[Note: If this post strikes a chord with you, then you ought to anonymously forward the link to any offenders you might know (if you can get away with it, that is). The only way things get better is if you do something.]

While getting ready to write a post about my first month as a Microsoft employee (yes: life has changed enough in a month to warrant a post about it), I was thinking about the pluses and minuses of my recent conversion to a full time employee for the company I've started to privately refer to as "Daddy."

I was showering this morning while I thought about this stuff. As water ran across my nudity, rinsing soap from various cracks and crevices, one point stuck in my head. It was this:

Nobody at Microsoft has called me a "resource" (at least not to my face)

In my time as an independent, I spent time in a few different companies of varying sizes and found that, the larger the company, the greater the likelihood that somebody at some point was going to call me a "resource."

It's great. Maybe you've been there, showing up to meetings where people talk about you in the third person without ever addressing you or using your name. Instead of saying, "Rory, I'd like you to get right on that project," they'll say things to each other like, "I am going to allocate resources to cover that priority action item."

There are few things about modern business etiquette that I've found more offensive than this tendency to refer to employees, coworkers, and even friends as "resources."

Some people don't care. They show up to work, punch in, do their thing, take lunch, do their thing, punch out, and go home.

They don't care about much, as a matter of fact, until they get fired.

The interesting thing here is how key concepts like calling people "resources" can be to things like getting fired, missing that raise, and so on.

When someone thinks of you as a "resource" rather than a "human," or, [insert deity here] forbid, by your name, your place in the social hierarchy is somewhere between the coffee maker and the water cooler (but only if the water cooler is empty - otherwise, it's still higher up than you are).

Paper is a resource. Staples are a resource. Toner is a resource.

Although some might be able to make a convincing argument to the contrary, I happen to believe that people are not resources.

Think about it. When you are classified in the same way as office supplies, you are so totally disposable that you're lucky there isn't an office recycling plan for your body.

As I was saying, paper is a resource, staples are a resource, and toner is a resource. How much thought do you put into it when you throw away, or waste, some of these resources? Probably not much. Now, when classifying people in the same way, how much thought are you going to put into throwing them away?

Put yourself in your manager's shoes for a moment. Do you think it would be easier to fire Frank or a resource? If I were a manager, I know that it would be significantly easier for me to fire a nameless resource than a person. Resources don't have families, mortgages, or food to put on the table. You can whack a resource's position and make the bottom line much sweeter without putting any kind of a burden on your conscience. How convenient.

Do you think it's easier for a company to ship people's jobs abroad, or to acquire resources in another country? If I had the horrible responsibility of offshoring work (selling my neighbor's life for pennies on the dollar to the lowest bidder), then you can bet your beautiful bottom that I would want all the paperwork to refer to resources rather than a term that might hint at the presence of something which might indicate a bit of humanity.

The word "resource" is insulting, disrespectful, and dehumanizing to people. I hate the word in this context.

And, nobody at Microsoft has referred to me (at least to my face) as a resource.

Yet.

And that's nice.