This Could Hurt by Jillian Medoff
Pity the toilers in America’s Human Resources departments.
In light of the almost daily revelations of sexual harassment in the work place, there seems to be universal agreement that HR is the last place you would go to report an issue because, you know, they get their paycheck from the same place you do. They are just the cogs in the wheel, turning a blind eye to egregious behavior and working hard to help the company mitigate risk.
So this is the perfect moment for Jillian Medoff’s new novel This Could Hurt, a funny, insightful tale of a human resources department of Ellery Consumer Research, a company trying to manage the economic downturn of 2009.
Rosa Guerrero has battled against all odds to become Executive Vice President and HR Chief of Ellery. She knows how to manage her boss, but she also knows how to manage her senior staff, skirting the lines between friendship, genuine collegiality and boss lady. She sometimes can’t resist being the mother hen to them all and that dedication to them helps her when she needs it most.
Medoff captures perfectly the many real functions that HR provides, and the tasks that we tend to ignore but that need to get done in a company. Rosa muses “As HR chief, she oversaw the entire employee experience from recruiting and onboarding through separation, along with comp, training, benefits, communications and policy. She didn’t just order printer paper and track service anniversaries; she made sure obese CPAs didn’t develop type 2 diabetes, go blind and lose their jobs. (Leo’s cost-benefit analysis was wrong, by the way. Shelling out six figures for gastric bypass now would save Ellery have a million in disability payments later.) As chief, Rosa kept the whole fucking enterprise afloat. “
Because HR is not necessarily a “revenue generating unit” they are seen as somehow not that important. That might explain why so many startups wait so long before setting up an HR department. But of course, when you need them, you really need them.
The HR department at Ellery doesn’t just look after the rest of the staff, it has to manage itself too, and in the management crew Medoff has assembled for Guerrero she perfectly paints a picture of every “type” in a workplace. There’s Kenneth, the ivy league graduate who thinks he could be doing better so has one eye permanently fixed on finding the next job; Lucy, the long serving VP who has the ability to move on up but that would only be at the expense of Rosa whom she couldn’t kick out; Rob, the go along to get along guy who is performing poorly but is held in such affection that he’s constantly being saved; and Leo, the dedicated supportive co-worker who is the understanding shoulder for Rosa to lean on while mourning the death of her husband and while dealing with the stresses of the job.
Medoff explores typical workplace relationships and dynamics. Who among us has not had a work spouse, or cemented a relationship with someone we thought we had little in common with but they end up being the perfect friend.
The HR team is severely tested when Rosa suffers a stroke and her team manages to successfully hide the fact from all the others in the company. They are there to catch her, protect her, cover for her even as they are trying to do their own self-assessment, to figure out who they are and what comes next?
It seems like a far- fetched plot but Medoff says she was inspired by working for a woman who was a “tyrannical bully” but who confessed that she’d had a stroke a few years before. “It occurred to me that this might account for her erratic, impulsive behavior” says Madoff. She never got to the bottom of that real life situation but it provided fodder for this, her fourth novel.
Medoff has perfect pitch when painting the particular quirks and culture of cubicle life, the habits of the workplace that so many of us will recognize. Here she describes the team gathered around a meeting table “Sighing, Rob fished a pen out of his pocket. He traveled light, always had—pencil, pad, company BlackBerry—unlike Leo Smalls (Benefits) and Kenny Verville (Comp), who sat across the table, hunched over their devices, gear lined up like weaponry: laptops, pens, pencils, highlighters, key cards, water, coffee, company BlackBerries, personal iPhones (a novelty, but both men had one), banana (Leo), muffin (Leo), trail mix (Leo), Mocha Frappucino with extra whip (Leo).” I think I’ve even sat in a meeting that feels like this.
Most of us probably spend more sustained time with our co-workers than we do with family and Medoff deftly explores the implications of that kind of exposure to a group of people who you are indelibly tied to but who could disappear at the stroke of a pen, or an awkward summons to HR to be told that they are being laid off.
The flaws and foibles of the team are played for laughs, but the genuine affection and dedication demonstrated to protect Rosa during her illness is heartwarming and, frankly, fantastical.
But that’s the pleasure of this book. As a reader you are invested in these people, you are hoping against hope that they come out whole from the devastating economic downturn, that they find their authentic selves and don’t fall prey to the economic sinkhole that doomed so many during that period of America’s economic history. The book is funny and astute but it’s also redemptive and in this bleak time for HR departments across the land, this might be the perfect pick-me-up for them, and a gentle reminder for the rest of that that H in HR stands for Human (just like the rest of us).
Before You Read
Length: 366 pages
Genre: Fiction, Humor
Themes: workplace, careers, friendship, aging
Commitment: A fun read with a group of misfits you don’t mind spending time with.
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