Why are corporate “Human Resources” departments so terrifying?

Why is it that these creatures of the night, who have risen up from the muck of the “Personnel” department, to become, well, human resources professionals, are capable of writing the death certificate for your career, in triplicate?

Why is it that these mysterious beings can ban you from smoking cigarettes in your car, even if your car is two miles from the office, in a parking spot assigned to you by, well, yes, the Human Resources Department?

The answer is, all Human Resources professionals received their training in the nation’s public schools. That’s right. The craftiness, the deviousness, the sinister ability to manipulate lives for the worse – it comes right out of the professional educators’ handbook.

The French philosopher Charles Peguy explained it best: “Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.”

How can you, the lonely, desperate, assistant vice president of commercial real estate and stuff, possibly withstand a memorandum assault from the Human Resources juggernaut? You cannot. They will send a note to your boss, just like they used to send a note to your parents, when you were acting up at school.

Just as the U.S. Supreme Court promised that children’s constitutional rights don’t stop at the schoolhouse door (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha), the CEO will tell you “our employees are our most important asset.” But the Human Resources director, who was a former elementary school principal, will issue a directive, to “protect company interests through regulation of employee behavior, including but not limited to breathing, eating, complaining and other actions deemed unacceptable.” You will sink into the morass and do what you’re told – just like in third grade.

It begins early, in kindergarten, and continues throughout life. Remember? Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

Boos

In April, the public schools in Lawrence banned bottles, for fear that what appears to be water might instead be Evil Demon Rum, or, more likely, vodka.

In a memo with the tone, style and warmth of something right out of corporate Human Resources, the Lawrence schools thundered: “If there is a need to provide a beverage to students in a classroom due to heat conditions or during testing sessions, then the beverage must be water and it must be provided in a paper cup.”

Of course, if there is a God in heaven, the bottle police will snare the valedictorian at Lawrence High School sipping from an illegal and illicit bottle of water, for which he or she will be suspended, humiliated, and prompted to file a lawsuit that will eventually stagger all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Speaking of the U.S. Supreme Court (this column is a seamless web), the justices this session ruled on the case of Savana Redding, who, when she was an eighth grader in a middle school in Arizona, was strip-searched down to and including her bra and panties, by school officials on the prowl for ibuprofen. She was clean. Those drug cartels are very crafty. The high court ruled that the school officials were morons.

In the Montgomery County schools in Maryland, school bureaucrats and politicians spent considerable time mulling the wisdom of a policy that prohibited the kids from using sunscreen at school, without a doctor’s permission. Even then, the radioactive, heroin-infused sunscreen had to be kept in the nurse’s office.

The USA Today editorial page was much taken of late by the case of a 6-year-old boy in Virginia, who was disciplined for “sexual touching;” that is, patting the butt of a girl at recess. Hugging is also one step removed from statutory rape in many elementary schools.

Of course, such stuff prepares the workforce for those “diversity training” and “sensitivity” classes required by the Human Resources Department.

To be sure, assuming one is not the beneficiary of a constipated union contract, your employer has you on board, “at will,” which sort of means he can inflict all manner of personnel madness on you.

And to be sure, schools have an obligation to protect the “safety” of the children locked inside the prison walls.

But somewhere in all that, there must be at least a tacit understanding that not only common sense, but the right of privacy, will prevail.