Shall We Not Avenge?

Imagine you're at a bank when suddenly two or three people there pull out guns.  One of them approaches a teller and demands, in German, that she open the safe.  You understand this because you happen to speak German but the teller does not.  Frightened out of her mind, she assumes the gunman is demanding money, so she opens a cash drawer and hands over a wad of bills.  The gunman becomes angry because his instructions were not followed and repeats his demand, again in German, brandishing his weapon in a threatening manner.  Meaning to help, you explain to the teller that the gunman wants her to open the safe, which she then does.

Realizing that you speak both languages, the gunmen now press you into their service, forcing you to translate between them and their victims.  Staring into the business end of their guns, you of course comply.  Now, imagine that, before the incident is over, the gunmen wind up shooting several bank employees and a customer or two for good measure but the police do arrive and the gunmen are eventually arrested.  Unfortunately, so are you because one of the security guards assumes, mistakenly, that you were one of the gang all along.  After all, you were their translator.

You're eventually brought to trial and, as the case is heard, all are in agreement that you yourself stole nothing and harmed no-one.  However, the prosecuting attorney argues that you aided the bank robbers which makes you complicit. 

To your dismay, you are found guilty, but you appeal the verdict and are eventually vindicated.

However, about a year later, you are again tried for the same crime and once again found guilty.  You appeal again and are exonerated again.  Some time after that you are tried again, but this time you are found not guilty and don't even need to appeal.  Nevertheless, the prosecuting attorney will not accept defeat and hauls you back to court yet again.  This goes on for about two decades, during which period your legal fees practically exhaust your life savings, not to mention the fact that you can never really rest easy and enjoy life because you never know when you'll have to defend yourself against the same accusation yet again.

Surely most of those reading this would agree that this entire affair was a travesty of justice, yet this is essentially what has happened to an elderly man by the name of Helmut Oberlander.  The difference is that Oberlander was a translator for German Nazis rather than bank robbers and the victims were Jewish, which brings politics into the picture as anyone siding with Oberlander suddenly risks being labeled an anti-Semitic.

During the second world war, Helmut Oberlander was pressed into service by the Nazis as an interpreter for one of the Nazis notorious Einsatzkommando death squads.  This is not in dispute.  Oberlander maintains that he was seventeen years old at the time.  He was coerced into service in that the alternative would have been to risk being executed himself, and that he was merely a translator and did not personally participate in any violence against Jews or any other Nazi prisoners.  These statements are not in dispute either.  Although I`m sure that Oberlander`s accusers suspect him of being more complicit than he admits, the fact remains that there is not one shred of evidence, none, that he ever personally harmed anyone.

So his accusers, primarily the Canadian Jewish Congress, have had to content themselves with arguing that Oberlander lied about his association with the Einsatzkommando squad when he first applied for Canadian citizenship and that this should be grounds to revoke that citizenship.  Oberlander maintains that he did not lie on his citizenship application.  While he concedes that he did not go out of his way so reveal his association with the Nazi death squad, it was only because he was never asked about any such association.  At worst, he is guilty of failing to volunteer information about a part of his past which he could not have changed and that he would just as soon put behind him.

For "lying" on his citizenship application, Oberlander was stripped of his citizenship, won it back on appeal, was stripped of his citizenship a second time, won it back on appeal again was tried yet a third time and won yet again.  This has been going on for over two decades.  This past week, he was once again tried for the same non-crime and stripped of his citizenship a third time.  He plans to appeal again.

In what sort of legal system is it acceptable to continuously try a person over and over again for the same crime until the court finally produces the desired outcome?  Unfortunately, unlike the United States' legal system, Canada has no "double jeopardy" law to prevent this sort of thing happening.  In Canada an accuser is free to hound the accused over and over again with impunity.

Helmut Oberlander is over 90 years old.  If his citizenship is not restored, he faces possible deportation, likely to the Ukraine where he was born, far from his family, his friends and the country that he has come to call his home.  Is  this a fair and just punishment for a man whose worst crime was to translate, involuntarily,  for a group of Nazi thugs? 

