The Loyalty Clause
There are two kinds of spines: the one that keeps you upright in the literal sense, and the other that people talk about in offices when they say, “at least he had the spine to say it.” Mine, medically speaking, has a glitch in the wiring; Spina Bifida Occulta, the polite Latin way of saying your back might not always cooperate. In practice it means I walk with a cane and live with pain that comes and goes in ways I can’t always predict. Maybe that’s why I’ve always admired Gregory House, my favorite TV character; not just because he was brilliant, but because he carried his pain into the room and still did the work. Most battles, it turns out, are invisible. Some of us carry them in our bodies; others in our minds or homes. You wouldn’t see them on an MRI or in a quarterly review, but they shape us just the same. I’ve found that HR is full of these invisible battles. You absorb other people’s struggles: layoffs, conflicts, disappointments and you start to see your own life reflec...
