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No Such Thing as H.R.

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Just your average day at The Office.

Life can be hard sometimes. You get up early in the morning, trudge to work, deal with loads of people who have varying opinions about you, and finally go home at the end of the day. But if someone takes out their frustrations by, say, sending you flying over the cubicles with a Megaton Punch, at least you can always go to Human Resources, tell them what happened, and have the guilty party out the door, facing a lawsuit and maybe in police custody by the end of the day. Right?

Right?

If you're living in a television show, probably not, because in fiction there is no such thing as H.R.. Whether it's the Cowboy Cop decking a paper-pushing Desk Jockey who orders him to turn in his badge, the crazy boss who's a firm believer in George Jetson Job Security, or the office's resident Psychopathic Manchild mail clerk, it seems that Violence Really Is the Answer.

If the victim's a badass hero, the Jerkass co-worker who started the fight's probably going to quickly find himself taking a dive. If it's the Anti-Hero doing the punching, expect his target, probably an Obstructive Bureaucrat, to also be a Sissy Villain. Just don't expect the situation to escalate into meetings with managers and termination notices, and certainly don't expect anyone to get arrested on assault charges.

This trope stems from a certain amount of Truth in Television, at least historically: A "Human Resources" department is a fairly recent concept, and there are plenty of historical periods when people did settle most of their disputes with fistfights or worse. It's also somewhat justifiable in settings where there's no legal system for people to turn to: fantasy heroes, hardened criminals and After the End survivors probably aren't in a position to file grievances. But if it's a modern, everyday setting, and otherwise respectable people are routinely pounding each other flat in Curb Stomp Battles, it's simply because there's no such thing as HR.

In dramatic storylines, this is used primarily to keep the character conflict and development building without having to complicate things or slow down the plot by bringing in the outside world, while in action/adventure and comedies, it's more likely to simply be all-out Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny at work.

If there is an H.R. Department, they will almost always be horrible, horrible people.

See also Fiction Is Not Fair, George Jetson Job Security, and Ultimate Job Security. Compare with No OSHA Compliance and contrast with Can't Get Away with Nuthin'. Not to be confused with Human Resources in any way. See There Are No Therapists for another industry whose absence stops people solving their problems like grown-ups.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Africa Salaryman: The company does have H.R. but they seem to be useless. They do nothing to stop the president from abusing employees and they refuse to write up an employee who keeps trying to make other employees miserable because then the recruiter would get yelled at for hiring him in the first place. And Toucan get away with all kinds of crazy antics that would get him fired in any sane company.
  • Aggretsuko: If Ton's sexism, Tsubone's abuse of power and Anai's complete lack of chill is anything to go by, the company Retsuko works must have laid off its entire H.R. department. H.R. actually does make an appearance in the fourth season, but only to ask Kabae to retire when the company's new CEO is trying to get rid of some of the less useful employees without actually firing anyone.
  • Chainsaw Man: Public Safety Special Division 4 has some incredible lax rules and enforcement of interpersonal behavior. Makima and Himeno openly romantically entangle themselves with their subordinates, and the latter is a casual sexual harasser. Several fights and even attempted murders between agents go unreported. Many hunters are devils that can't be held to human standards, yet also lack any right to formally complain or quit.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, Mustroum Ridcully's latest bright idea to modernise Unseen University involves setting up a Human Resources Department with recognised procedures re hiring and firing, and with setting up properly organised staff files. Mrs Whitlow gets angry about this and points out that the day she doesn't know how to handle her staff, or when to reprimand, when to fire and when to hire, without having to look it up in a wretched manual, is the day she retires, have you understood that, Professor Stibbons? Ponder Stibbons, whose role in life is to take the flak for Ridully's poor judgement, assures her the Human Resources Manual is there, err, purely for guidance, Mrs Whitlow. Just, err, put it on a shelf somewhere, you don't have to actually read it or anything...
  • Zigzagged in The Fifth Act for the Shin-Ra Company. They tolerate Cloud's desire to kill Sephiroth, but they force Cloud to take a vacation when he works too many hours without stop.
  • In Racer and the Geek, royal bank security seems to vest an awful lot of confidence in their local bosses, who by and large have very broad authority over their subordinates. H.R. does not exist until the larger organizational levels are involved, although HR is viewed by the characters as a nebulous, somewhat dreaded entity whose primary purpose is to inconveniently shove employees around and act out the wishes of pencil pushers.