To the Jewish community, and anyone else who, like Shakespeare's Shylock, cries "If you wrong us, shall we not avenge?" I say this:  While it is understandable that you should want to see someone held to account for the atrocities committed against your people, singling out a person who has done nothing wrong but whose background and nationality make him a convenient symbol of the source of your anger is wrong.  Punishing a blameless man will not bring back the dead.  Two wrongs still do not make a right.  Leave Helmut Oberlander to live out his final days in peace and let your God be his judge.

How Not To Keep Employees

I've changed jobs again.

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I started the job which I just left back in April of 2010.  The company that I worked for before fell victim to the Great Recession of 2008/2009, so I found myself unemployed.  It took me six months to find another job, which is not bad compared with some of the stories of job search frustration that I've heard.

I have to credit the management of the company that I just left for seeing beyond my technical knowledge, which was not a strong match for what they generally sought in a potential employee, and seeing some promise in my long years of work experience, doing many of the same things that their employees typically did, albeit with different technology.  Also, full disclosure, I was able to get a referral from someone close to the company president, which probably didn't hurt my chances either.  No matter, the fact remains that  they took a chance on me, and I spent almost nine years hopefully vindicating their faith in me.

Sadly, I was never truly happy in all the time that I worked there and, the longer I stayed, the clearer it became to me that none of my fellow employees were happy either.  The company in question is a small, family-run business with only about 13 employees excluding management; i.e. members of the family that owns the company.  In spite of my nine year tenure, I was the second newest employee in that company.  They have hired a  new person since my departure yet, even so, I believe that leaves only two current employees with less than 9 years tenure.  Most of the remaining staff has been there for 20 years or more.

My point is that this company is blessed with a small but highly experienced and dedicated staff.  You would think that they would want to do everything in their power to hold on to people like that.  Instead, the company management seems to be doing almost everything wrong where their employee relations are concerned.  If they had a handbook outlining their managerial policies and practices, it would probably read something like this:

Blood Lineage Is The Only Managerial Qualifier

Never, under any circumstances, grant any form of managerial or decision making authority to any employee whose last name is not the same as that of the company owners.  A business is to be run as a kingdom.  God has ordained that only those of the proper lineage shall rule.  There is no need to search for managerial talent outside of the family bloodline.  Heaven forbid that you might accidentally import any new and strange ideas about how to manage the company from outsiders.

Do Not Communicate

Never tell your employees anything.  Everything is a Big Secret.  Don't tell them if you're planning on hiring someone new or if someone has given notice of their resignation.   The others will find out for themselves in due time.  Let that rumor mill run rampant.

Expect Employees To Accept Work For Which They Are Unqualified

Feel free to make your employees responsible for doing things that are outside of their job description and for which they have no formal training.  A good employee should be able to figure things out for themselves.  To cover yourself, be sure that all job descriptions include verbiage such as "Other tasks as required", which can mean anything from mopping the floor to flying an airliner.  And, whatever you do...

Do Not Train

Employees who receive formal training acquire credentials that only make them more attractive to other enterprises.  This inevitably leads to their leaving your company and then all of the time and expense that you invested in their training is out the window.  If an employee lacks the knowledge to perform a task which has been assigned to them, why, that's that Google is for.

Do Not Document

Writing down standards and procedures takes time and reduces productivity.  If you do document anything, do it once and never review it to ensure that it is still current.  After all, change doesn't happen.

Do Not Replace Staff When They Leave

If someone leaves, simply re-assign their duties to the remaining staff.  Nobody ever works at 100% capacity and there's always room to take on additional responsibilites.

Micro-manage

Your employees cannot be trusted to do their jobs in an independent and professional manner.  It is up to you to tell them how to do everything, right down to the precise wording of e-mails to customers.  Freeing your employees from the burden of prioritizing their own work and thinking for themselves helps to reduce their stress levels.

