Court Finds True-False Job Queries Truly Out of Line
Member of the wrong sex? Enjoy the wrong kind of sex? If the answer’s yes, it’s no seller’s market for some job-seekers in the Bay Area.
A Texas-based appliance rental company has to pony up $2 million in damages to job applicants and employees at its Bay Area stores who were asked 502 true-false statements, such as whether they believed in “the second coming of Christ.” Job-seekers had to respond to intrusive statements such as “I have never indulged in any unusual sex practices.” Among the other 500 true-false statements was one obviously not drafted with San Francisco in mind: “I am very strongly attracted by members of my own sex.”
Scott Hadley, once a general manager for Rent-A-Center Inc., told the San Francisco Chronicle that he was fired after complaining about the tests.
“It was ridiculous,” Hadley said. “The test asked if I loved tall women. How was I supposed to answer that? My wife is 5 feet 3 inches.”
And the Berkeley-based nonprofit Impact Fund sent pairs of women and men posing as job applicants into Bay Area car service shops advertising for workers to perform tuneups and oil changes. The organization said female applicants with qualifications equal to those of men who applied were four times likelier to be derided, nudged toward the coffee-and-pastry-selling jobs, told, “We don’t hire women here,” and in one case asked by one grease jockey, “Can I be your man?”
No . . . but maybe you can be her defendant.
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Paper, scissors, rock: Lightning can strike twice in the same place--and in this case, it should.
The man who contrived probably the most absurd fad of the 1970s--which is saying a very great deal--has now won a contest for writing abysmal prose.
Gary Dahl, the Campbell, Calif., ad executive who got millions of people to fork over $3.95 for a stone in a box when he marketed it as the Pet Rock, triumphed over thousands of woeful wordsmiths to win the Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
Dahl’s entry beat out thousands of others from around the world to make him the best of the worst. His winning entry began:
“The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land’s end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints.”
The contest--named for Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who began one novel, “It was a dark and stormy night”--is in its 18th year, meaning it’s outlasted the pet rock.
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Holy malathion, Batman! Imagine--a comic book whose superhero might be a government agency. The EPA hasn’t been put into Superman tights, but a booklet that derives its style both from American comics and Mexican illustrated novelas is telling and selling the story of safety in the fields to farm workers.
The story line of “Proteccion de Su Salud” (Protecting Your Health) charts the first day on the job for Cati, a young woman who learns what agricultural pesticides are, how to recognize them and what to do to protect herself from them.
Some 100,000 copies have been printed in hopes that the booklet, published by the Western Crop Protection Assn. and the Coalition for Rural and Environmental Stewardship with the endorsement of the EPA, may accomplish what even Spanish-language pesticide labels cannot: recount the risks and detail the prevention methods in easy language and vivid images.
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One-offs: The governor’s annual barbecue for the press--they’re the guests, not the main course--had to be postponed after it was found that it fell during the Republican Convention. . . . A San Joaquin County deputy district attorney has filed a motion to force a jail inmate to shower before court appearances, because the convicted rapist has reportedly refused to shower since he was jailed March 31. . . . A man, his pet mule and dog were performing circus tricks on the Golden Gate Bridge when security officers stopped them.
EXIT LINE
“Keep Your Muzzle Forward on the Firing Line. Failure to Do So May Result in Accidental Discharge on the Deck.”
--Rifle-range sign also posted above some urinals at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, in an effort to keep floors clean and dry.
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Literacy in California
Nearly a quarter of Californians age 16 and older have such poor literacy skills in English that they cannot read a food label, fill out an application or read a simple story to a child. Here are the states with the highest percentages of people who struggle with such everyday reading:
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State Percentage 1. Mississippi 30% 2. Louisiana 28% 3. Alabama 25% 4. Florida 25% 5. South Carolina 25% 6. California 24% 7. New York 24% 8. Texas 24% 9. Georgia 23% 10. Arkansas 22% Nationwide 21%
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Source: National Institute for Literacy, 1998 estimates
Researched by TRACY THOMAS/Los Angeles Times
California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.
