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Human Resources, the department that is cloaked in so much mystery in regards to what they actually do everyday. They are the faceless conglomerate that decides how much you are worth as an employee based on arbitrary data taken from a market that is filled with over hyped and misleading job titles that leverage the net worth of an employee for a given company. I’ve been working at my company for almost four years now, and I still have no idea what the people here in HR do day to day. It’s almost like if they aren’t hiring, firing, or deciding what benefit reductions they should choose along the path of least resistance, then they are sending off pointless memos and newsletters that contradict the lifestyle that they control within the company.
As I’m slowly dying in my cube just slinging sub-savage business deals while simultaneously missing numerous deadlines like fucking Elon Musk, I noticed the little yellow email notification pop up in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen. The anxiety fueled twitch response from my eye glances at the yellow symbol and instantly my mood flickers from checked out business person to wanting to go to sleep person. I click over to my email inbox to find yet another generic, uninformed wellness letter from our HR department. This month’s letter was right up my alley though because the subject matter was about drugs, and if you’ve ever read my comments on the PGP forum, you know that drug references are a reoccurring theme in my educational scriptures. The letter was about spotting drug abusers and what you can do about it in terms of providing help to them.
Let me take you down the rabbit hole in my break down of this letter.
The author of this letter really drives the guilt tripping home with a nice little quote at the very top that reads:
“Abuse of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs is costly to our Nation, exacting more than $700 billion annually in costs related to crime, lost work productivity, and healthcare.”
First of all author, every business has overhead costs associated with its operation, and since the drug trade is an extremely profitable business, the liquid cash revenue made from drug abusers far surpasses that $700 billion in costs that you speak of so get with the times. Haven’t you watched Drugs Inc on Netflix? Also, the profits made from incarcerating millions of non-violent drug offenders year after year is astounding, so the profits of crime also outweigh the costs. I like how you threw in the “lost work productivity” angle, siding with the corporate agenda like a true shill. Do you know what causes more lost work productivity than drug use? Not caring and not feeling stimulated or inspired at your job. I can guarantee you that if I experimented with meth for a week, I would be twice as productive at work than I normally am from sipping copious amounts of coffee.
In fact, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that I could probably get promoted to middle management a lot faster while on meth since companies love to promote irate lunatics ad nauseam. The healthcare angle is also garbage because for decades we’ve been told that a plant that grows in the ground and makes people feel good is terrible for our health while it has been proven to stop cancer cells from regenerating and metastasizing in the body and also stopping seizures in epileptics. Yes, I’m talking about the Devil’s Lettuce. They made nature illegal, so just let that sink in. I’m not even going to mention all the other corporate labeled drugs that kill millions of people each year that are willfully distributed to people.
It’s more profitable to treat the disease and milk out death than it is to cure one and prolong life. If you combine the annual illicit drug sales dollars (roughly $400 billion) with the profits raked in from the private prison industry (roughly $680 billion), that exceeds $1 trillion, so you already have a profitable business model at over 30% gross profit margin and I’m not even factoring in the profits made from pharmaceuticals because society doesn’t classify them as illicit drugs until they are sold for cash on the street because, you know, tax avoidance. That’s over $300 billion in profit, so the cost you mentioned above is simply a bottom line issue. How do you lower the bottom line costs on a business model like this? Make drugs legal and let adults decide what they put into their bodies because they aren’t children. You’ll also diminish the black market with regulations and standards once drugs are legalized, but then again why would they want to diminish their own untracked revenue supply that they hypocritically enforce against everyone else? I mean, how else would our police forces afford armored militarized vehicles?
“Substance Abuse: Know the signs: Get Help”
“Did you know that illicit drug use in the United States has been increasing?”
Oh, you don’t say? Have you looked around lately and seen the state of society? Drugs are like mini vacations for poor people, and when you’re in an economy such as ours, what better way to take a vacation is there? Just think, you won’t have to spend a lot of money to go somewhere in a careening tube of baby screams and arm rest strategies and be exposed to massive amounts of radiation 35,000 feet in the air with no upfront guarantee of a safe arrival.
“The increase mostly reflects a recent rise in the use of marijuana, the most commonly used illicit drug. Marijuana use has increased since 2007. Use of most other drugs has stabilized over the past decade or has declined.”
