Let's Pretend This Never Happened (18 page)

Today I had to talk to an employee who e-mailed a photograph of his penis to a woman in his department. I knew it was his penis because it said, “This is my penis,” in the subject line. Also, his name badge was clipped to his belt and was clearly visible. I practiced saying, “Is this your penis?” over and over in my office until I could say it without giggling, and then I called him and his supervisor in.

“Is this your penis?” I asked, as I pushed the printout of the e-mail over to him.

I think I was expecting him to break into a sweat or try to jump through the window out of embarrassment, because apparently I’d forgotten about the fact that this was the same man who thought it would be perfectly fine to take a picture of his penis in the office bathroom to send it to a shocked coworker. Instead he grinned cockily (no pun intended), saying, “I think the better question is, Exactly how did you get a picture of my penis?”

“It was caught in the e-mail filter. The picture, I mean. Not your penis. If, in fact, that is your penis, I mean.” I was flustered, but tried to gain control of the situation again with a deep, calming breath. “Did you mail a picture of your penis?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Would it make it better if I said I was mailing pictures of someone else’s penis?”

I’ve thought about that question for fifteen years and I still don’t have a good answer. Instead I said, “Not really. Giving a coworker a picture of a penis is sort of universally frowned on. It’s in the employee handbook. Sort of. It’s between the lines.”

“Is there anything in the handbook about someone in HR handing you a penis picture and asking you whether it’s yours?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I just told him he was fired and made a note that we need to update the employee handbook with more penis-related directives.

As of today I’ve had to ask five separate men, “Is this your penis?” after their pictures got caught in the e-mail filter. (Side note: When I read this to people who don’t work in HR, they stop me here and say, “Really? People actually mail pictures of their penises at work?” And I explain that yes, it happens at least once a quarter. If it’s an HR person I’m reading this to, they always say, “Really? You worked in HR for fifteen years and you only had to ask five men about their penises?” And I explain that no, I wrote this in my first few years in HR, and there’s another one in the very next paragraph. After that they just got so commonplace I stopped writing about them in my journal. I eventually got to where I could say, “Is this your penis?” without blushing or giggling. That’s how much practice I had at handing random men photos of their junk and asking them to identify their penis. I never once had to do it with a vagina. Probably because women are better at not getting their e-mails caught in the firewall, because they don’t use the subject line “Look at my penis.” Also, vaginas seem to have less personality than penises, so “Is this your vagina?” would probably be difficult to answer. If someone asked me to pick out my own vagina’s mug shot out of a lineup of vaginas, I’d be helpless. And probably concerned about what exactly my vagina had been doing that constituted a need for its own mug shot.

“Are these your penises?”

This is a question I never thought I’d have to ask, because I’ve never met anyone with more than one penis, but in this case it was two men taking pictures of their penises, together, at work. They hadn’t been caught in the filter, but had instead printed out the picture using the office printer and had accidentally forgotten to pick it up. One of the guys just nodded quietly, but the other leaned over to look clinically at the photo before he pointed to the penis on the left. “Just this one,” he said. I thanked him for the clarification, because I didn’t know what else to say. His friend looked at him, stunned, but I think it was probably a good lesson for him in picking the quality of people his penis takes pictures with. Standards are important, you guys.

Last week I turned down an applicant who had misspelled or left blank almost all of her application. She came in again yesterday with almost the exact same application, but with a different name. I turned her down again. Today she came in again and turned in another application with another new name. I asked her whether she was the girl with the first name. She said that was her sister. I told her that I couldn’t hire her unless her name matched the name on her Social Security card, and she asked for the application she’d just given me, and changed her name back to the original one. I turned her down again and pointed out that everyone lies on their application but not usually about their names. When she left she said, “Okay. See you tomorrow.” I’m pretty sure she’s not being sarcastic.

This morning the HR director told us we were going to start hiring transportation workers to bus people to our different locations, and asked for a committee to come up with some standard interview questions for our office to use. I asked whether we should screen them to see whether they believe that they’ll be saved during the rapture, because if they do then they’re knowingly putting the lives of the passengers at risk when the bus suddenly becomes driverless and spirals out of control. I got some weird looks, so I pointed out that we technically work at a religious organization, so it should totally be okay to ask that.

I was not allowed to join that committee, so my guess is that they totally hired a lot of bus drivers who plan on leaving their buses driverless. I bet those drivers totally know they’re putting their passengers’ lives in jeopardy but just don’t care. Which (based on what I’ve learned on religion through TV) would probably be considered a sin. So I guess either way, our passengers will still have a driver when the rapture comes. It’s gonna be a pretty nasty surprise for those bus drivers, though.

Every HR department I’ve ever worked in has secret codes that no one else knows about, and we use them to talk about you while you’re still in the office. Here are the codes from my last job: Tucking your hair behind your ear means, “This bitch is crazy.” Tucking your hair back behind both ears means, “Totally fucking crazy.” Absentmindedly wiping your brow means, “I’m sorry. Does it look like I have ‘dumb-ass’ written across my forehead?” Picking your nose means, “Someone needs to call security.” Scratching your crotch means, “Steal second.” It worked really well until we hired a new girl who had a lot of nervous tics, and then it just became too confusing.

Last year they installed panic buttons under our desks so we could alert security if there was someone violent threatening us. We’re supposed to test it out once a month, but security is always very slow to show up to turn off the alarm. Yesterday our boss was out, so we decided to push all the panic buttons. After fifteen minutes with no response, we decided to lie down on the floor and put signs on our chests that said things like “I’ve been shot in the head” and “We’re all dead now. Thanks.” Mine said, “I’m still alive. I just came in, and I slipped on all the blood and now I’m unconscious and have a concussion. I really shouldn’t be allowed to sleep.” In true dedication to a role I actually was asleep when security showed up fifteen minutes later. They were not amused, and pointed out that it would be a smart move to be a little less bitchy to the only people in our building who were actually required to bring loaded guns to work. The next day we all got yelled at by our boss because “potential job applicants could have been scared off if they’d looked through the glass window of our office door and had seen you all lying on the floor.” I pointed out that finding bodies on the floor and not helping was sort of an interview that they had failed anyway, so technically we were kind of saving time. He was not amused.