An overheard conversation

B.I. #5 04/23

J–: ‘-absolutely fucking ridiculous. And you know the South American Youth Conference coming up? Now we have no options. What do they expect? Me to lead the meeting? I don’t know shit about South America or its youth.’

R–: ‘Look, dude, at least you have a Section Head. Finding a girl for a professional staff position is one thing, but filling the Section Head post is downright impossible these days. And our temporary one is sitting like a bump on a log, collecting his fat paycheck-‘

J–: ‘-but they never do anything! It doesn’t even matter if the Section Head exists or not. Teams can manage themselves perfectly fine. My issue is when there’s two of us on a team that historically had five-‘

R–: ‘-speak for yourself, dude! The other day, I spoke to the team that’s supposed to be covering topics on like the orphans and shit and they’ve started an initiative for South Asian minorities in STEM. I mean, fuck! That’s literally the topic we did back in February. There’s so much duplication of work and our Section Head insists he’s too busy to host any section meetings. Says it’s a waste of everyone’s time. We need someone that can actually organize and lead this section. It’s devolved into complete pandemonium, dude.’

J–: ‘Nah, that’s on you. Just talk to the other team leaders instead of setting up any bullshit meetings. But our HR problem has no easy solution like that.’

R–: ‘Yeah, sure. All the other sections are just getting their team assistant girls to toss in their CVs for the professional posts. Doesn’t matter if they’re qualified or not. HR just wants to say “we got 30% female applicants, so we can proceed to interviewing”. Dude, come on, it’s such bullshit. Just play their little game so you can finally move ahead with a candidate that’s actually qualified.’

J–: ‘And then they’ll be pissed when we hire yet another man for the role… This administration completely fucked up the hiring process with this gender parity nonsense. Like of course, we get it. We need girls in the office so every meeting isn’t such a complete sausage fest, but the qualified ones just don’t exist. And then they end up plopping some underqualified chick straight into our team. I don’t mind training girls, but come on! What can I do with some communications-liberal-arts-gender-studies-bullshit major with zero experience?’

R–: ‘Dude, pipe down. Someone will hear-‘

J–: ‘-I don’t fucking care! Maybe management should know how this gender parity shit is fucking up the whole organization. And then – get this – did you hear about the scholarship? Like I get it, really I do. Female empowerment and all that. But my son has been busting his ass for four years to get into a good law school, got in, then found out that it’ll cost us 50 grand every goddamn year! Of course, we told him he can go, but damn it! We had to take out loans. And the chicks get to go for free? I told him to just apply and tell them he’s trans or gender-fluid or whatever term they use these days. But he didn’t want to. And I get it! He shouldn’t have to lie to even out the playing field.’