Double standards

Sounds like a good reason to unionise.

Did boss' daughter have an eating disorder, because that's a pretty savage callout.
- Either way it's a goddamn amazing comeback.
  If boss' daughter did have an eating disorder and the boss is still calling out employees eating habits rudely and unprompted, then maybe a firm dose of reality is overdue.

HR is employed by the company to protect the company/capital.
A regulatory watchdog (so not on company's payroll) would be the one to protect the workers. Even a union could to a certain degree.
- This is just a tawdry /r/antiwork meme borne of McDonalds burger flipper level reasoning.
  Sure, companies maximise profits and hire HR to assist them in that objective.
  However, your own interests are often aligned with theirs.
  If you want to sue your employer, then obviously HR is not there to help you do that.
  However, if your supervisor is an ass who makes witty comments about how many cup cakes you ate, your interests are aligned with HR's - he needs to stop creating fodder for your bullying claim.
  
  She literally just told you HR didn’t help her in her situation and your answer is to tell her that actually, she was helped and her silly little girl brain just didn’t realize it?
  I know that you didn’t do it on purpose, but I implore you to do some self-reflection and start believing women when they speak of their struggles instead of dismissing them.
  
  your own interests are often aligned with theirs.
  Seriously? If you are an employee of a company all you want to do is your job and then go home preferably after receiving a pay rise that didn't require additional work on your behalf. The company's interests however are to get as much work out of me as possible for as little compensation as possible.
  The interests of myself and the interests of the company are diametrically opposed, there cannot be alignment because we are in an inherently adversarial relationship.
  It's like claiming that your interests and your landlords interests align, and then completely ignoring the fact that you can never get him to come around and fix the broken light fixture. The thing I want him to do is the one the thing that he definitely doesn't want to do.
  
  I don't presume you've checked the accumulated downvotes but
  Mcdonalds burger flipper level reasoning
  stinks pretty badly of classist ideology. Paired with a comment that seems more in-tune with the needs of the company than the employee, it does not paint you in a good light.
  I understand the comment is speaking from the capitalist's side but you don't have to wear the suit so naturally. Historians won't be putting on red belly shirts and sticking their heads in honey jars to give talks about Xi Jinpeng in the future.
  
  That doesn't mean HR is staffed with intelligent people who will back up the smaller paycheck.

I'm surprised so many people still don't realize that HR exists to protect the company, not the employee. Yes, since a bad or reckless manager can put the company at significant risk, sometimes they will take the side of the employee, but not because it's their charter.
- Somewhere along the lines a lot of people in HR and upper management in some companies (cultures) forget that you need people and that you need to listen to then to make it all work
- Also if someone says something fucked up and you clap back and they report it. YES HR WILL SPEAK TO YOU!
  If you want to nail someone with the rulebook you cant respond like two people talking shit on twitter. You have to call them out on what they said respectfully and professionally, preferably with witnesses or go straight to HR.
  
  Yeah, that's a good point.
- Everyone uses this cliche. Nobody seems to understand it.
  a bad or reckless manager can put the company at significant risk
  Yes. In this circumstance, the manager opened the company up to a lawsuit with his comments. It would have protected the company to punish him or have him take some sort of class.
  You can just say that HR is usually bad at their jobs. "Protecting the company not the employee" is completely meaningless here.
  
  No, there's more to it than that. Immediately taking the manager to task gives more credence to an employee lawsuit. Their "best" first approach is to talk to the employee, even scold them. What they want is for the issue to go away without the company getting bad press or a legal issue. It's not that they're bad at their job, it's that their job has zero to do with being an employee advocate.
  They might also scold the manager, but that will happen off the record and behind closed doors.
- The fact that it's called human resources instead of something less dystopian should be a hint. If you want an actual ally as an employee you gotta unionize.
- I'm kind of surprised (yes, naively) that some people aren't even aware enough of the wider culture to think twice about saying things like that.
- Exactly. They're not there for you.
- Humans are the resource.
- That's right. Just imagine that you start a business and you start hiring employees and at some point you have so many employees that it becomes difficult to manage and sometimes the employees start fighting or doing other inappropriate things. So, you hire some other employees to to create an HR department to make sure that your employees don't become a liability for your company. See?

I assume they talked to you about your poor grammar and spelling ? What was the outcome ?
Edit: the people downvoting this are promoting, or at least accepting poor education, and trump is the result of a poorly educated society. Think about that next time you say that spelling and grammar don't matter.
- as a huge fan of linguistics, spelling and grammar, I will say this very confidently: in this case, spelling and grammar don't matter even one bit. but if this kind of thing matters so much to you, you should also care about typography and not leave a space before a question mark.
  
  English may not be their first language (since the question mark thing is common in French, for example), though of course if that were true, their comment looks even worse.
- It is completely normal human behavior to use different dialects of a language with different levels of formality depending on the context. That’s what makes language beautiful and expressive!
- Dat is stupid.
  I guess dat makes me a trump voter now...
- Oh come on. Trump has become the new Hitler. How long does it take before completely random topic is brought around to him?
- He could be dyslexic.

one time i had to interrupt an hr sensitivity seminar because the trainer casually threw down an ethnic slur for me
- What the fuck?
- Did he not know it was a slur? Was he ignorant, or just plain awful is what I'm wondering?
  
  she seemingly forgot the word "biracial" and decided to go with the first thing on her mind
- Gy*** or ab*?
  
