Internet commenters were left shaking their heads after one peeved employee revealed why their employer suddenly required all staff members to pass tests intended for those not yet hired.
In a viral Reddit post published on r/MaliciousCompliance, Redditor u/RevolutionFriendly56 (otherwise referred to as the original poster, or OP) said their human resources department claimed the evaluations were simply a formality but offered speculation about their true intention.
Titled, "HR says only smart people can work here," the post has received more than 11,000 upvotes in the last nine hours.
"I work for a small company and we have a one-man HR department," OP began. "I think maybe HR got all its education on YouTube or Reddit."
Continuing to explain that HR recently implemented the new standardized test to screen prospective employees, the original poster said the general idea is to "weed out" applicants who look good on paper, but are actually incapable of completing simple tasks.
The original poster also said those same tests, which evaluate aptitude in mathematics, language and logic, were then turned on current employees.
"HR thought it's an excellent idea to make everyone including those [who've] already been here for years do it as well, for the employee files of course," OP wrote. "We suspect HR is trying to get rid of a few crucial people who are not great with computers...but are in fact the beating souls [of] the workplace.
"Everyone at the office pretty much...boycotted the test [but] when HR pressured the CEO to threaten our bonuses, we begrudgingly complied," OP continued. "We spent the next three days after hours working on the tests together...we all scored 9/10 in every category.
"And guess what? We forced HR to do the same test, and HR scored 5/10 for Math, 4/10 for logic," OP added. "Who should be on the chopping block?"
Employers have long used aptitude tests, as well as other pre-employment evaluations, to help sift through high volumes of job candidates at high speeds, increasing efficiency and landing only productive employees.
However, as time passes and the entire work landscape becomes more digitized by the day, employers are turning to similar tests to determine which employees of their own should stay, and those who should go.
A half-decade ago, MIT Technology Review asserted that tech illiteracy would cause employees to be fired long before efforts to automate certain positions would, despite concerns over robots.
And with only 30 percent of jobs requiring minimal digital skills, and 70 percent of jobs created since 2010 requiring at least moderate digital skills, that assertion rings true.
Unlike "quiet firing," which sees employers divesting time and energy from underperforming personnel, companies with tech-illiterate or tech-ignorant staff members sometimes implement requirements to single out those employees with the intention of letting them go right then, or down the line.
Throughout the comment section of the viral Reddit post, Redditors railed against these types of practices and slammed the original poster's employer for tests they can't pass themselves.
"HR should have had all current employees take it and use those scores to create the benchmark for external," Redditor u/HR_Gamer_Guy commented. "You have to validate the tests or face legal problems.
"They did this a** backwards," they continued. "And with the wrong intent."
"It would have been more interesting for everyone to have scored 0/10...to see if the CEO was willing to fire the entire company," Redditor u/Cloudy_Automation added.
"Did I miss the episode where Dwight [takes] over Toby's job?" Redditor u/someone1050 chimed in, invoking a bit of humor from NBC's The Office.
Newsweek reached out to u/RevolutionFriendly56 for comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Taylor McCloud is a Newsweek staff writer based in California. His focus is reporting on trending and viral topics. Taylor ... Read more
