Classified

 

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FOR YOUR EYES ONLY!

There are lots of things that are kept secret. You parents didn’t tell you how much your dinner cost or why you had to attend church every Sunday or how to do homework?

Think about your school report card? Some woman stood at the end of the room talking to dozens of kids staring at her while she presents knowledge that will be tested and your wisdom will be evaluated on your answers. If you were handed back your answers with a grade, you were suppose to take it home and show your parents. If your grade was at the top of the alphabet your parents were overjoyed at your ability to regurgitate what the teacher had spoken. If you grade was further down the alphabet, you, as a student, were to get your parents to sign the test and bring it back to teacher to prove you were shamed at home. To make a forgery of a parents signature is easy.

At the end of the year the letters of the alphabet gave you permission to move up to the next grade or not.

All through the academic years, you, the student, are not allowed to see these secret files. There are guidance counselors along the way who can view the teacher’s comments and occasionally there is parent/teacher conference to recommend a path for your child according to the alphabet. Some may show promise to apply to higher learning and possibility of advancement and monetary gains, while others may be more suitable to hands on trades?

Then there is the process to apply for gainful employment. You, the applicant, gets to fill out a form that inquires into your history as a requirement to evaluate the possibility that you are worthy of working at this establishment. This document and the following comments are then noticed as your “Personnel File”.

Your reviews, raises, complaints are filed in a manila folder and locked in a file cabinet out of your sight. Some papers needed to be shown to you for a signature that the accusation was acknowledged.

Once elevated to management, I got the secret handshake and a key to the ‘classified’ files.

I could not see ‘my’ personnel files, but I could view all the subjects I was assigned to supervise. Most files read as employees came in on time, did their assignments and left without causing chaos or disturbance. No knew what the average pay scale was or why some were promoted. Unions were established in an attempt to equalize job descriptions that were subjective until then.

Written files were sketchy at best. Digital files were no better. The ‘personnel file’ required a sheet of paper stuffed in a file cabinet under lock and keep for it was ‘classified’.

Even in offices, files could not be left unattended and ‘classified’ materials should not leave the building.

During one of the re-organizing of departments, the Human Resources department (formerly “Personnel Department”) requested me to re-file my original employment application.

It seems my Top Secret Personnel files had gone missing?

With more actuations and the introduction of digital computers, all sorts and variations of files were being established. New hires were filing in databases from paper files while others were maintaining the ole-established forms.

With little secrecy in a cubicle, personnel files had to be removed and filed at home to be later printed on a weekend and then lock away for security.

So the day I left employment, I had a file cabinet full of notebooks and hard drives full of “Top Secret Classified” files. Memos, e-mails, salaries, hiring/firing, budgets….

I don’t know why I kept them? I had nothing to do with that organization anymore. Like the President keeping a copy of the secret nuclear codes, they change everyday.

Maybe I thought that something I had might be evidence if a conflict with the former employer?

A few years ago I emptied out the file cabinet and shredded the paper and destroyed the digital disk. It was a theoretic experience.

Like most ‘Classified’ files, the next day they are history.