Mark Wadsworth: Spot the token wheelchair user

Sunday, 17 July 2011

Spot the token wheelchair user

12 comments:

Anonymous said...: We have similar, absurd posters at work, featuring Asian grandmothers 'high-fiving' in a meeting.

Not in my line of business.

If you think I am being wacist, how many Oriental chefs do you see in a Bangladeshi restaurant?; 17 July 2011 at 13:53
Curmudgeon said...: No token "person of size" or "person of age" either.; 17 July 2011 at 14:39
Mark Wadsworth said...: Anon, none, but I seldom go in the kitchen. Ask me how many white people I've ever seen behind the counter of a post office.

C, I can only assume that the photographer was a fat, gay bloke in a wheelchair, presumably a very tall one.; 17 July 2011 at 16:02
Anonymous said...: @Mark

Okay: depends on the country (or even the county).

I work for a company based in country X. Many people from X speak English very well. I speak Xish on a par with their medium/slow learners.

There are foreigners who work for the company who speak Xish as a second language, none of whom I can comprehend. Some are from the colonies, which helps, as we can all speak English. Whew.

Then there are counterparts living in Y who have learned Xish in great haste. None of who I can comprehend.

So, I ask you, when you contrive a team poster for a firm in X, showing almost everybody from outside X, what's the deal? There are a couple of Chinamen, but there could also be a couple of people with aids or in an iron lung or ms or in bloody wheelchairs but there are not. Thanks to that fucking Jonas Salk we don't need no poxy leg braces anymore.

Ageism, Mark. That's life, we have to sit at the back of the bus now.

Still, we have a job posing for my company's management motivation posers.; 17 July 2011 at 16:56
Mark Wadsworth said...: Anon, that's a splendid example. But you ask: "when you contrive a team poster for a firm in X, showing almost everybody from outside X, what's the deal?", remember that this as an English recruitment advert from an English accountancy magazine, we are not talking about Country X. Surely they don't use the same photograph world wide?; 17 July 2011 at 17:17
Lola said...: Bollocks to the wheelchair, how about the bollocky job title - 'market-winning tax team'.

'Market-winning' - eh?
'Tax' - Engaging in pointless work creation fostered by pointless bureaucrats.
'Tema' - the classic way to enslave someone, make them want to work for / in a 'team'.

The whole thing looks dire to me.; 18 July 2011 at 09:29
Anonymous said...: I used to work for EY and can honestly say that I was reasonably frequently the only white male in any meeting. That photo, albeit perhaps a little posed, is in no way unrepresentative.; 18 July 2011 at 15:43
Mark Wadsworth said...: L, it's all spendid managementspeak.

Anon, go on then, which town was your office in?; 18 July 2011 at 15:44
Anonymous said...: London.; 18 July 2011 at 15:48
Mark Wadsworth said...: Anon, now I am surprised. So who got to cop off with the cute oriental lass? The geeky white bloke or the slightly more macho black bloke?; 18 July 2011 at 15:58
Anonymous said...: I was out of the loop as far as works gossip was concerned - I doubted I was missing out much, tho.

As for the ethnic mix, it was largely explicable by the EY practice of shipping folk in on international secondment rather than any particularly enlightened local recruitment methods - my feeling was that local recruits were roughly as pasty as you would expect. But there were a lot of people in from overseas.; 18 July 2011 at 16:41
Hopper said...: MW - I'd bet that the cute oriental lass went for the geeky white bloke. In my industry it's practically the norm.; 18 July 2011 at 21:52

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