Punish Good Performance

When you do need to assign additional work to someone, be sure to give it to those employees who are the most productive.  This only makes sense as they will be the best equipped to handle the additional workload and stress.

Reward Low Ambition

There will always be those employees who whine and complain any time that you try to assign them a task that falls outside of their perceived responsibilities, just as there will always be those with more of a "can do" attitude who are willing to accept new challenges and learn new things.  When assigning new tasks, it's best to assign them to the ambitious ones.  They'll put up much less of a fuss, thus saving you time and frustration.  Don't worry about lopsided work loads and responsibilities, or "fairness", whatever that means. 

Avoid Giving Performance Reviews  

Employees should not need regular reminders of your goals and expectations of them, especially since these never change.  They should also have a good idea of their own performance without need of feedback from you.

If you tell an employee that you're pleased with their performance, they will likely expect increased compensation.  Conversely, don't express your concerns to an employee who is not performing up to expectations, or provide goals or suggestions for improvement.  If they can't figure out and correct their own shortcomings, you can always fire them.  If it does come to this, see the directive about not replacing staff.

The Job Is Of Prime Importance

As a business owner, you eat, sleep and breath your work, often putting in 50 to 60 hours a week.  You should expect nothing less from your employees.  Never mind that they are almost certainly nowhere near as well compensated as you are, nor that they will naturally be less invested than you, having no personal stake in the business beyond a paycheck.  They owe you complete and total loyalty for being given the privilege of working for you.  Family responsibilities, health issues, personal hobbies and general well-being should not impinge upon work responsibilities.  The work-life balance should always be weighted toward work.  Your employees should live to work, not work to live.

In my letter of resignation, I did not elaborate on any of the above.  Instead, I merely commented that the company has a morale problem and that the staff feels over-burdened and over-stressed.  Sadly, I fear that this too will merely be dismissed as the unimportant grumblings of a malcontent.

Nothing Boosts Church Attendance Like A Good War

My mother, on returning from Sunday morning services this morning, mentioned that the priest made a comment to the congregation about people who show up at the last minute or, worse, after the service has already begun.   Needless to say, he disapproved of such behavior.  Nevertheless, he delivered the admonition in as genteel a manner as he could, politely suggesting that people consider getting up a bit earlier in order to arrive in a timely manner, as opposed to thumping his fist on the lectern and invoking God's wrath on non-compliers.

In days past, it was not always so.  Mom recalled her childhood days, when priests were much more given to scolding the impenitent and the impertinent in a fire-and-brimstone manner.  She mused that this may have been because people took church a lot more seriously back in those days, shortly after the end of the second world war, consequently giving the clergy an inflated sense of self-importance.  She had a point.  Nothing boosts church attendance quite like a good war.

On the other hand, I'm reminded of a certain bit of fundamental airplane pilot wisdom which tells us that "If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger.  If you pull the stick back, they get smaller,  unless you keep pulling it further back, in which case they get bigger again."  I suspect that church attendance follows a similar pattern.  When things get bad, attendance goes up, unless things continue to get even worse until there comes a point where attendance falls off, either because the worshipers have lost their faith, or because they are dead.  I wonder what church attendance is like in Syria nowadays?

Sibling T.M.I.

My sister is one and a half years younger than I.  There's not a huge age difference between us, and the gap seems to get smaller with each passing year.  But it did seem somewhat bigger when I was 18 and she asked me one day, totally out of left field, what color "come" is.

Now, on most guys' list of "Questions That We Don't Want To Hear From Our Little Sisters", I imagine that one ranks fairly high, right up there with "Why do all the pages of the magazines under your mattress stick together?"  On the other hand, I did feel somewhat relieved that she still had to ask that question.

My second reaction was the fear of that question being followed by "How do you know?" if I answered her.

My third reaction was to wonder why the color mattered to her.  Was she worried about choosing underwear that wouldn't clash?

I honestly don't remembered how, or even if, I answered her.  Maybe my mind has intentionally suppressed the memory.  All I can say is ladies, girls, even though you may understandably regard big brother as the font of all wisdom, there are certain questions that are just too weird to answer.

Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

I have a 27-year-old nephew, Jonathan, who still lives at home with his parents.  Sadly, this is not so uncommon nowadays.  It seems our society has made it harder than ever before for young people to savor their first taste of independence, what with high post-secondary education costs creating onerous student debt burdens coupled with low-paying, precarious student jobs or, even worse, internships that offer no monetary payment whatsoever.

Jon, however, has no student debt, because he never continued his education beyond high school graduation.  It's not that he lacks the mental aptitude for college or even university study.  Indeed, he's a bright young man, whose marks in high school were good enough to put him on the honors list.  And it's not that he lacks the financial means to cover the cost of tuition and books.  His parents, while not overtly affluent, are a comfortable upper-middle-class couple who helped to finance Jon's older brother's post-secondary education and would happily do the same for Jon as well, if only he were willing to enroll.  But he isn't.

Instead, he lives in his parents' home, spending his leisure time playing computer video games.  He does not pay rent, because he has no job and therefore no income.  At this point, dear reader, you're  probably picturing a lazy, overweight freeloader.  If so, your mental image of Jon is incorrect.  In fact, he happily helps out around the house doing chores and odd jobs and he has been known to do volunteer work in the community.  But he refuses to seek gainful employment because nothing suits him.  There's always some reason for not applying for any given job; it's too far away and he has no means of transportation or he's unqualified or he just plain isn't interested in doing the type of work required.  He suffers from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and this provides a ready excuse for avoiding employment.  He may not have ready access to a bathroom or his boss might get irritated with him taking too many bathroom breaks.

He has lots of talent.  He's handy enough to be able to fix things and do simple home renovations and repairs, yet he eschews building on his knowledge of plumbing or carpentry or any other area of specialization in the field of home renovation or repair.  He's much more PC-literate than the average person and has built his own custom home PC, yet he would never consider joining the "Geek Squad" or taking a job as a computer technician.  And he's a born comedian.  He can mimic anyone or any accent.  He has a keen memory for movie lines and catch phrases.  Yet, when his older brother recently explored the idea of making him Master of Ceremonies. at his up-coming wedding, Jon flatly refused.  Public speaking is out of the question.

He has never had a girlfriend, although he's reasonably attractive and extremely physically fit.  He works out constantly.  Yet, he's not gay; he has never had a boyfriend either.  He has a wonderful sense of humor and an engaging personality.  

He's devoutly religious (Christian) and is somewhat prone to preaching.  But he readily admits that the root of his religious faith is a fear of eternal damnation.  He doesn't practice his faith out of a love for God, but rather out of a fear of the fires of hell.

And therein lies the key word that defines Jon.  Fear.  He's afraid to try anything new.  He is extremely averse to change, to the point where he wears the same type of shirt and pants every single day.  He's normally unwilling to try anything new or novel; hence the avoidance of post-secondary education and all forms of employment.  A friend of his father's recently got him a job working in a warehouse.  He didn't last a day.  Before the day was out, he had what can only be described as a panic attack and had to be sent home.

And yet, there have been rays of hope.  A couple of summers ago, he spent time in an indigenous community, spreading God's word among the young indigenous people there.  The local kids gave him good-natured nick names such as "Army Pants" (because of the camouflage pants that he constantly wears) and "Milk With Ears". At one point, he actually petted a wild wolf and came away with hands still attached to the end of both wrists.  He genuinely seemed to enjoy that experience, yet he has never seen fit to repeat or follow up on it.

Almost everyone who knows Jon, especially his family, gets frustrated with his unwillingness to try anything new.  His parents, his brother, his grandmother and, yes, even his uncle, are constantly trying to think of ways to "fix" him.  But it's not that easy.  While I'm no psychologist, I strongly suspect that Jon's fears and anxieties are the result of a mental illness or abnormality.