  Probably called match!! a mutt instead of a goldendoodle.

A coworker drunkenly made out with my face at a work event and HR tried to send me to a sexually harassment seminar so I could "learn what sexually assault really is"
Another great quote from that meeting: "if you knew she was a sloppy drunk, why were you hanging out with her?"
HR is there to protect the company - not you
- Ayyyy~ what the fuck?
  
  It was crazy. What made it worse was that I didn't even report it...my friend was so upset about it, he told his boss.
  When the HR director asked me what I wanted to happen to the girl, I told her NOTHING. I don't want her fired or anything, I don't even work directly with her. Then she asked why, if I didn't want anything to happen, I reported it? BITCH I DIDN'T I was going to find a new job and move the fuck on with my life
- That last line is the key take-away for dealing with ANY HR.
  Never forget who signs their paychecks.
  
  Yes. The acronym stands for Human Resources and it'd be a stretch to think they consider us human!
  Jokes aside, I actually really liked most of the leadership at that company. I really only disliked the CEO and HR director.

Who would have imagined that a department called "human resources" wouldn't have your best interests in mind?
- If you think about the phrasing of the title “Human Resources”, it makes sense that they are not your friends.
  Let’s look at the definition of the word resource:
  resource /rē′sôrs″, -zôrs″, rĭ-sôrs′, -zôrs′/
  noun
  Something that is available for use or that can be used for support or help. “The local library is a valuable resource.”
  An available supply, especially of money, that can be drawn on when needed.
  Those definitions describe disposable commodities; easily replaceable. The adjective “human” simply refines what type of disposable and replaceable commodities that the department deals with.
  If you want someone to be your advocate your best interests at a job, you’ll need to hire a lawyer. In the meantime, make sure you take notes, and follow everything up with an email (bcc your personal email a copy of each correspondence).
  If your state allows one-party consent, you can even record conversations; be very aware that despite being legal, it will likely get you fired with prejudice if anybody finds out you’ve been recording them without their knowledge.
  
  If you want someone to be your advocate your best interests at a job, you’ll need to hire a lawyer.
  You can also join a union.
  
  “The local library is a valuable resource.”
  I wouldn't call the local library a disposable commodity.
  
  It could also be interpreted as "resources for humans", but you're spot on
  
  That's why forward-looking and thoughtful tech companies call them "People ops," which changes absolutely nothing about what they do.
- Where I'm working they rebranded HR to ✨"People & Culture"✨ so I don't know what you mean. With that name, they simply must have our best interests in mind instead of always siding with the higher ranking individual.
  
  Weird, at my company they changed it to "flesh asset repair and removal."
- Most functional HR departments actually do have the workers best interests at heart, because protecting the company and not screwing over workers usually has a ton of overlap. But HR does a lot more than handle workplace disputes.
  
  I had a boss and mentor who happened to have a hot headed streak. He lost his temper with his boss during a meeting and was brought into a meeting with HR over it. He was able to spin the meeting with HR so it became as much about his boss's failures to be an effective leader as it was about his inappropriate behavior so it ultimately worked out for him

"If you're going to start a meeting with fat shaming me, then yes; I am going to fire back. Don't dish it out if you can't take it yourself.
If you have a problem with that, we can get the lawyers involved and discuss it further."
But I also live somewhere that actually has labour laws and where 'at-will' employment is a ridiculous concept. If you want to fire someone (after their three months probation), you've gotta have a good reason and you better document it throughly.
- Saying someone has had quite a few cupcakes isn't necessarily fatshaming. It can just be calling out someone hogging the cupcakes.
- "At will" isn't as magical as people think.
  If you terminate an employee without documented cause, you still have to pay them unemployment.
  
  In practice this just means that your documented cause will be fabricated.
  
  they can just say they're downsizing, or the employee hasn't been performing well, or any other lie. as long as they don't specifically mention that you're being terminated for something illegal you'll never stand a chance in court.
  that being said. record every meeting with hr, they slip up more than you think

I had an elected official chuck pens at the HR lady and reference her recent weight loss during a training about professional behavior in the workplace. Unironically. But the HR lady laughed it off and then kind of flirted with the elected official and a program manager.
He was already on the way out but it did provide a good orientation for the workplace culture.

I used to feel bad for Toby that Michael was constantly shitting on him. That is, until I encountered corporate HR. And now I too hate so much about the things that Toby chooses to be.
- True lore: in one episode, Toby says that he was actually training to be a priest, but he gave it up to hook up with a woman. (who later left him and is now his ex.) Then he just took the first job that he saw. ...almost as if he was guided to it by a higher power?
  So canonically Toby is in a living hell because he rejected his god to indulge his fornicatory lust.
- Why are you the way you are?
  
  Toby's from HR, which means he's not a part of our family. Also he's divorced so he's not really a part of his family either.

"Tina, there are six of us. Learn to share"
- That's what I imagined the situation to be at first, her reaction does seem in that situation to be pretty wild