Thursday, June 13, 2013

"If you're not up to it, find something else to do with your life."

In a frankly stunning video, the Chief of the Australian Army ( Lieutenant General David Morrison) tells sexist soldiers to just go away.

After repeated attempts to embed it, I cannot, so you can find it here.

At a time when the US (armed forces), Canada (RCMP) and Australia are all confronting allegations of sexism and behaviour demeaning to women, it looks like Australia (of all places) is getting serious about it. We could use some of this kind of leadership in North America, no?

ronnie

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Glad I didn't inconvenience you.

Me, on phone, to professional contact who had phoned me for the first time and was riddling off a lot of complex information: "We haven't met, so I'm going to let you know that I have a cochlear implant-"

Him: "Oh, that's okay."

(I went on to tell him that I sometimes found the phone challenging but if he spoke slowly and clearly we should be fine. It didn't occur to me until later what an odd response that was.)

Incidentally, a couple of months ago someone from our HR department (who knows me and knows I have a CI) called me about a matter related to HR, but not me personally (I was doing some research about employment standards). She said, unprompted "If I speak too quickly or you don't understand something, just let me know and we'll go over it again." She is literally the only person I work with who has ever made that outreach to me during a call unprompted. It was much appreciated.

ronnie