That Which Can Never Be Named!
No, not a Lovecraftian horror, more a Human Resources word salad.
Although I remember the days reasonably well¹ when people would be carried from their desk, quite violently, on their birthday for the bumps in the company car park to be inevitably followed by several rounds of drinks in the pub over the road before the afternoon’s work continued; I cannot categorically say that I clearly remember a time when salary was widely discussed in the workplace.
Sure, we often do it, but — you know — we don’t do it openly and all that.
It seems as if, in the usual style of ruthlessly repressive societies dependent upon the secret police and legions of covert informants, Human Resources has very much outlawed a great number of practices in the modern workplace — the most commonly known being the discussion of how pitiful modern remuneration in the Grand Game of Software Engineering has truly become.
There was also a time when we had holidays instead of annual leave, celebrated Christmas and not the holiday season, even (dare I say it) we actually had a department called Personnel before it was rebranded, and dehumanised as a result, as Human Resources².
Now, I don’t want to come across like some archaic anti-woke dinosaur who wants to bring back tea ladies³, secretaries, and those suggestible…
