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In high school one of my poorer bits of judgment was an attempt to win the admiration of an exceptionally attractive young lady. My strategy was to tell her a very funny joke. The joke I chose was, had the vocabulary existed back then, politically incorrect and then some — its punchline was a pun on a derogatory name for an ethnic group.

Her ethnic group.

After my head stopped ringing — her response was instantaneous and surprisingly muscular for someone that slender — my chances of her going out with me, never very high, dropped to numbers smaller than mathematicians had yet invented.

It was a painful lesson. Literally.

The phrase “politically correct” is overused these days but what it means, exactly, isn’t clear. It might mean “a ridiculous attempt to euphemize plain facts,” but it often seems more like “I want to tell Polish jokes in public without peeving the Poles.”

Faced with a phrase that means little, the best course of action is to not use it. So I don’t.

Which brings us to the question, raised last week, of how to handle an employee who belongs to the Jehovah’s Witnesses — and who, as a consequence, doesn’t celebrate birthdays — if your staff habitually celebrates all birthdays as they come around on the calendar.

Unsurprisingly, I received a flood of responses (many are chronicled as comments on Advice Line if you’re interested in the details). Many were from Jehovah’s Witnesses, all of whom expressed their appreciation for my raising the issue. When invited, it appears, the average Jehovah’s Witness politely explains the situation, wishes everyone well, and offers to answer the phone during the party.

I also heard from a few folks asserting that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult, should be treated as such, and that perhaps as a manager you should encourage them to seek your help to escape.

Before continuing: Neither KJR nor Advice Line are forums for discussing what is a religion, what is a cult, or for that matter what the difference is between the two. If the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult, that hasn’t been obvious to me in my dealings with any — that’s as far as I’ll take the subject.

To continue: Your role as a manager isn’t to discuss what is a religion, what is a cult, the difference between the two, or your opinion that one or some religions are superior to others. As a manager (at least in a publicly held corporation), you are secular. Here’s why:

Publicly held U.S. corporations are, by definition, secular entities. Their ownership is diffuse and largely anonymous; any religious affiliation of the owners is unknown and almost certainly not uniform. Beyond that, the laws currently governing the chartering of a publicly held corporation limit them to a single goal: Increasing value to shareholders.

When you act as a manager for a publicly held corporation, you are its agent. That confers an obligation to be secular when in that role. Any other course of action goes beyond your scope of authority and responsibility. Worse, it creates an environment in which some religious groups have an expectation of preferred treatment and others have the expectation of the opposite.

It’s a very clear principle, which collides with a very messy reality: The people who work for you are diverse and human. In order to work together effectively they can’t be automata — they have to get to know and trust each other as human beings. Inevitably that means finding out who was born when, where their ancestors came from, family history, how many children they have, whether they like dogs or cats, and all the other bits of information that you, in your official capacity as manager, aren’t supposed to know or take into account as you assess who is performing how well and what to do about it.

Don’t let the impossible balance you’re supposed to maintain paralyze you. You can get through most of these challenges by following one of the simplest and most basic rules of courtesy: Be interested in them but don’t ask them to be interested in you. That Schwartz is Moslem, Achmed is Presbyterian, Andersen is Jewish and Chelsea used to be Sheldon isn’t your business. If they tell you anyway, because you’re a good listener and they like to schmooze, it will help you facilitate the sometimes-awkward group dynamics that can result when even the best-intentioned people make assumptions about each other.

And the group dynamics definitely are your business.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Next year, wish everyone you know a Nifty Newton’s Birthday and a Pleasant Perihelion.

Lauren Eve Pomerantz, a regular correspondent, suggested these as tongue-in-cheek alternatives to the usual and strangely controversial choices for well-wishing during the interval between Thanksgiving and early January. Sir Isaac was born 12/25/1642, and “Remember,” she points out, “if it hadn’t been for Newton discovering gravity, we would all have to be tied down to the Earth, like people in olden days.”

The Perihelion — January 3rd, the day the Earth most closely approaches the sun — isn’t as notable an event, but at least it has astronomical significance, in contrast to the New Year, which celebrates the Earth passing an entirely arbitrary point in its orbit.

But I’m sure plenty of Americans would take offense, just as almost a third do when they hear “Happy Holidays” (at least according to Newsweek). Taking offense is a growth industry.

Following this year’s “Holiday Card to the Industry,” which discussed this subject, the floodgates opened. I received even more mail about “Happy Holidays” vs “Merry Christmas” than I did in response to my columns about corporate dress codes and global warming (separate subjects — I haven’t tried to link dress codes and global warming, although it’s tempting).

For the record, most agreed with the column’s position that getting steamed at the phrase “Happy Holidays” doesn’t make much sense, and encouraging Christians to become angry about it is reprehensible. Among the minority who wrote to chastise me, quite a few focused on my having embroiled KJR in political issues (again) and for taking a liberal position in doing so. Both challenges are worth responding to.

So I will.

Second one first: If I’m a liberal for encouraging you to take no offense when someone wishes you well using secular phrasing, that means encouraging people to take offense when offered good wishes is the mark of a loyal conservative. I’m pretty sure, though, that neither political party claims sole ownership of bad manners.

First one second: Whether I extended KJR beyond its scope and my expertise to cover a political issue. It’s a fine opportunity to make an important distinction — between political issues and issues that have become politicized.

Here’s the difference. Imagine Senator Bill Frist made a speech on the Senate floor decrying the trend toward casual garb in the workforce, and that Senator Ted Kennedy responded in favor of neck-tie-less attire. Does anyone think this would immediately make it inappropriate for KJR to take a stance on corporate dress codes, or that being against mandatory neckties would make yours truly a liberal?

The contrast is clear: Were KJR to run a column taking a position on how to deal with the conflict in Iraq, whether the U.S. should defend Taiwan militarily in the event of invasion by mainland China, or whether the United States should reduce the federal deficit through revenue increases along with cost reductions and deficit spending, those would be political columns that exceed its scope and my special competence.

But dress codes, global warming and how to wish friends, co-workers and customers well are not political issues, although two of the three have become politicized. Were I to consider politicized subjects off limits, it would silence this column on subjects that are of great importance to IT executives and managers.

Bad idea. For that matter, some issues that are clearly political matter greatly to an IT audience: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, offshore outsourcing and the “in-shoring” of foreign IT professionals are high-profile examples. They’re in bounds as well.

As it happens, the question of whether to offer a secular or non-secular greeting during the Holiday Season is just one ramification of a serious issue IT leaders deal with every day. Next week’s column will dig into it; here’s a preview to get you thinking:

In many companies and probably most, employees celebrate each others’ birthdays. Probably, as an IT manager, you’ve participated, and wished employees “Happy Birthday,” too.

Now imagine one of your employees is a Jehovah’s Witness, and therefore considers the celebration of birthdays to be sacrilegious since the tradition’s origin traces back to Roman polytheism and the celebration of various gods’ days (or so a Jehovah’s Witness missionary explained to me many years back). How do you handle the situation?

* * *

I’ve been writing this column in its various incarnations once a week for ten years now. When it started, as InfoWorld’s “IS Survival Guide,” I wasn’t sure I could come up with 50 strongly held opinions, let alone the 500 that a decade required. I’d ask you to be more impressed, except that Isaac Asimov published that many books in his lifetime.

Still, ten perihelia have passed since I started these musings, and that’s a milestone of sorts. Welcome to the start of the next ten.

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