Double standards

If you think about the phrasing of the title “Human Resources”, it makes sense that they are not your friends.

Let’s look at the definition of the word resource:

resource /rē′sôrs″, -zôrs″, rĭ-sôrs′, -zôrs′/

noun

1. Something that is available for use or that can be used for support or help. “The local library is a valuable resource.”
2. An available supply, especially of money, that can be drawn on when needed.

Those definitions describe disposable commodities; easily replaceable. The adjective “human” simply refines what type of disposable and replaceable commodities that the department deals with.

If you want someone to be your advocate your best interests at a job, you’ll need to hire a lawyer. In the meantime, make sure you take notes, and follow everything up with an email (bcc your personal email a copy of each correspondence).

If your state allows one-party consent, you can even record conversations; be very aware that despite being legal, it will likely get you fired with prejudice if anybody finds out you’ve been recording them without their knowledge.

Where I'm working they rebranded HR to ✨"People & Culture"✨ so I don't know what you mean. With that name, they simply must have our best interests in mind instead of always siding with the higher ranking individual.

Most functional HR departments actually do have the workers best interests at heart, because protecting the company and not screwing over workers usually has a ton of overlap. But HR does a lot more than handle workplace disputes.

"At will" isn't as magical as people think.

If you terminate an employee without documented cause, you still have to pay them unemployment.

This can't get said enough. HR is not there to help you. HR is there to keep you from being able to sue the company if something happens.

If you have, or someone gives you a cause to sue the company, before hiring a lawyer and possibly (likely) losing your job because you're suing your employer, you can instead take the complaint up with HR. They should recognize the liability for the company in your situation and take steps to minimize or eliminate any possibly perception of blame that could be cast upon the company.

Here, I'll give you an example of something that actually happened to me. I used to work at a grocery store and to say the "left hand doesn't know what the right is doing" .... Would be an understatement. It was a fairly large place in a national chain of stores. I was working in the produce department at the time.... So, the supplier for grapes informed us that the location where the grapes are grown has black widow spiders in the habitat. Though every effort is made to prevent it, there is still the possibility that the grapes may contain traces of venomous spiders.

Corporate HR appeared, like a fart you didn't hear, but you can definitely smell. They tasked my manager to get everyone in the department to sign a paper that said, and I shit you not: we've been made aware of the possibility of black widow spiders in the grapes, and that we understand that we should use specialty gloves that are bite resistant/bite proof when handling the grapes.... As soon as I read that I turned to my manager and said what fucking gloves? Where are these gloves?

We, of course, didn't have any such thing. I asked the manager if they could get some for us and they didn't even know how to do that.

Simply: after everyone has signed the statement, and if anyone is bitten by a black widow, the HR dickwads that work at the company can hold up the form you signed saying "we tooky them to use the gloves for safety, and they were not using those gloves at the time of the incident" .... Because nobody ever got the gloves. Regardless, it lets the company throw you under the bus for getting injured, while management won't help you in staying safe on the job, often encouraging the behaviour that HR says you should not be doing.

HR is not your friend, they're actively protecting the enemy (the business owners) from you, the worker.

This is just a tawdry /r/antiwork meme borne of McDonalds burger flipper level reasoning.

Sure, companies maximise profits and hire HR to assist them in that objective.

However, your own interests are often aligned with theirs.

If you want to sue your employer, then obviously HR is not there to help you do that.

However, if your supervisor is an ass who makes witty comments about how many cup cakes you ate, your interests are aligned with HR's - he needs to stop creating fodder for your bullying claim.

Also if someone says something fucked up and you clap back and they report it. YES HR WILL SPEAK TO YOU!

If you want to nail someone with the rulebook you cant respond like two people talking shit on twitter. You have to call them out on what they said respectfully and professionally, preferably with witnesses or go straight to HR.

Everyone uses this cliche. Nobody seems to understand it.

a bad or reckless manager can put the company at significant risk

Yes. In this circumstance, the manager opened the company up to a lawsuit with his comments. It would have protected the company to punish him or have him take some sort of class.

You can just say that HR is usually bad at their jobs. "Protecting the company not the employee" is completely meaningless here.

Ayyyy~ what the fuck?

That last line is the key take-away for dealing with ANY HR.

Never forget who signs their paychecks.

Did he not know it was a slur? Was he ignorant, or just plain awful is what I'm wondering?

Gy*** or ab*?

Why are you the way you are?

as a huge fan of linguistics, spelling and grammar, I will say this very confidently: in this case, spelling and grammar don't matter even one bit. but if this kind of thing matters so much to you, you should also care about typography and not leave a space before a question mark.