We’ve come a long way since 2007 in terms of our education on that “good, good.” We’ve witnessed the benefits from smoking or ingesting THC in the medical field and we’ve even taken steps to make it legal in some states even to the point of recreational use. With that said author, wouldn’t that eliminate the illicit drug label for marijuana? Wouldn’t that also contradict your first point of saying illicit drug use has been increasing after you’ve already attributed it as a result of marijuana use? Your title says “Get Help,” it seems to me that weed has helped. Also, since you say that the use of most other drugs has stabilized or declined in the past decade with the increased use of marijuana, wouldn’t that suggest that weed is not a gateway drug? We’ve been told that nonsense our whole lives by people who have either never tried it or were bad at handling it when they did try it (it’s not my fault that Dillon Cheverere…rereee thinks he’s going to piss himself after smoking weed, the dude’s not even verified on Twitter so why would I take his word as gospel? I know it’s an old joke now but so is the argument against a god damn plant), but according to your statistics, it appears that weed is quite the opposite.
Don’t worry everyone, the author now gives us profound insight on the signs of spotting substance abuse!
“Problems at school or work” – Frequently missing school or work, a sudden disinterest in school activities or work, or a drop in grades or work performance.”
A sudden disinterest in school or work? Have you been to school or work? After reading your horse shit wellness article, apparently you haven’t. School and work are not very interesting places. It’s really hard to be motivated everyday to go sit down for ungodly amounts of time and be forced to do boring shit for assholes all day just to earn enough money to be able to afford to come back the next day. There you go again with that work performance reference; you are really trying hard to pander to the Establishment, aren’t you?
“Physical Health Issues – Lack of energy and motivation.”
Yeah, because sitting down all day doesn’t lead to increased mortality rates that surpass smoking…never mind, yes it does. Hey, tobacco is an illicit drug! Maybe we should add sitting to the list, but I know you won’t do that because getting stand up desks would ruin the budget for this years office supplies. You’re further making your own points in the beginning more irrelevant. Good effort though, I hope you’re getting paid well for this bullshit and after checking your salary on Glassdoor, I can’t believe you make that much money. It’s depressing, really. I don’t know about you, but when I’m not allowed to go outside in fresh air and sunshine for extended periods of time all while sitting at a desk under fluorescent lights and staring at a computer screen, my energy levels go way down and so does my motivation. You can only do repetitive tasks for so long before you start to lose your mind. Luckily for us, there are drugs that can help us cope with these facts. They’re given to us by a guy in a white coat and a bunch of pens in his front pocket even though he only uses one to scribble an illegible dose before he hands it to you, but we can forget that it’s the same synthesized chemicals of one of the “illicit drugs,” that’s none of our business, right?
“Neglected Appearance – Lack of interest in clothing, grooming, or looks.”
I know a lot of people who don’t do drugs who look like absolute piles of aged dog shit. In your words, the clean shaven middle manager who drives a Ford Taurus and wears oversized dress clothes from Kohl’s definitely doesn’t do drugs because he cares about his appearance and dresses to the company dress code? Meanwhile, he’s blowing coke at the low rent strip club while talking about business with other dudes in oversized dress clothes from Kohl’s who can’t get laid by their wives at home anymore. Speaking to your previous point of illicit hard drug use decreasing over the years, so has the relevance of having middle managers at companies. Also, is Rick Ross suspect for having a beard as he sparks up in his Bentley while wearing Nike slides and no shirt? I don’t know about you but I’m taking sides with the Rich Forever lifestyle. Without question.
“Changes in behavior – Exaggerated efforts to bar family members from entering his or her room or being secretive about where he or she goes with friends.”
That’s called privacy; it’s a dying thing these days. It’s bad enough you corporate folk are obscuring the line between work life and personal life. You know who bars people from entering their rooms? About 2/3 of the managers at this company who hide behind closed office doors and fire off passive aggressive emails even though they sit 10 feet away from the recipients. I’m going to agree with the notion that they are hiding something, and I’ll take a deeper guess and say that it’s not drug related, but it for sure has something to do with my job title’s market worth and how I’m getting paid severely below it.
