Poetry & Blindfolds

At work recently, my boss came up to me and said, ‘do you know where I have to go for sensitivity training?’  I replied, ‘On the 39th floor, you jerk.’

Sensitivity training seems to be the bastard child of the onslaught of the PC consciousness of the 1980s (where everyone was ’sharing’, ‘caring’, and starting to set up ‘play dates’ for kids) and the paranoid corporate culture of the 1990s.  Like all good bastard children, sensitivity training is borderline retarded: in this case, it isolates human behavior into being a project.  There are upsides of course, namely, more controlled insurance rates and a way to legally alienate employees in an environment where it’s more likely that management would be pulling power plays, intimidation, etc.  But those advantages are for the companies.

For working stiffs like myself, the sole upside appears to be being able to turn just about anything into a potential lawsuit.  When I first received sensitivity training, I went against dress code and wore jeans for a week.  When someone mentioned this to me, I curtly advised them that I was offended that they were looking below my waist and that they should seriously consider their actions and that they further might need psychiatric help. 

For the latest batch of sensitivity training, I was eating a donut with strawberry frosting on it when someone came up to me and said, “Ah, so you like the pink donuts, huh?”  I sneered back, “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘pink donut’, but I’m very uncomfortable with this conversation.”

If there is another upside, it’s that I will never be without material for my comedy pursuits.  Because, as the woman once sang, this shit is bananas.

Ultimatley, the message is: forget ‘Give Peace a Chance’.  Sign a paper saying you’ve been to sensitivity training.

 The most bizarre point made by the speaker at our training was: “The old golden rule was: treat others as you’d like to be treated.  The new one is: treat others as they would like to be treated.”   This strikes me as the kind of thing that, in a very few short time, will be a joke told to illustrate how idiotic 2007 was.  There is no way to treat someone the way they wish to be treated on several levels, of which here are two: (1) if I don’t know you, I don’t know how you want to be treated; (2) if I want to be treated with simple yet blind worship and people fail to do so, can I sue because most people would say ‘oh fuck off’?

However, in an effort to live my life more sensitive and respectful, I will ask that you not read the above until I know you.

Personally, I think this kind of thing fosters an unhealthy lifestyle for most people.  Giving and taking offense, at least on a certain level, is the very basis of just about any conversation worth anything.  Different interpretations are the key ingredient in any advancement of the collective intellect.  To avoid them in the interest of being sensitive will only create in all of us the more likely ability to get on the TV news one night and say, ‘I didn’t know he was going to kill all those people.  He kept himself to himself.’

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