How is it convoluted? Maybe the powerless person is a homophobe. Is that complicated or unrealistic?
This story is supposedly about an actual taxi driver, not a plant from HR. It's absurd to trust this person like this.
This story is supposedly about an actual taxi driver, not a plant from HR. It's absurd to trust this person like this.
> It's absurd to trust this person like this
If your friend told you "man, my last customer was a jerk" you would distrust that?
If a homophobe was working for HR (in 2022) they would hide it, even to the extent of making sure to hire some percentage gays no matter what they thought personally.
> If your friend told you "man, my last customer was a jerk" you would distrust that?
My personal friend? That's the standard we're expecting from a giant corporation's bureaucracy? It just has its personal friends that it trusts.
That kind of thing is just gross, is my point. Maybe it's how everything works, welcome to the real world, etc. But it's nothing to be praised or admired.
The corporation should vet its "personal friends" at least as closely as its official HR personnel. Otherwise they're an unaccountable source of bias in the hiring process.
Observing how people behave around nominal subordinates is not a new trick or one that is gross. It's an interesting data point. This is unusual as rather than a receptionist or security guard, it is someone who doesn't work for the company.
That you think it's impossible to trust someone without formal vetting is really interesting to me. It suggests that formal vetting by Big Corps is useful but knowing someone from a significant number of interactions/conversations is worthless. I don't buy into that at all, I'd argue pretty strongly the inverse is true and vetting is garbage and interpersonal interactions are useful.
A similar way is to take the candidate out and see how they deal with the waiter.
sounds like both
what do you mean when you say "Maybe the powerless person is a homophobe" ?
> what do you mean when you say "Maybe the powerless person is a homophobe" ?
The taxi driver may cause conflict with gay passengers. Or female passengers, or whatever else. Then they would blame their own victim for their reaction. The taxi driver's personal biases and animosities would become a vector for corporate discrimination.
There is a reason that corporate bureaucracies take such care to look out for this kind of thing. If you let ordinary people just go with their gut on things, you end up excluding a lot of people based on stereotypes and bias. It's not some theoretical possibility, but empirical fact.
This actually happened in my workplace, I recognised a coworker as gay long before he told me, just from his vocabulary.
Also, wouldn't the taxi driver also have to know about these clues?
With all respect, I think the scenario "Taxi driver planted/used as an interview prescreen is openly anti-gay and sniffs them out." is a bit contrived.