    Film — Animated 
  • Double Subverted in The Incredibles, where Mr. Incredible gets fired for picking his boss up by the neck and throwing him through fifteen cubicles. Oddly enough, the main issue the authorities seem to have with it was that doing this revealed he had Super-Strength, thus violating a law saying that superheroes are not allowed to exercise their powers. Nobody seems to have a problem with the fact that he took out his frustration on his boss by hospitalizing him, possibly because they thought that the guy had it coming.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • The employees of the electronics store in The 40-Year-Old Virgin get away with all kinds of shenanigans, from continually harassing the Andy about his virginity, to skipping work to go speed-dating, to smashing fluorescent light bulbs on the loading dock. The one time we see someone actually disciplined (but not fired) is after he hooks up a video camera to the TV display feed and shoves it down his pants, but immediately after this the manager turns around and makes a rather creepy offer to "help" Andy with his virginity "problem".
  • Clerks, full stop. Dante and Randal do pretty much whatever they want at the Quick Stop and survive the day with no repercussions, mainly because the bosses are far away, giving their orders by phone.
  • Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men portrays two He-Man Woman Hater office workers who curse, swindle and manipulate their way through the movie, with most of the story revolving around their romancing and dumping a female coworker to prove that they can. While the movie's point is that Humans Are Bastards, none of the numerous victims ever seem to turn to any higher authorities than these two mid-level, temporary managers. While one of them might be enough of a Manipulative Bastard to get out of trouble, the other most definitely isn't, and the issue never comes up either way.
    • Indeed, the only time it arises in the story is when the Manipulative Bastard himself reports all of his partner's misdeeds and gets him in trouble for their shared offenses.
  • Star Trek (2009) eats, drinks and breathes this trope. The film more or less begins with Kirk getting into a bar fight that leaves him covered in blood and bruises: Captain Pike responds afterward by recruiting him into Starfleet Academy, with no apparent attempt to identify or apprehend the Starfleet cadet who administered the beating. Later, Kirk and Spock get into a prolonged fight while the bridge crew watches on. It only ends when Spock realizes he's crossing the line and stands down.
    • Additionally, the aforementioned cadet who spearheaded the beating is later seen working as a security guard (and may be the security chief) on the same ship the man who stopped the beating (Captain Pike) was captain of. The guard detains Kirk and remembers who he was from the aforementioned beating, mocking him by saying "Cupcake". He then brings him to the bridge and stands around watching while Spock (who at the time is the acting captain) beats the crap out of Kirk, which proves to be so shocking that Spock relinquishes command immediately after. Even though any sane person would have had him reprimanded for gross negligence, he gets off scot-free when Kirk assumes command of the Enterprise.

    Literature 
  • In the Harry Potter series, this trope also seems to come into play in a metaphorical way with Professor Snape: despite Hogwarts having a benevolent headmaster and staff, he seems to get away with stunning amounts of cruelty without any students thinking to bring it up to their parents or other teachers. Various justifying factors may exist, ranging from a more traditionally British culture that doesn't see a problem with a bullying teacher, to the Ministry of Magic's general incompetence, to the necessity of Dumbledore keeping Snape in his teaching position, regardless of his behavior. The movie series dodges the issue by softening his character into a more reserved Deadpan Snarker.
  • Charles Stross' The Laundry Files inverts this trope, or just zig-zags with it. The Laundry does have a human resources department, but it is often the cause of the problems that in Real Life they'd be expected to solve. This is partly just because of Rule of Funny, partly because of the spy setting, partly because almost no one chooses to work at the Laundry and so they take their frustrations out on each other, and also partly because of the Ultimate Job Security - no one, neither H.R. personnel nor the people they're supposed to oversee, can be fired until they screw up big enough to get killed.
  • In Making Money, Moist von Lipwig asks junior clerks at the Royal Bank why they stay in a job where the line manager is a perfectionist tyrant who has just displayed certifiable insanity. A junior clerk tells him, shuddering with loathing, that the rival bank now has a Human Resources Department and that he'd far rather take his chances in a job where he is recognised as human and not as a resource, thank you very much.
  • In The Man with the Terrible Eyes, employees at Iotech are subjected to memory rewrites, torture, human experimentation, gunfire, explosions, and monstrous shadow monsters being released from the cells in the basement. No one ever gets in trouble for all this. Probably helps that the Supervisor has done worse.
  • The Stranger Times office is a hellacious place to work. The editor is verbally abusive and arguments between employees escalate to physical violence with alarming frequency. The former assistant editor resigned by headbutting her boss, the office manager may wield a sledgehammer when pushed to her limits, and the editor likes to wave around his blunderbuss (and accidentally shoots himself in the foot). And when one of the regular columnists threatens to throw himself off the roof? Well, that's just a regular Monday!

