Rant #2,477: Something's Burning

... and it really stinks.

There is no other way to describe it.

I am outraged, and you should be too.

if you did not see my Facebook post yesterday, it has to do with the various questions you are asked to fill in on your job application.

Well, I applied for a job that the company that is offering the job clearly stepped over the boundaries, asking applicants questions that, quite frankly, are none of their business.

Here is my Facebook post, and I will take it from there:

"Usually, when I apply for jobs, the application asks me for my ethnicity, my race, and if I am a veteran and if I am disabled. As repulsive as it is to reply to these questions, I do it anyway, because I don't have a choice.

However, today, for perhaps the first time, I was asked about my sexuality. If this is going to determine whether I get a job or not, is this the type of work environment that I would like to work in?

Never again will I answer such a question on a job application.

It appears that rather than take the best person, companies are hiring people based on things that have absolutely nothing to do with the workplace. And that is plain wrong.

And it actually should be illegal to ask such questions.

And if any hiring managers are reading this, that is fine with me. If you are basing your hiring on whether I am gay or straight, transgender or binary, rather than what I can bring to your company based on my skills and experience, then I guess your company is not one that I want to work for.

Some of you will say that I am shooting myself in the foot for posting this, but so be it.

I am white, male, heterosexual, and most importantly, I have decades of experience. If that is not enough for you, then find someone else who fits they type of individual that you are looking for.

I am obviously not that person."

Absolutely ridiculous, wouldn't you agree?

It really does not matter for me to tell you the company that perpetrated this (click on the image at the top to clearly see what I am talking about in this Rant), nor the job listing service that posted this position. What's most important is that companies are evidently now asking applicants for information that has absolutely nothing to do with the work environment. It is an invasion of privacy, and really, what my sexuality is has nothing to do with the workplace at all.

Is this where this culture has gone, where we are not defined by our accomplishments and what we have done in the workplace, but by our sexuality? Is this what employers are looking for?

I think not and I certainly hope not. If this is the new workplace, perhaps it is better if I don't get a job, because I won't fit into the box that employers want me to exist in.

Honestly, I do not know what this world is coming to. We are so afraid to offend anyone that we have gone off the deep end for inclusion, and I do believe that it is hurting not just the workplace, but the world in general/

We have completely lost the ability the laugh at ourselves, to laugh at our human foibles, and in doing so, we have completely lost the ability to be human beings. We are nothing but robots, without any sense of who we are, and being defined by our sexuality shows, without a shadow of a doubt, that the world is insane, or certainly the world is getting there.

We can accept people without defining what they do in bed and who they are attracted to. I have never been asked in a job interview whether I prefer men or women, if I am really the gender that I am, or what I consider myself to be. True, I have not had a face to face interview in eons, but is this what I am to expect when I finally do get a real interview?

Are my abilities, my background, and what I can bring to a company unimportant now, trumped by who I am sexually attracted to?

If that is how I am going to be defined, then you know what? I will graciously step aside, let some other people apply for the same jobs I am highly qualified for, and just meander into retirement.

And when I think about it, maybe that's for the best.

Today's world is not the world I was born into, and maybe it is better for me to just live out the next 25 years or so (hopefully) in peace.