November 13, 2002
Dear Everyone:
Diversity is Big Business lately. At work, everyone is required to have a “Personal Diversity Plan”. What’s a “Personal Diversity Plan”? Just about anything you can get your supervisor to agree to. But mostly, it means spending at least a couple of hours each quarter attending “Diversity Events”. There’s usually one each month in various locations. They’re generally put on by one or more of the “FIB Employees Networks”. (“FIB” stands for Fill In Blank.)
There’s the Black Employees Network; the Lesbian and Gay (or is it the other way around?) Employees Network; the Hispanic Employees Network; the Native American Employees Network; etc. I’m looking to join a “Celtic-Portuguese Employees Network”, but haven’t found one yet.
There’s a “Diversity Council” which recommends that people “celebrate diversity” through Bingo. (I am not making this up!) You can even earn “Diversity Stamps” by playing Diversity Bingo and by making suggestions for Diversity Bingo.
Every week, at our teleconference staff meeting, someone is supposed to come up with something “diversity” to share in a “Diversity Moment”. It’s a standard agenda item, just like the “Safety Moment”.
So what does “Diversity” mean?
According to my Webster’s Dictionary: “The quality, state, fact, or instance of being diverse, difference.”
The Company Pontification: “We learn from and respect the cultures in which we work. We value and demonstrate respect for the uniqueness of individuals and the varied perspectives and talents they provide. We have an inclusive work environment and actively embrace a diversity of people, ideas, talents and experiences. Company wants to be recognized as a leader in global diversity and as a company that values and leverages diversity for business needs.”
(In other words: Claptrap.)
My definition: “Diversity is a buzzword used by corporations in an effort to avoid lawsuits. It occasionally has the pleasant byproduct of generating a more comfortable working environment for the employees.”
Now here’s the tricky part. How do you measure “Valuing Diversity”? Answer: See paragraph one, sentence five.
So last week, there were two (count them, two!) Diversity Events in my neck of the woods. One had already been planned. The other was a rather sudden amalgam of “safety” and “diversity”.
It started when the Safety Team decided to come up
with the traditional “You’re going to eat yourself into an early grave”
holiday food remonstration.
But then, someone decided to invite the Diversity Council to get
involved and, before you knew it:
“The Multicultural Holiday Feast” cooking class was under way.
It was intended to provide healthy food choices and to include
absolutely anyone who might have something to celebrate during the
Holiday Season:
Thanksgiving (covers just about everyone, including Native
Americans, should they wish to participate)
Christmas (for your traditional Christians)
Hanukah (for
those of the Jewish persuasion)
Kwanzaa (for
those African-Americans who don’t want to observe the traditional
European Christianity Christmas, but who still want to party)
Ramadan (for the
Moslems)
Now, technically, Ramadan is a month-long celebration of fasting, in honor of Allah giving the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad; and it generally shows up around November and December. But there’s a loophole: Fasting takes place between sunrise and sunset. So the idea is to eat before the sun comes up, fast all day, and have a nice meal once the sun goes down… a meal you share with as many people as possible. Once again: party.
With all that going on, the “event” took considerably more than the one hour it was supposed to fill. We each got a brief taste of grilled cranberry-marinated chicken. And, for a wonder, the smoke alarms in the conference room didn’t go off (two electric grills, lots of smoke). We also tasted “tofu pumpkin pie”, guaranteed to contain zero grams of fat. (Well, of course it had no fat. She neglected to include the traditional mountain of whipped cream.)
And the very next day, the Native American Employees Network had its Diversity Event, featuring a clip from a PBS documentary coming up soon on TV. (The local PBS station has been very generous with its help in these events. Also, it provides them with virtually cost-free advertising.)
With all this Diversity running around, it was inevitable that we would start getting lectures about not spending too much time on Diversity. Bottom line: We value diversity as long as it doesn’t cut into billable hours.
In other news…
There I was a few weeks ago with “Jeannie”,
shopping in
How it got that way, and for how long, I really couldn’t say.
But “Jeannie” felt quite superior for the rest of the day.
(It rhymes, so it must be true.)
Love, as always,
Pete
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