Agreed. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t have a union, and sometimes unionizing just isn’t possible.

HR can protect the company by reigning this guy in. I really feel it was a lone wolf thing, not policy.

Very true! Like I said, I’m not trying to convince you to not bring it up, just that it’s something to be careful about, and to make sure you have evidence or documentation.

I completely believe all of that, and I’m sorry she’s had to deal with so much crap. Lately a lot of employers seem to be showing their asses by being overtly racist, ableist, and transphobic. Everyone I know who isn’t a white straight cis man has had employment troubles in the last six months.

I hope this is just a strange interaction with one HR person and you have a better time with everyone else!

Exactly what I was referencing! I’ve known a few people who were recently fired from remote jobs under very strange circumstances. I can’t prove anything of course, but I distinctly got the feeling that they were fired because the intersection of their marginalizations made them look like “evil North Korean spies” to management.

Definitely! However if your first experience with HR is being discriminated against, raising concerns about discrimination can be dangerous. Who do you go to when HR is causing the issues? HR is there to protect the company, not you. If the easiest way to protect the company is to fire someone, HR will probably do that.

I’m not trying to talk OP or anyone else out of going to HR, they aren’t always sharks waiting to fire someone. It’s just good to be careful here and OP and their wife should be aware of the risks before taking any action. Definitely document this incident. If this becomes a repeat issue, documentation can be the difference between getting fired and winning a wrongful termination lawsuit.

It sure sounds like racism and poorphobia to me. HR trying to make sure her surroundings don’t look like what a “typical poor person” would have (clutter, children, signs of disability, “drugs”, etc.) It’s not super common, but it’s common enough that I hear about it every so often.

I can’t offer any kind of legal advice, but it sounds like this job will be potentially problematic and HR will definitely be one to watch out for.

ETA: There’s a lot of paranoia in the US right now about “laptop farms”. Remote jobs are paranoid about people getting remote work to send money back to North Korea. It’s completely ridiculous, and it’s causing issues for a lot of people, mostly marginalized people. I think it’s useful context to know why this kind of thing is happening more lately.

I don’t have links because they get banned pretty quickly, but over the last week I’ve seen maybe 4 or 5 examples of lemmy users referencing “the race card” (derogatory) in response to others talking about systemic racist violence.

But as much as we hate ads, they fuel the internet. Without them, the internet wouldn’t be what it is today.

The corporate web wouldn’t be what it is today, the internet would be fine. This is an important distinction to make. The internet is run by a bunch of nerds going to “internet peering conventions” and paying for BGP cross-connects in data centers. They would be fine, because ad-blockers don’t hurt them.

The corporate web, on the other hand, would die. I’m very okay with that. In fact, I see that as a feature, not a bug. I hate the corporate web, and I think the world would be better without facebook and google creating monopolies on communication. But either way, if the only way technology can survive is ads (and it’s not the only way), then let it die.

So should we gatekeep ad blockers and enjoy an ad-free internet as a minority? It’s not like they know what they’re missing.

lolno. We should be doing everything we can to protect ourselves and those around us from malware, surveillance capitalism, and predatory advertising. Even if you don’t care about other people, herd immunity to malware and surveillance capitalism are very real things. It’s a lot harder to get infected by malware on an immunized network, and it’s a lot harder for facebook to surveil you (remember shadow profiles?) when nobody around you is having their every step tracked.

Consider why those people don’t even know about extensions or ad-blocking. The web was built to be extensible, but ad companies (google) have done everything they can to keep people from realizing they can just change websites however they want, including blocking ads. People aren’t ignorant about privacy because they want to be, they’re ignorant because a lot of money and manipulation has gone into keeping them unaware and unempowered.

Solidarity and support are the only real weapons we have in the war against surveillance and malvertising. If not for those around you, then at least do it for the sake of your own privacy.