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Application advice: Criminal History

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  • Application advice: Criminal History

    I am not consulted about hiring and firing, but I do often get to see the applications that cross the Manager's desk.

    Dear recent applicant:
    I am a firm believer in the term "paid his debt to society", and I believe the Manager and owner agree, so it is not an immediate red flag on your application that the employer where you worked for the last 13 years, ending last month, paid less than $1/hour and had an address on "corrections way".
    And I see you marked "Yes" under "have you ever been convicted of a criminal offense", and where it said "If yes, please explain" you noted you are a convicted felon.
    Again I have good news for you, as the Alcoholic Beverage Control people recently changed their regulations. Previously we were unable to hire any convicted felons, but now we can so long as your conviction was not for an alcohol related crime and you won't be doing the paperwork. (People doing the books must never have been convicted of fraud.)
    However, the entirety of what you wrote as your explanation was "Convicted Felon (Sex Offense)".
    There are a whole lot of sex offense felonies, and some wouldn't have much bearing on hiring you, but some definitely do.
    You have provided just enough information that we might be liable for your future misbehavior, without giving us any clue what that liability or misbehavior might be. What I mean is, should you relapse and do something awful to a customer or coworker, when we say "How could we have known he would do that?" will the answer be "He's done it before."? Not asking looks like willful ignorance, so now we really need to know what you did.
    Or we can save a lot of effort and just not hire you.

    As I said, they won't even ask for my opinion, but I can guess which option they'll choose.


    Similarly to the other applicant whose "explanation" was "Disturbing the Peace" and then 3 letters starting with an M. The only criminal offense whose abbreviation I would consider common knowledge is DUI (aka DWI), for Driving Under Influence (or Driving While Intoxicated). I'm guessing the M was for Misdemeanor, but have no clue what the rest is. I don't even have a good guess. If it had been MPT, I would guess Misdemeanor Petty Theft, but it wasn't. (Sadly, the application got moved before I had a second chance to look at it and commit those three letters to memory).

    But again, I have a guess as to how this will get handled. You are clearly more casually familiar with the names of crimes than a guy who watched Dragnet, Adam-12, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and Bosch. That either makes you quite the fan or quite the criminal, and figuring out which would take time and effort.

    It's not like my record is squeaky clean, either. I have multiple misdemeanor traffic offenses on my record, and fitting a decent explanation in that box isn't easy (heck, just fitting a list requires I write small). But I list exactly what I got convicted of, and I suspect that's why I got hired.

  • #2
    MUN....Misdemeanour Unruly Nuisance?
    MCC....Misdemeanour Creating a Commotion
    MGR....Making a Goddamn Racket?
    or hiding it as MFD....Murder First Degree.. but l got done for disturbing everyone's peace when l hatcheted the victim so let's concentrate on that shall we?
    The Copyright Monster has made me tell you that my avatar is courtesy of the wonderful Alice XZ.And you don't want to annoy the Copyright Monster.

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