THE TYRANNY OF THE CAMPUS HR DEPARTMENT. In 19 years at FIRE, I saw a lot of abuses, but now that I’m in private practice I can see that HR has been weaponized even more than I thought. Here are just a few of the “offenses” that spurred abusive HR investigations we’ve dealt with in our small, fairly new practice alone:

  • Hanging a movie poster in a faculty office that the movie director had personally autographed.
  • Instructing an undergraduate that the faculty member’s recommendation was needed to get into graduate school.
  • Refusing to write an undergraduate recommendation after the student failed to provide application materials.
  • Exchanging gardening pictures of flowers with a staff member.

If you or someone you know is going through this now, shoot them a link — it might tell them what to expect, and I presume it applies at many companies as well.