Mental illness is still largely misunderstood in our society.  Many people believe that everyone has complete control over their emotions and that, for example, not being depressed or afraid is simply a matter of deciding not to feel that way. The reality is, those suffering from any form of mental illness can no more make it stop than a person suffering from the flu can make their runny nose or watery eyes stop.  In both cases, there are treatments and medications that may help, but it's impossible to just wish the condition away.

So, maybe what Jon needs is counseling.  Doubtless that would help.  The problem is, he's no more willing to speak to a professional counselor any more than he is willing to try anything else new; at least, not in person.  But he does interact with others on-line.  He plays on-line computer games and, the rare times that he has actually applied for jobs, it has always been via on-line applications; never in person.

So perhaps on-line counseling is the answer.  That too is available nowadays.  I have recently exchanged e-mails with an online counseling web site known as betterhelp.com.  One of their representatives stumbled upon this blog and apparently though enough of my writing to suggest that we might provide links between the two sites.  Having not used betterhelp's services myself, and not yet knowing anyone who has, I can't yet provide any sort of testimonial for them but I've at least explored the site and the counseling service they offer sounds interesting.  Now if I can only convince Jon to give it a try.

The Social Media Conundrum

Nowadays job search gurus and web sites such as LinkedIn.com are commonly advising their readers and members to be mindful of the content that they post on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc.  It's no secret that potential employers commonly browse the social media pages of prospective employees as part of their selection process.   I have read that some employers have admitted to disqualifying potential job candidates because of something that they read or saw on said candidate's Facebook page.

I'm a Facebook hold-out.  I don't have a Facebook account, because I am a natural introvert and I don't feel the need or the desire to share every detail of my life with a bunch of on-line "friends".  My real friends know where to find me and we keep abreast of the goings-on in each others' lives in the old-fashioned manner (i.e. by telephone or face-to-face communication).

If a potential employer "Googles" my name, they will find my LinkedIn profile, a bunch of photos on my Flickr page, my Google+ page (which I really don't keep up to date), some game reviews on a computer gaming site, and a handful of miscellaneous posts on technical web sites.  Ironically, they might not even necessarily find this blog, without browsing through several pages worth of results or clicking on related links, because I don't use my proper name here all that much (no, my name is not really "The Halmanator").  With a little more careful searching, they might come upon the video that I posted on YouTube in memoriam of my late son.

There is actually a Facebook account belonging to someone who happens to share my name, but that someone is not me. The same person also has a Twitter account, an Instagram account and, just to really confuse a potential employer, he`s also on LinkedIn.  Presumably anyone looking for me, or information about me, would soon realize that these accounts are not mine, based on the owner's age (he's younger than I), geographical location (he's in New Jersey, I'm in Ontario) and other such details.

This has got me speculating as to whether not having a social media presence might also reduce one's chances of getting hired.  I could well envision a scenario where a somewhat paranoid potential employer, dismayed at not finding me on any of the key social media sites, assumes that I must have something to hide, and disqualifies me in the interest of erring on the side of caution.

Well, let me say for the record that, if  you have my résumé in hand and you've arrived at this post because you're digging for more info about me and you're put off by my desire for a little privacy in my personal life, I probably don't want to work for you anyway.

Thanks for your Pinterest.

Thomas Covenant? Unbelievable!

I'm re-living my youth.  As the years pass, I find myself doing this more and more.  This time around, it has to do with a book or, rather, series of books, that I read back when I was twenty-something and am now in the process of re-reading.  It's a Tolkien-esque fantasy series known as "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever", written by Stephen R. Donaldson.

Thomas Covenant is a modern leper, and I'm not using the term "leper" in a figurative sense.  He literally suffers from leprosy.  Before he was diagnosed with the dread disease, he was a published writer as well as a family man, having both a wife and a son.  After his unfortunate diagnosis, his wife left him and took their son with her (can't risk either of our appendages falling off you know) and the rest of society shunned him as well, demonstrating that apparently not much has changed for lepers since biblical times.

