbal tea or other therapy. Note:
I got serial promotions too after I kept achieving the goals.
For
this young lady, a millennial, I said “here’s your desk, your phone—it’s a land
line, you don’t have to recharge it, your goals, and, of course, your computer
with tons of pdfs on everything we do, and your employee buddy’s office is over
there. Here’s the coffee machine and
herbal tea, and I’ll check back with you in two weeks. If you reach your goals, there will be
another two weeks. Go for it.“ She nodded
and then proceeded to excel. I learned a
great lesson for the second time in my life.
Goals, hard work without fooling around and respect make for a winning
formula. No matter the generation.
This
brings us to diversity. Many run, hide,
and pull up the covers with this topic.
I don’t get it. You see, plug in
the same story of the millennial above with any variation of respectful,
well-dressed, hard-working person, and I could not care less about
diversity: their skin color, gender,
whatever. Isn’t—or wasn’t—that supposed
to be the point? Somehow we tend to veer.
We were
taught by enlightened civil rights messengers that skin color is
irrelevant. Maybe I’m missing the
message, but official diversity now tells us that color is everything. Perhaps it’s “victimeering” or perhaps I just
don’t get it, but we seem diverted by diversity. For those who know Latin, it is indeed the
same basic word. Perhaps, we’ve diverted
from the “here’s the desk, the goals, etc.” talk. Just give the same talk to everyone and see
who gets it. The others can go
elsewhere. If diversity is the self-evident end goal,
then there are a lot of NBA teams in trouble—just saying.
One
summer, I was fortunate enough to make it to the Olympic training camp. I fit in well, I thought, had a great
attitude, worked hard, even dressed in all the right gear. Every Friday morning we had a time trial to
make sure everyone made the minimum standard.
I was sore, nursing an old injury, but still did pretty well on the time
trial that Friday, or so I thought. At
lunch, one of the coaches came by and said, “Harrison, I’m afraid you missed
the time; are your bags all set?” I
looked bemused. “your ride to the
airport will be out front in about an hour and a half,” he said softly but
factually as he looked sad and shrugged.
I said, “Sir, I’ll be ready. I appreciate having had the chance.” Smarts
didn’t count, parents didn’t count, skin color didn’t count, money didn’t
count, et cetera didn’t count. Only the stopwatch
counted, and I was a click too slow. I
learned a bunch during lunch that day.
My son plays high school football. I’m ambivalent about it because the
risk-reward equation isn’t all that favorable, especially if one plays for all four years. I asked him what he likes most about football, “It’s not soft, but hard and makes us work
together to get something done,” he said.
Indeed, it’s the only semblance of military training American teenage
boys still get. There’s no mandatory
service here as in most other major countries, no compulsory giving of youthful
time and energy to serve society at large.
Like it or not, some essentially American can-do, get-it-across-the-line
thinking will die with the last good football coach.
A few
years ago, some terrorist tried to blow up a plane by lighting a shoe bomb or
an underwear bomb or something like that.
Some football player type saw him trying to light the fuse and knocked the bejeezus out of the guy. I remember it because I had lunch with the
most artsy-craftsy, left wingy, wonderfully kind friend I had soon after the
news of the attempted bombing. She said
about the incident, “sometimes all the grief therapy and herbal tea in the
world can’t get it done like a tough dude with a job to do.”
Sometimes,
many times, nearly all the time—let’s not divert--it’s about getting the job
done respectfully every time.
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Copyright © 2018. All
rights reserved. JP Harrison
