Digital Analogue

Things I HATE

One of the things I really, really hate is workplace discrimination. Whether it's gender-based, or racial, or on sexual orientation, or some other ought-to-be-irrelevant criterion, it pisses me off. Now, in most areas we've passed laws against it, but they're largely ineffectual---people have lives and responsibilities, and they can't meet those responsibilities without having a job. With rare exception, people harmed by violations of these laws are not in a position to litigate against the violators. They're not even in a position to mention it to other people in their company, because that could mean their job, which of course they can't afford to lose. Even if they could afford living expenses for a while, the current state of health insurance means that if you don't get it from your job you'll pay three times as much for it, and if you don't have it at all, you'll be charged ten times as much for medical service as the insurance companies are charged, not to mention thousands of times more than the co-payment you'd normally make. Also, you lose your health insurance portability, which means that if it turns out you develop some long-term condition, even if you get health insurance again, they won't pay for it.

And of course, after years of this, when in the end they find their excuse to fire you, you need the unemployment benefits badly enough that you can't afford to fight it---not that you'd really want to win, anyway. You thought it was bad before, just wait for the warm and welcoming work environment you can expect when they're forced to give you your job back.

Dammit.

"Anything that spoils the polite fiction that one's coworkers possess neither sexualities nor sexual organs is likely to be inappropriate." --Gel Thelen