Why this exists

I have sat through a great many mandatory compliance modules, and every single time I have had the same experience: I get one wrong that I was certain about, and the explanation for why I got it wrong is more interesting than anything else in the module. Not because the rule is stupid. Because the rule is precise, and precision does not feel like anything.

The training is built to teach you that harassment is bad, which you knew. What it accidentally reveals is that the line between "appalling" and "actionable" runs somewhere nobody's gut expects. An equal-opportunity boor may be outside the statute entirely. A complaint that gets investigated and dismissed can still cost an employer a fortune if the complainant's shift changes two weeks later. Favoritism toward a girlfriend is not sex discrimination, because it treats everyone equally badly.

None of that is a flaw in the law. It is what happens when a rule has to be written clearly enough to be enforced. But it does mean the codified version and the intuitive version part company almost immediately, and the gap between them is genuinely funny in the way that only true things are.

What this is

Assessments built the way real ones are built, with fact patterns invented to be as ridiculous as the format will bear. The absurdity is in the scenarios. It is never in the grading. Every explanation is written against US federal law (Title VII / EEOC guidance) and is correct as far as I can make it, because a joke about how surprising the rules are only works if the rules are reported accurately.

A rule I hold myself to

The fool in every scenario is the person exhibiting the behavior. Never the person the rules exist to protect. The absurdity lives in the codified system, not in anyone subject to it. That is not a disclaimer, it is a constraint on what gets written, and anything that fails it does not ship.

What this is not

Not training. Not legal advice. Not affiliated with any employer, and not a substitute for a lawyer who knows your jurisdiction, your facts, and your handbook. If you are making an actual decision about an actual person, close this site and call one.

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