The other day we were irritated, and then fooled, and then irritated again for a new reason by a thing we thought was a completely bullshit article on Forbes—”How Punk Rock Can Revitalize Human Resources”—which was secretly not a completely bullshit article but a completely bullshit BRANDVOICE “Paid for by the brand” thing on the Forbes site for something called SAP and we don’t know what it is except they fooled us with their paid advertorial into thinking it was a legit article, but even before we realized it was a trick, all we could think was HR Punk? There’s only one H.R. in Punk and that’s H.R. who started Bad Brains!
Nowhere in the HR Punk advertoricle was there even an acknowledgement that someone else had gotten there first and from the opposite direction. So we figured we’d let the words of Paul D. Hudson, dba H.R. (variously and indeterminately claimed to stand for “Human Rights” or “Hunting Rod,” though after the Forbes thing, someone changed it to “Human Resources” on his Wikipedia page), from the documentary Finding Joseph I, mash it up with the brandtastic blatherings of SAP’s Chief Human Resources Officer, Stefan Ries, who rocks the punk Attitude with his wacky DNGAF attire, straight out of the mid-’80s sketch comedy or action-movie wardrobe department.
HR PUNKS: “The heart of the human revolution is us. The old days of HR are over. Today onward we need to revolutionize and the best people who can do this are HR punks.”
H.R. (Human Resources): “Having something to believe in is important. Anything the mind can conceive and believe the mind can achieve.”
HR: “It will only happen through amazing technology that will help you get out of a back office function and position HR where it should belong — at the heart of the company.”
H.R. “A lot of people were sleeping. It was time to wake up. I could either sleep my life away, or go out there and do something about it.”
HR: “We have an obligation to our customers and our customer’s applicants, managers, employees and even alumnus — we need to create and deliver a very positive end consumer experience with an end consumer focus. It needs to be intuitive, simple and fun.”
H.R. “For us it was a challenge and it was a task, and sometimes I’d wake up penniless and not know where I was going to get some food to eat.”
HR: “Nobody else can do this.”
H.R. “A lot of times we’d psych ourselves out, and I wouldn’t talk for months on end. I wouldn’t say anything, just go and meditate and read the bible.”
HR: “This is not something that is sitting on a PowerPoint. It’s real.”
H.R. “I’m not certain but I thought I saw somebody pull out a gun and so I picked up the microphone and slammed him on the head with it, and then later on I had to do about 30 days behind bars.”
HR: “I don’t need to do headcounts every single day, I simply push the system on my mobile phone, on the digital boardroom on any other device and I have that information available at my fingertips. It allows us as HR professionals to focus on the really important aspects of people.”
H.R. “Brothers and sisters, this is what it looks like when a person is reborn again. One love. Peace and harmony. Just like that.”
HR: “The big takeaway is that all of this great technology leaves more time for creative work.”
H.R. “You are the pilot of your own soul, and in your hands lies the destiny, peacefully, to control the elements, so that you will be able to live in heaven, and fly the way the angels fly. Peace and love, children, and remember, the Bible is the best source of information when you’re all alone. Peace and love, children, Rasta!”
