Pirate Misadventures in the Midwest

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Author Solutions Inc. -- REMOVED PER HR REQUEST

BLOG POST REMOVED PER REQUEST OF HR DIRECTOR OF AUTHOR SOLUTIONS

posted by Kari Stevenson @ 4:00 AM  

3 Comments:

  • At 11:55 AM, Blogger Cowperthwait said…

    As noted elsewhere, I'm relieved for you that you've done something you feel is important and empowering. I'm confident you'll find another, more engaging, assignment — you certainly deserve better... — and you'll doubtlessly learn from this experience how to stand up for yourself in the future.

    One word on ASI's behalf, though. Assuming the entire organization is not irretrievably evil (and they're not, right?: you worked there for almost a year and have friends therein...), I sympathize with their difficult situation at present. They now are tasked with sorting out not only a painful, messy HR problem, but a PR problem, too.

    For some very solid reasons grounded in federal employment law, your (now former) employer can't discuss disciplinary action against a bad manager, or the details of your friend's resignation: not with you, and definitely not with the blogosphere.

    Declaring for the world, "Doing business with company X is giving sanction to this manager's bad behavior", or — worse — "Doing business with company X is giving sanction to the company's irretrievably evil anti-woman posture" amounts, more or less, to a sucker-punch. They're not allowed to respond on this blog; now, they're probably advised by their employment law litigator not even to apologize to you; you've lobbed a pretty specific accusation and insult at them, and they're powerless to do anything about it.

    My fear is that they, like many other employers, will respond by finding the first possible inaccuracy in your account, and exploiting it to slap you, this blog's host, and every ISP in sight with a takedown notice based on a claim of slander. Starting a flamewar on the Internet is unfortunate enough, but when it involves real lawyers with hourly fees in the hundreds of dollars, it can become even nastier, very quick.

    Choose your words carefully, is what I'm saying. Prove you're better than these people by leading a successful, happy life working for more enlightened bosses; resist the temptation to start a fight with them that you can't afford to win.


    xoxo/jec.

     

  • At 2:34 PM, Blogger That redheaded one said…

    It is important that people know what is going on in corporate America, if they are going to spend their money wisely. Lina did not want to quit even though the job was killing her from stress and long hours early on. Her goal was to stay and fight the good fight. This fight got increasingly more difficult by middle management telling her to only do her job or they would fire her for doing more than her job. That after she told Upper echelon of the company what was going on with her department other departments kept making her life more difficult was what finally broke the camel's back. I don't blame Lina for posting what practices she witnessed or naming the names of the people who finally made her choose her mental and physical health over a company and a job. In fact I applaud her for doing so. As a person from the mental health profession I can say that if more people would accept when their work is affecting their mental and emotional health we would have less people dependent on anti-depressants to live a psudo-normal life day to day.

     

  • At 5:32 PM, Blogger Kari Stevenson said…

    I appreciate your concern, cowperthwait, as well as your wise words. There is a lot of material within the corporate culture of this company that I take issue with.

    I have chosen not to air other dirty laundry [which is extensive and already explained to both HR as well as upper management]; this is just one of the more galling actions the company has sanctioned or taken.

    I was concerned with slander, and chose my words carefully. I spoke of my frustrations to varying levels of authority and was surprised that they even failed to acknowledge that behavior in sort by the management was even a problem.

    If I don't know the details of action against the employee in question, that is fine. I would just like to know that the company's corporate culture is, if not woman-positive, at least woman-neutral.

    There are many frustrating sides to the corporate world; there are many that I am able to accept, understanding the practices of business and making money.

    There are a handful, though, that I find intolerable. The creation of a workplace climate that will likely be uncomfortable for many employees is certainly high on that list.

     

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