Saturday, March 22, 2003

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

Over on his site The Gamer’s Nook, Scott talks about taking down a sign that had been displayed on his blog for awhile.

It’s interesting that he took down his sign at this time.  On Thursday morning, I walked into my office and discovered that the “Attack Iraq?  No!” bumpersticker I’d taped to my door—the same one that Scott just removed—had been taken down.  As I walked around the corner to get some coffee, my manager called me into his office and informed me that HR had received complaints about the display of my political statements (I’d also drawn a flag at half-mast and upside-down on the whiteboard outside my office, which had been erased early that morning).

I note that neither my manager nor the HR director personally disagrees with me about Dubya’s war.  And I also note that the company—which obtains the majority of its income as a federal contractor—does have policies which probably support the removal of my materials.  On the other hand, that bumpersticker had been on my door for months, and I’d drawn the flag on Monday morning after the Azores meeting.  BTW, that flag was more of an impressionistic US flag than a faithful copy.  For instance, my hand-drawn stars were blue dots on a white field, and there were fewer than 13 stripes.

What bugs me in this incident is that whoever it was who complained took it right to HR instead of saying something to me.  I probably would have taken down the (no longer really meaningful) bumpersticker and erased, or at least revised, the flag.  Maybe not half-mast, maybe right side up.  I would have asked the complaintant whether he/she knew that an inverted flag indicates distress.

One of the people I deal with at work quite often is a former intelligence operative with US forces in Europe.  He certainly disagrees with many of my opinions on the war and on politics in general.  We’ve talked and argued and agreed to disagree about current events while sitting in my office, with the bumpersticker and flag right there.  He has never uttered a word of objection to the existence of my displays.  Why couldn’t the anonymous complainers have shown me the same level of respect?