It’s been a terrible month for human resources departments, and not just at the Weinstein Company. It’s increasingly obvious to anyone who ever thought otherwise that in most workplaces, HR exists to serve the interests of management, not employees. That’s why, in so many of the current sexual harassment scandals, it looks like human resources botched the job, burying complaints and taking only token actions until public outrage forced their hand. (They didn’t botch anything; we’ve just misunderstood what their job is.) But there’s one place where management and worker interests align, and that’s preventing sexual harassment from happening in the first place. Even at the Weinstein Company, human resources would presumably prefer not to have messes to clean up. That’s why sexual harassment training is something HR departments insist on: It helps shield companies from liability while—theoretically, anyway—slightly reducing the risk for employees by helping both labor and management understand some of the complicated ways power dynamics play out in the workplace.
But the horrific stories coming out lately haven’t exactly been thorny moral issues, which is one reason “Claire from HR” (Cecily Strong) is not at her best while giving Colin Jost a quiz on NBC’s sexual harassment policy. Obviously, anyone in human resources is going to be in high demand these days—Claire says that Jost is her tenth sexual harassment training session in one day, and she hasn’t been home in three—but it must also be soul crushing to have to pretend that questions like this one are tough to get right:
What is the appropriate way to handle a workplace relationship?
A. Inform someone in HR.
B. Lock her in a room and make her look at it.
C. Bully her out of the entire industry.
To Jost’s credit, he doesn’t have much of a problem picking the right answer. He also aces this rather pointed question, cutting Strong off with the right answer before she even finishes reading the choices:
When is it okay for an adult to have a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old?
A. When she’s 14, but smoking a cigarette.
B. When she’s 14, but it’s Alabama.
C. When she’s 14, but you’re gay now, so hooray, how brave!
(With any luck, Roy Moore and Kevin Spacey appreciate being seated next to each other here.) Strong is always aces when playing crazy—remember her Scottie Neil Hughes?—and this is a great performance from her. But it must not have been particularly hard for her to go method on the rage and sorrow underlying Claire’s behavior, especially with her sign-off:
But I’m sure I’ll be back next week, and the week after that forever and ever, because all of this isn’t just a scandal, it didn’t just start last week. It’s just actual reality for half of the population.
The problem—and the reason Claire from HR will be back every week, and angrier and more frazzled each time—is that there’s no HR training class that can teach people to care about other people. Harvey Weinstein wasn’t confused as to whether or not he was doing the right thing, and neither were the other men who have been caught up in this scandal so far. The problem, in other words, is not a lack of moral or legal instruction. The problem is systemic, and the system has to change.
