Hello Gentle Reader,
The term ‘Rubber Room,’ conjures images of institutional padded rooms, whose purpose is punitive in nature. Literature, film, television have promoted the image of a white institutional windowless room covered in protective padding as the defining hallmark of incarceration in a psychiatric facility. Be it “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” or “Girl Interrupted,” or “The Green Mile,” these rooms are cast in a menacing light. Their sole purpose is to be penal even grossly vindictive. From this image the connotations of “Chill Out Room,” “Quiet Room,” “Seclusion Room,” “Time Out Room,” and “Rubber Room,” summons an isolative cell where one is tossed into to go mad. The image is associative of the restraint and isolation of psychiatric penal detention as both application and an inherent prescription of instructional treatment. Insanity can be inherited and curated. Yet the term ‘Rubber Room,’ has gained a new associative meaning, specifically in the New York City Department of Education.
While searching the archives of This American Life, I stumbled across an episode from February 2008 called: “Human Resources,” where the program investigates the strange world of institutions who hold immeasurable authority and power over individuals lives. This is why the episode is so aptly named: ‘Human Resources.’ My personal and professional disdain exhibited and harbored towards the profession of human resources is well documented and known. Recently, I called it a profession lacking in both character and form, an empire whose foundational elements are so vague they are alchemical in spirit while being completely nonexistent. Yet, the episode of This American Life starts with a prologue where Ira Glass talks with a veteran Human Resources administrator, who Ira Glass classified as a human resources ‘executioner’. This administrator held the position of being a coordinator of employee’s severance and termination from the company. A bit of background: it was the cusp of the new millennium and the novelty of the internet boom had waned and the economic repercussions from 9/11 had settled, and this human resources administrator was tasked with reducing a large cell centre workforce During a period of 5-6 years, this administrator had the unfortunate task of being the professional who informed employees that the organization was severing their employment. In a twisted fate of corporate irony during the end of the process the administrator himself was terminated. The administrator describes the process with palpable tension. Entering a nondescript office building, the atmosphere tense and uncomfortable, and as you walk by these rows of cubicles the eyes of employees follow you with apprehension and suspicion. In short something is up. Much like the butcher casually strolling through the chicken coop, so does this administrator, with the understanding the coop is being culled. At Ira Glass’s request, the administrator walks him through the process of being severed, simulating the conversation of being terminated. A consummate professional the administrator spoke low, soft, and went through an established speech. There was no blame, no argumentative components, no aggressive tactics, just a level and soft explanation of the situation followed by a review of what is described as a generous and fair severance package.
The administrator in question is a consummate professional. Who despite his chosen profession, remains amicable, even empathetic in his discussion regarding his time as being a human resources executioner--which it should be noted he took no enjoyment in, as the administrator went so far as to describe it a very depressing period of his professional career. This episode of This American Life then turned towards the main element of the episode, the supposed “Rubber Rooms,” used by the New York City Department of Education to hold and house teachers who have been accused of professional misconduct. Like a penitentiary or holding cell, the teachers find themselves in an indiscriminate office building with rooms and chairs. It is here they spend their days doing nothing. Of course, some read, some play cards, some sleep, while others visit and talk. Yet through the interviews with numerous individuals who found themselves remanded into these Rubber Rooms, seating arrangements took on a greater meaning. New initiates are oriented regarding the proprietary nature of a chair. Seating became the sole patch of earth one could stake out and claim as their own. In the process establishing a pecking order. A social structure within the amorphous purgatory of the Rubber Room.
The Rubber Rooms deployed by the New York City Department of Education, have been satirized and mocked via a variety of different mediums, including political cartoons and “The Simpsons.” Yet I listened to this episode with a combination of pity and disgust. The teachers who were being remanded into these facilities each had their own story. Some obviously engaged in inappropriate conduct, such as losing their temper and throwing a chair against a blackboard. Others had more human moments of indiscretion, such as letting a cuss word slip out when talking with a colleague in earshot of students. Then there were others whose reasons were pettier in form, as in the case of one teacher who said she had a personality conflict with the school principal. Regardless of the reason or the severity of their act each educator found themselves placed in a situation which became increasingly Kafkaesque in nature. As the existence of Rubber Rooms became more ubiquitous and infamous, a documentary was later filmed and made regarding their existence. The film itself revealed a education system which no longer seeks to facilitate or inspire or nurture education as a value, or lifelong learning as a principle. Instead, it reveals an anarchist state of social depravation, which is further condoned and promoted by willfully breaking the spirit and professional souls of educators. If school is the foundation of a function society. Then then New York City Department of Education reveals a system in ruin beyond repair.
