♛

kensingtonroyal

These aren’t job requirements, they’re filters meant to weed out “undesirable” candidates using criteria they otherwise couldn’t (legally) get away with. You can’t ask someone “are you poor?” but you can sure as hell ask if they have reliable transportation and check their credit score. You can’t reject someone because they’re disabled, but you can require them to be able to do some physical task that is completely unrelated to the job they’re applying for.

And while a lot of these hiring practices have been going on for a long time, COVID‐19 has put a spotlight on one in particular: remote work. For years, disabled folks have been told that the job they’re applying for or working at just can’t be done remotely. “Nothing beats face‐to‐face collaboration!” they say as they attach a powerpoint deck to an email, asking for feedback and for their coworker to update the deck with their half of the slides.

Some companies will even go so far as to list work‐from‐home “flex days” as a perk they offer. How the fuck is being able to do a job from more than one location a perk? Also, isn’t this a tacit admission that your office is terrible? If not, then why is it a benefit to not work from there?

It’s all bullshit. And now with companies being forced to allow work from home, everyone can finally see it. It was never about collaboration, it was about control. Companies are inherently distrustful of their employees and want to keep them in an environment they can monitor. After all, if you’re at work, you must also be working, right?

Snapped this photo on the local bulletin board: a job listing for public works director. Some requirements listed, for this office job:

- Frequently stoop, bend, and crawl

- Climb and twist

- Carry moderately heavy things

- Operate machinery

- Verbally communicate, hear within normal range, and see well enough to read computer screens

Sarah Everard walked down well lit streets. She phoned her boyfriend and talked for most of her journey. She was literally just walking home. And she is being blamed for her own murder. The narrative surrounding this story has turned into what women should do to avoid these situations and not exposing the harsh reality that a police officer has literally done the exact opposite of his job description.

This story has hit hard with so many women across the U.K. and I have had so many conversations with friends in the last 24 hours about how tired we are. Of how insane it is the things we have learned.

Like how we learn to walk with our keys between our fists. Or how we text each-other when we’re in the Uber not to let friends know when we’ve set off but so they know where to look if we go missing. Or how sometimes we put a ring on our left hand bc a guy is less likely to harass you if he sees you as belonging to another man already.

We’re tired. We’re frustrated. We’re angry. 97% of women and girls in the U.K. have been sexually harassed. And men on twitter are telling us ‘not all men’.