“Spending Money – Sudden requests for money without a reasonable explanation; or money is missing or has been stolen or that items have disappeared from your home.”
Sudden requests for money without a reasonable explanation? Oh, you must be talking about Sallie Mae that takes a mortgage payment from people each month due to their interest rates. Did you know that they can even garnish your wages if you don’t pay on time? I’d rather hang with a drug user instead of a collections agent at this point in my life, but at the same time, what’s the difference anymore? Missing money? Please see the previous run on sentence above. The only missing money that I’m worried about is the aforementioned $300 billion+ in profits. You cant tell me that our satellite opium grow operation in Afghanistan isn’t paying dividends. That money could be used for better things like improved infrastructure so people can get to their dead end jobs more efficiently, or maybe education so that people can realize that some drugs aren’t only good, they’re grrrrrreat!
Listen author, let’s name some people who have used drugs to their benefit and have made positive changes to certain things in our world.
Jimi Hendrix
Ozzy Osbourne
Everyone from Pink Floyd and all of their fans (well, some of their fans)
Steve Jobs
Hunter S. Thompson
W.S. Burroughs
Ricky Williams
Sigmund Freud
Bill Gates
Francis Crick
Carl Sagan
Ernest Hemingway
Howard Hughes
Vincent van Gogh
Ulysses S. Grant
Bill Hicks
Doug Stanhope
So you see, I would much rather hang out with people like the ones mentioned above as opposed to a clean image, by the book person. I don’t think we need your wellness letters anymore because they don’t offer any substance or new information that we don’t already know to be lies. It’s complete overkill and propaganda. Instead, just be happy that people still show up to work everyday even after you’ve destroyed their health benefits and room for advancement in the company by hiring from the outside. It actually terrifies me that you get to evaluate my worth as an employee because your ability to miss the point on a lot of things is actually sort of impressive now.
Until next month, HR! I can’t wait to see what you have in store for us. Can I make a suggestion for the September wellness letter? How about you write one that covers the alarming die off rate of pollinating bees on a global scale because soon you’ll be revoking all those catered lunches because of it? Thanks again..
Image via Shutterstock
Respond
Telling Devin not to do drugs is like telling a Peregrine falcon not to fly
*sniff* our little devin’s all grown up
Been waiting for the day I get to read a published column of yours.
For whatever reason HR went through my desk and thought she found cocaine (which would have been a risky thing to bring up considering I’ve actually seen her do cocaine). It was protein powder.
It’s all about stacking supplements. Protein powder mixed with cocaine is great for gains and prolonged workouts and recovery plus the border patrol hasn’t caught onto this trend yet because they’re too busy cutting tires open from 1989 Toyota Tacoma’s.
Did they make Tacomas in ’89?
I audibly laughed several times. Nicely done.
I fully expect this to have been back sent in a reply all email.
*sent back
Nived/deFries 2020 ticket…….also funny how HR is against drug abuse when HR Departments are literally the corporate world version of human traffickers
HR is that fuckin kid who asks the teacher about an assignment or quiz the friday or thursday before a 3 day weekend.
Aw, man. C’mon. Some of us hate those people too. To be fair I’m just in it for the paycheck though.
I say a prayer on a daily basis that we don’t have an HR department at my place of employment.
Finally a comment from mhc28 that is not a complaint/disagreement.
Real talk, Colony Collapse Disorder (bees colonies dying across the globe) doesn’t get enough play on the news. Google that ish, if the pollinating bees go, there would be nearly no crops within a short few years (severe loss of crops = minimal food for livestock = even less food for us); humanity enters into a quasi non-zombie Walking Dead hell. Regardless of your stance on climate change, this is well documented, currently happening, and few people seem to care.
I know I’m busy all day, but sometimes I walk out of the office and I couldn’t tell you what I did all day if my life depended on it. But if your HR people are that highly paid, I guess I’ve been working at all the wrong companies.
Also, fuck health and wellness newsletters. I’ve fortunately never had to write one, and if I do, it sure as shit won’t be sincere.
Fuck Health and Wellness newsletters. They told me to write one for my plant (I work in a manufacturing plant). I said no thanksI bought a ping pong table, basketball goals, and corn hole boards instead and told people to take their stress out with a game.