I was cleaning out some old boxes a few days ago attempting to rid my residence of old junk and a host of bad memories. These boxes contained books, papers, and other assorted BS from the absolute worst employment experience of my life. It was two years of hell on earth for me and went a long way to making me the cynical and pragmatic SOB I’ve become. This is why I have such a dislike for political correctness. I became a victim of it working with this company and it’s employees.
Most people don’t like to name names when talking about their past bad experiences but I have no qualms about doing it. Many of you have never heard of the Hechinger Corporation and I’m happy to let you know they no longer exist. It was a small family-run hardware business that had grown to many hundreds of small stores across the country. The company philosophy, as directed by the Hechinger family, seemed more interested in liberal causes and making political contributions than actually making money.
I’m getting off my main point. Political correctness has always been in my crosshairs since the day this blog was started. I don’t spend time complaining about it just for giggles. Experiencing it firsthand is not fun and not something I would wish on my worst enemy (well maybe on my worst enemy). It’s a very dangerous tool when used by people who care more about being PC than anything else. I was one of the unlucky few management members from a very dynamic company that they’d purchased who survived the personnel slaughter. The Hechinger brainwashing machine kicked in almost immediately and I was sent to a steady stream of team-building seminars, personality testing, and spent hundreds of hours getting my head filled with their liberal politically correct BS.
For over a year they attempted to change my approach to my job and how I did business. I wasn’t about to change because I’d been very successful for years at what I did and they had not. They kept the pressure on me with all of their PC crap until I simply lost it. It was the day I was to receive my first evaluation from my new bosses. I stood up from behind the table and told them in no uncertain terms that I thought they didn’t know what they were doing. I begged them to just fire me. Being the PC idiots that they were they spent the next hour trying to convince me that I should calm down and relax. I ranted and raved for a while and again begged them to fire me. They wouldn’t do it and abruptly ended the evaluation session. I think they felt they could still save me and convert me to their way of thinking.
The next day I was given a better-than-average evaluation, a decent raise, and sent on my way back to New England. Any good businessman will tell you that if an employee begs to be fired, just do it. I was let go a few months later after they destroyed the company and it went out of business. That’s why I continuously bitch and complain about PC issues. If the minor issues are ignored by intelligent thinking people more will likely follow.
So as I’m delivering these books and papers to the trash can what falls out at my feet but a book I hoped never to see again. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. He was God Almighty to the Hechinger Corporation and they beat me over the head for more than a year with his book. If I never hear the term “paradigm” again it will be too damn soon. Did you hear that loud “THUD?” That was Covey’s book hitting the trash can.
I decided to brave the cold this morning just to get out of the house for a few minutes. Everything was fine until I made that one fatal mistake. I turned on a local Maine radio station and within two minutes my blood pressure was soaring. There was a young lady being interviewed who sounded like she might have been twenty-one years old. She was a “Journalist” and I use the term loosely. She was going to explain to all of us in the audience about the eight million senior citizens in this country who are “food challenged”. That supposedly means they don’t have the proper food with the proper vitamins and minerals to maintain a healthy life style. She was also concerned with seniors living in northern Maine in agricultural areas she termed “food deserts”.
Please someone just take a gun and shoot me, please!!! I understand now why at a certain point the very elderly get tired of living. To be in your eighties and to have been force fed political correct crap for 40 years can send you over the edge. What boggles my mind is that everyone you talk to hates political correctness. Many of those same people must be either disingenuous or big, fat liars. If everyone hates it so much why is it thriving in this country?
The following list of quotations are from both celebrities and intellectuals. I realize that the people who fawn over celebrities are more likely to be some of the “politically correct weasels” who say they hate it it but really don’t. Many of these quotes are for them.
“Don’t ever call me mad, Mycroft. I’m not mad. I’m just … well, differently moraled, that’s all.” ― Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
“You’re not allowed to call them dinosaurs any more,” said Yo-less. “It’s speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons.” – ― Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Bomb
“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.” ― Gore Vidal
“I know that even now, having watched enough television, you probably won’t even refer to them as lepers so as to spare their feelings. You probably call them ‘parts-dropping-off challenged’ or something.” ― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff
“The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one’s peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad.” ― Lynne Truss, Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door
“The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.” ― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
“Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society.” ― Theodore Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future
“Can’t call ‘em zombies anymore,” sighed Manny. He seemed almost wistful. “Now we gotta be all politically correct. It’s like the Cold Wars never happened.” ― David S.E. Zapanta, Posthumous
In my opinion there’s nothing more to be said on the subject. For all of you “politically correct weasels” out there . . . KMA.
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