Is this Political Correctness gone absolutely crazy?

Please provide a reliable source.

I’ve learned that, on occassion, here at Fluther, questions or answers are removed for not meeting quality standards, or they’re misleading or vague, or have too many grammar errors, or (the horror!) aren’t safe for work.

This is in todays national daily paper here The Daily Mail, complete with picture of the person who tried to place the ad. Also copy of ad that was rejected.
Cant copy @ paste on this thing.

fyi: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246201/Employer-told-advertise-reliable-workers--discriminates-unreliable-applicants.html

So how is this question not up to quality?

Well considering that the article also states that the ad is posted in the original wording and all we have to go on is one person’s word about what happened, I would say that this is, at most, a stupid mistake by an overzealous employee blown all out of proportion by a sensationalist newspaper.

Well that article certainly clears up why there are so many unreliable workers in the work force. :(

@Snarp I think your going a little bit OTT with what you say about the newspaper. The woman who highlighted the issue works for an agency, and whats probably happened is that the jobcentre have realised their mistake and gone ahead with the ad.
I know papers can sensationalise but in this case they are highlighting an absurdity and doing a service.
I work for the British Civil Service ( jobcentres are part of it ),and know just how stupid some jobsworths in it can be.

Oh come on, fish object to being wrapped in the Daily Mail.

I think political correctness is a poor substitute for actual respect. Instead of fostering good etiquette and mutual respect political correctness is often regarded as an obligatory code of behavior to be used regardless of the users personal opinion. This does nothing to change the minds of the people that do hold hurtful prejudices it merely drives them to hide their prejudices. And hidden or not a prejudice is still a prejudice.

That said this doesn’t sound like political correctness so much as idiocy.

And as I said before, there is always some smartass lawyer out there who will just jump all over the chance to represent a bunch of unreliables in court. “Your honor, my clients are clearly being discriminated against because of something that is clearly not their fault. Witness the fact that several of them are not actually here with me in court this morning, they’re unreliable. They can’t help it. It is discriminating to not hire them, and to fire them for being unreliable once they are hired.” I rest my case. And some idiot judge will compensate them financially for being slackers, and a jury will name a BIG amount.
Just kill me.

The use of inclusive language is a way of showing respect.

Excessive zeal in carrying out what are often reasonable attempts to be fair are abuses of the process.

No employer seeks out unreliable workers, any more than they look for lazy people, dishonest people or socially inappropriate people.

Employers typically spell out the attributes they require of applicants. They are not permitted to exclude applicants by age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, race or religious affiliation.

They are not required to seek individuals with maladaptive behaviours and poor work attitudes.

@Trillian Well as soon as there’s actually a court case that you can cite in which that has happened, then you’ll have an argument. What you have is idle speculation.

@Snarp I wasn’t aware that I was involved in an argument. The questioner was just asking for input. From my perspective, there have been plenty of ridiculous things people have done or sued about that makes my “speculation” a valid possibility. I was under the impression that this was allowed in this format.

@Trillian When you make a statement you need to be able to justify it. Argument or no.

@Trillian Yeah, anything is allowed, but I’m also allowed to say why your statement makes a weak argument, and I’ll do so because there’s a lot of overheated puffery out there about political correctness that hinges on poorly reported media stories and wild speculation, rather than on any actual facts.

Ok, I’ll give you three links to ridiculous lawsuits. I don’t think I should have to because it isn’t as if we don’t know they exist and are given time in the courtrooms.
http://www.humorouscourtcasenews.org/humorous_court_case_news.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/09/23/acorn-files-lawsuit-in-hidden-camera-sting/
http://www.hendriepedia.com/index.php?title=Lawsuits_of_Steve_Bosell

The acorn lawsuit in particular I believe, should be simply laughed out of court. I don’t understand how someone can get caught doing sdomething wrong, then want to file a suit against the one/s who bring that wrongdoing into the light.
You can question the validity of the links, the third in particular is like a wiki, and we all know not to use a wiki in a thesis paper. However, you can evaluate for yourself if my statement has validity by following the links. If they tell you something you didn’t already know, I leave to yourself to determine.

@Trillian None of that supports your statement all that well. These are not cases about “political correctness” and they aren’t victories for the plaintiffs. Yes, people will always file frivolous lawsuits, but that doesn’t mean that they will win. People are seriously paranoid about this sort of thing because of inaccurate, half finished, and overly sensational newspaper articles like the one that started this thread.

Whatever. I say that people will jump on ANY excuse to file a suit, whether it’s politically correct wording, or something else. That’s the point I was trying to make. I think that there are people out there who would use this particular “event” for just such an excuse, and that there are lawyers ready and waiting to represent such people. I believe tht such people and the lawyers who represent them are more concerned with getting money to which they’re not reasonably entitled and some fame and notoriety on the news. I feel entitled to have that opinion and to make that statement. You’re entitled to feel that my views are weak.
I don’t accept your first premise that this is an overly sensational article. You haven’t provided any supporting evidence to the contrary of what the article states. You call it inaccurate and half finished. Where is your documentation to support this?
It could very well be a case of one person overreacting or not wanting to put the ad out for reasons of his/her own. Even if that is the case, you can call it political correctness gone mad, or you can call it idiocy. They’re synonomous to me anyway.
The bottom line is that we as a society take this kind of thing way too far, and as long as there are people out there who go along with it instead of waving the bulls**t flag, it’s going to continue.

@Trillian Or course there are people willing to jump on any excuse to file a suit, but I don’t think this non-event is likely to provide an inspiration they didn’t already have. And again, filing a suit is not winning a suit.

The reason the article is inaccurate and half finished is because it is entirely based on the word of a single person, they provide no supporting statements whatsoever and do not provide any explanation from the company in question as to what may or may not have happened. They then toss a line in at the very end saying that the ad was actually placed with the original text, but it is pretty clear they intentionally held that until the very end and made as big a deal about the story as they could because this kind of thing excites people and sells papers.

And the reason I don’t think it s Political Correctness gone mad is because that implies that this is a symptom of a widespread societal problem and not simply a single isolated incident, likely a dumb mistake and misunderstanding. Yes, it is possible that this individual acted out of some belief in what is or is not politically correct, but that isn’t the same as there being some widely held belief or policy that unreliable people should not be discriminated against. That’s still an absurd notion, and one odd and unexplained incident doesn’t mean that we can expect to see more cases of job postings not being allowed to request reliable workers.

Of course, I find it odd that anyone would write an ad asking that people be reliable. Sounds like the work of someone who didn’t know what to say so they just stuck words in the ad. Of course you want them to be reliable, as opposed to all those jobs where reliability isn’t an issue? Of course the posting was free, so it was overly long, if they were paying by the word to post the job like in a newspaper classified they’d be idiots to include “must be reliable”.

It seems a lot of unreliable people work at this job centre.