The issue I took with the Rubber Rooms was not to critique the hollowed out remains of the New York City Department of Education; it was an immediate revulsion directed towards the profession of human resources. The very same profession veiling itself in the vague nebulous vagrancy of a defined profession. Though it cloaks itself with the corporate trends and buzz words, remaining indefinite in shape and character, just a superficial profession teetering on the point of irrelevancy. Yet perhaps the only anchor point of human resources is the entrenched understanding that the profession and business unit exist to be the heart of labour relations. In essence that corporate bridge between the corporation and the employee. In essence the faceless and soulless conglomerate and the individual employee, whereby it operates as the mediator between the two’s interests, ensuring fair play and compliance with pertinent employment and labour laws. It comes as no surprise that employee’s distrust and loath human resources, who as a function of the corporation will enact resolutions which are considered corporate centric. Such resolutions cannot be found as fault to a profession, however. Loyalty is an act all parties will subscribe to in order to maintain their position. This function also means that human resources is involved in the severance of employees from the organization, as previously mentioned in the prologue of this episode of This American Life. Business textbooks list the functions of human resources as: recruitment, onboarding, training and learning development, labour relations, and facilitation of employee exit. Then the endorsement and utilization of Rubber Rooms as a form of remand facility and detention centre for teachers who have allegedly engaged in a form of professional misconduct, becomes a distorted and disturbing Beckettian stage displaying just how absurd and disturbed the human resources profession is.
The description of these Rubber Rooms is best summarized as some absurd hellscape from within a Beckett play. Yet, they become thorough examples of the incompetence exhibited by the human resources profession. The establishment of Rubber Rooms and the complacent acceptance of their utilization shows a profession that has no professional interest in operating within its own vague mandate and maintain one of its own professional principles. It’s an insult to imagine that these educated professionals are left to languish in some bureaucratic exile, where they fill their days with nothing. The whole concept is absurd. I can’t imagine what defense or rationale could be provided to justify this practice. As a citizen of New York City, I would be appalled, I would be disgusted that an institution would engage in this kind of unprofessional practice, while keeping these educated professionals on the payroll, and paying them to do nothing. These are qualified educational professionals, whose talents and education could be redeployed or exercises in a variety of other measures. Yet instead, they are paid a salary to do nothing, to engage in nothing. All I can think is what a waste. A waste of public funds and a waste of such professional talent, who are left to languish in some penal purgatory. What is most infuriating through this entire process is viewed as normal. When This American Life asked a high-ranking labour relations representative from the Department of Education about the Rubber Rooms deployment as a solution, the representative appeared to shrug the question off and encourage an endorsement of the term: Reassignment Centre. Regardless of what semantic spin one wants to put on these institutionalized bull pens of nothingness, they are a disgrace to the professionals detained within those buildings and should be considered a blight and embarrassment to the human resources profession.
The Rubber Rooms remain an example of what is truly rotten at the core of human resources as a profession and should provide the corporate world with enough stock to evaluate what value and benefit such as a business unit brings to the organization. If any organization is looking for a special breed of leech like professional capable of syphoning funds from the organization while enacting Kafkaesque and Beckettian bureaucratic solutions to labour relations issues, then yes keep human resources on your payroll and in your organizational chart. While in turn the revelation of the Rubber Rooms and their continued utilization (now remotely with the rise of the pandemic), only affirms a deep-seated disgust and outrage against a profession whose qualities and functions were always in question prior.
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
If you would like listen to that episode of This American Life, please see the following link:
This American Life: Human Resources
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