Frank Shamrock, MMA Legend, WBI ally, Anti-bullying spokesman

Frank Shamrock, MMA middleweight ex-champion,

an ally of the Workplace Bullying Institute will guest.

In addition to promoting a featured MMA match,

he will declare that

“Tough Guys Hate Bullying, Too!”

We are fortunate to have the MMA legendary fighter,Shamrock,

join the campaign to educate the public about bullying –

both for children and for adults in the workplace.

Outsourced, NBC-TV show, premieres Sept. 23

From the network: “Outsourced” is a comedy where the Midwest meets the exotic East in a hilarious culture clash.

HaHa. Notwithstanding the crude stereotypes of Indians and the idiot American overseers who treat the workers like children (at least in the preview that the network must be proud to circulate publicly), there are serious problems facing Indian workers.

In India, the industry sector is called the ITES-BPO, information technology enabled services-business process outsourcing. India currently accounts for 46% of all global offshoring. The appeal, according to a 2003 NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) report, is “an unbeatable mix of low costs, deep technical and language skills, mature vendors, and supportive government policies.” Even with the influx of offshoring financial services, the industry still provides mostly standardized and routinized services of low complexity, emphasizing mass production and customer service.  To better understand the pressures faced by Indian call center workers, read Premilla D’Cruz’s 2010 article described elsewhere at this site.

The dilemmas facing Americans are more dire. Losing 500,000 more jobs in July 2010 and several million displaced since the great recession, laughing about offshoring or outsourcing domestic jobs is no laughing matter. Lost jobs in the U.S. means more than in most other industrialized nations. Everyone in the world who loses a job loses wages , but in the U.S. you also lose affordable health insurance when you need it most to cope with escalated stressors, you risk losing your home to foreclosure and for too many there is the loss of identity.

A movie produced by New Line, with shooting that began in July, 2010, is expected to a summer 2011 R-rated blockbuster with an all-star cast. The storyline according to one Hollywood “insider” trade publication:

Three best friends who, fed up with abuse from their employers, enlist the help of a scam artist called MF Jones to help murder them. Two of the horrible bosses are a coke-addled heir to a chemical company and a nymphomaniac dentist. The publication then gushes that almost all of the roles in the script by Jonathan Goldstein and ex-”Freaks and Geeks” star John Francis Daley are “great.” Then, seemingly without irony it states — “it’s a very funny, enjoyably mean-spirited piece of work, and with a cast like this, could be one of the better comedies of next year.”

The problem I have with the premise is how  “funny and enjoyable” is juxtaposed with “mean-spirited”? This semantic pairing baffles me. After decades of media pounding us with “sex and violence,” maybe Hollywood next wants to package funny and mean-spirited to go together. Wonder if bullied targets think the abuse they endure is very funny?

Don’t think I reject funny. Those who have seen me speak have seen my brand of humor. And I have spent lots of evenings in comedy clubs; I love slapstick.

But I resent the fact that before the media ever get around to seriously exploring workplace bullying in depth (NBC cancelled its airing of a full Dateline show on bullying in 2007), they want to trivialize it as if it were a joke.

Another funny hit, dilbert the comic strip, can be easily seen as mean spirited, too.

In conclusion, there’s money to be made laughing at, not with, the down and out during tough times. It’s a variation of the blame-the-victim theme rampant in our society.

1. The employer can do whatever it wants! Contract? Fuggedaboutit.

2. “Executive” is a meaningless marketing term — useful only for bathrooms, ranks of chefs in a restaurant’s kitchen, office furniture, and overpriced upgraded junk (SkyMall crap) misleading consumers to think they are getting something better for their money. Truth be told they rarely came up from the ranks by knowing the business. And they remain remarkably out of touch with those who work for the corporation. NBC exec Jeff Zucker runs the network that is watched by the fewest viewers. He runs an unsuccessful business by his industry’s own best measures.

3. Employers routinely lie to, and betray, employees. Jeff Zucker made Conan wait 5 years dangling the promise of hosting the Tonight Show when Leno left as an incentive for Conan to be “loyal” to the network. Then, he repays the loyalty with termination after 7 months. So much for integrity.

4. Employers who trash workers risk sabotage. Few of us can get even as Conan did in a very public way — on the air.



View the segment:

[See post to watch Flash video]

Warning: advice from the in-studio Career Expert does not reflect the reality of bullied targets, the voluminous research, or advice that we at WBI give.

Listen to Podcast 5: Beware Bad Advice for a different perspective.