"I thought you said this was a fantasy series," I hear my readers thinking at this point, "nothing terribly fantastic-sounding about that.  Sounds more like a melodrama, really."  Well, things do take a turn for the somewhat more fantastical when Covenant walks into town to pay his phone bill one day (an act of defiance against his fellow townspeople who would much rather he avoided any personal interactions) and inadvertently wanders in front of an on-coming police car.  At the moment of impact, his world dissolves from around him, as one might well expect that it would, except that it is then replaced with a different world; not the one that you might be thinking of, Dear Reader, as there is nary a sign of either pearly gate nor fire and brimstone. 

Well, actually, there sort of is fire and brimstone, but it's not what you think.  Covenant has apparently been transported inside a mountain which he will later learn is named "Kiril Threndor" or "Mount Thunder" in the common tongue, having been summoned by a creature known as a cavewight.  In due course, he learns that he has been transported to another world known simply by its inhabitants as "The Land" and he is sent on a mission by the enemy of that Land, one "Lord Foul the Despiser", to deliver a message to The Council of Lords, informing them that Lord Foul intends to kick their collective asses within the next forty-nine years, or sooner, if they don't manage to retrieve the Staff of Law from the cavewight who stole it, and used it to summon Thomas Covenant. 

The reason why the cavewight summoned Thomas Covenant, of all people, has to do with Covenant's resemblance to one of the Land's greatest heroes, Berek Halfhand, so named because he lost two fingers of his right hand during a big showdown between himself and The Despiser.  Covenant happens to be missing those same two fingers, in his case due to his leprosy. 

Covenant, not surprisingly, refuses to believe that any of what's happening to him is real, especially since his leprosy seems to go into remission during his time in The Land, so he officially assumes the moniker of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, just to make it clear to everyone around him that he doesn't take any of them seriously.

Sounding a bit more Tokien-esque now?  Hmmm?  And that, my friends, is my chief criticism of this series.  It's too Tolkien-esque.  Consider:

Thomas Covenant has been transported to a world, much like our own, known as Middle Earth - I mean The Land.

The Land is an idyllic place where both magic and fantastical creatures (cavewights, giants, ur-viles, mystical intelligent horses, etc.) exist and which is in danger of being corrupted by an evil entity known as Sauron - I mean Lord Foul the Despiser.

And here's the clincher; Thomas Covenant holds the one weapon which might defeat The Despiser, his wedding ring, which is made of white gold, which happens to be the ultimate source of "wild magic" in The Land.  An evil entity that can only be defeated by the power of a magic ring?  Really?

And get a load of the first book's description of Drool Rockworm, the cavewight that summoned Covenant:

"Crouched on a low dais near the center of the cave was a creature with long, scrawny limbs, hands as huge and heavy as shovels, a thin, hunched torso and a head like a battering ram.  As he crouched, his knees came up almost to the level of his ears.  One hand was braced on the rock in front of him, the other gripped a long wooden staff shod with metal and intricately carved from end to end.  His grizzled mouth was rigid with laughter, and his red eyes seemed to bubble like magma."

Ummm... did he also happen to make a funny "gollum" sound in his throat, by any chance?

I said that the resemblance to Tolkien's writings is my chief criticism of Donaldson's work.  My other criticism of the Covenant books has to do with the alternately corny and lame monikers with which Donaldson saddles his characters. "Drool Rockworm?"  "Lord Foul?"  Really?  They sound like the names of the evil villains in a typical Saturday morning cartoon show.  On the other end of the scale, we have "High Lord Kevin".  Okay, it's better than "High Lord Bob", I suppose, but just barely.

Now that I've undoubtedly earned the everlasting ire of both Thomas Covenant and Stephen R. Donaldson fans everywhere, let me say that I actually enjoyed the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.  Hey, I wouldn't be re-reading the first six books (Donaldson has since written more) if I didn't enjoy them.  They're well-written and they offer an interesting blend of the real world that we all know with the fantastic.  But, hey, I enjoyed "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens" too, yet I still maintain that it's basically "Episode IV: A New Hope" all over again.