Sunday, March 14, 2010

Comic Relief – Who Speaks Legalese??

One of my students sent me a job posting the other day for me to review it in preparation for an interview with a potential employer. The position was a very typical post-MBA product management job in a tech company – nothing unusual that far. But them upon reading the posting I stumbled across the following paragraph:

“PHYSICAL DEMANDS: While performing the duties of the job, the employee is regularly required to use hands and arms and talk or hear. The employee requires dexterity in using telephone, computer keyboard, mouse and calculator while seated at a desk. The employee is frequently required to stand, walk and sit. The employee may frequently move to interact with fellow employees and/or clients. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.”

I am not making this up… The employee is required to use hands and arms and hear and talk – well, duh… The employee requires dexterity in using telephone – wow, why not virtuosity? And oh yes, the employee is required to stand, walk, and sit – good thing that he/she is not expected to crawl or swim…

When I shared my disbelief with my student, she sort of smiled and said, oh yeah, this is very standard now… So, to those of you who work in Corporate America or Corporate Somewhere Else and are not surprised by this either, I am telling you, wake up, people!! We are talking about an extreme case of Legalese here…

In this world of absurd political correctness, we should pause for a minute and think about what extremity of ridicule we’ve let things reach without reacting…

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