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Los Angeles branch of CTU in 24 was subject to so many instances of this trope that the entire locale of the series was changed in Season 7 because of it. To note, several employees were tortured and forced to go back to work, computer technicians were verbally harassed by other co-workers and several acting administrators abused their power over employees. Any attempts to change the status quo were usually done by an internal coup, and CTU was later disbanded as a result of these violations.
  • In Angel, Wolfram and Hart, being a law firm specializing in catering to and employing demons, vampires, warlocks, and criminals, didn't have a lot of time for resolving employee disputes with anything but death. Things didn't improve much when Angel took over, though he did add a personal touch. That is, he'd call you into his office and cut off your head instead of having people dragged off by security. Wesley shot two employees, one fatally, one in the knee for suggesting that the entire department couldn't all work on the same thing, and stabbed another. Though they were all involved with what happened to Fred, and Wesley and Sanity have never been friends where she's concerned. It helps that they felt most of their employees deserve to die, so they didn't have much of an incentive to set up proper conflict resolution. Harmony also staked a secretary in full view of most of the management, during a business meeting. Though she probably would have got in trouble if the demons they were meeting with hadn't assumed it was a blood sacrifice and taken it as an apology for their earlier treatment.
  • Subverted on The Big Bang Theory when Sheldon gets called to H.R. for sexual harassment, then proceeds to throw the other guys under the bus for all the crap that they've pulled during work hours. It's revealed that Howard is on a first name basis with Mrs. Davis, the H.R. director, after being called to her office so many times. It's still all Played for Laughs, though.
  • A sizable fraction of Frank's subplots on Blue Bloods concern him, as Police Commissioner, dealing personally with issues that would rightly be resolved by the NYPD's HR-equivalent, the Chief of Personnel. Justified by Frank's depiction as a staunch micro-manager whenever ethical lapses on the part of his officers are at issue.
  • FBI agent Paul Ballard's rather famous for his lack of police decorum in Dollhouse, but when he gets into a grappling, head-slamming fight with another agent in his office over a personal insult, it's hard to imagine how he's able to continue going about his investigation afterward.
  • The IT Crowd is set in a business where swearing, violence and sexual harassment seem to be a daily occurrence (Played for Laughs, of course), yet they rarely have any lasting effect. Oddly, they actually do seem to have a H.R. Department when it suits them - for instance, Moss is sent to a psychologist at one point after he tells everyone that Jen has died.
  • The American version of The Office plays this trope for comedy; it's somewhat justified in that incompetent office manager Michael serves as a buffer between the employees and the rest of the company, and the two H.R. managers seen might as well not be there in terms of effectiveness and ability. When the home office eventually discovers just how chaotic things have become under Michael's watch, they react with appropriate panic, and even more Hilarity Ensues.
    • Specifically, Michael ostracizes Toby and dates Holly. In a way, it's genius.
    • In an 8th season episode, when Toby is asked to do something in regard to Nellie basically stealing Andy's job and then firing him, he tells everyone, "H.R. is a joke."
    • Episodes like "Conflict Resolution" show that Toby's efforts have some effect.
    • In the series Grand Finale Kevin is finally fired for utter incompetence and then Toby is fired right afterwards for being so useless.
  • For all intents and purposes, Our Miss Brooks only has two superiors.
    • Mr. Conklin, the principal of Madison High School, is Connie Brooks' immediate superior. He can order Connie around at school; and even assign her to type his speeches or paperwork at night. The one power Mr. Conklin doesn't seem to have is the power to fire Miss Brooks.
    • Mr. Conklin's superior, Mr. Stone, the Head of the Board of Education, does. Stone also has a veto over all staffing decisions at the various schools; including the appointment of department heads. Stone is usually able to dismiss or retire principals and teachers at will, something he does with several over-the-hill principals in "Noodnick, Daughter of Medic". However, in "Foreign Teachers" and The Movie Grand Finale, Stone needs to get permission from the rest of the school board to actually dismiss a principal.
  • The Pact: The brewery has no H.R., which is a shame, because they definitely could have used it, with Jack's constant bullying of his staff, sexual harassment of Tish, and rampant drug use at work parties.
  • The staff in the hospital in Scrubs spends a lot of time abusing each other verbally and physically, usually but not always sparing their boss. Dr. Cox even punched Dr. Kelso, Chief of Medicine, in the face once.
    • Justified in-universe: Kelso is so much of a jerk that everyone took Cox's side and testified that they hadn't seen anything, making it Kelso's word against theirs.
    • Kelso also seems to think that the most effective way to maintain a stable employee environment is to make himself the central figure of everybody's hatred. The effectiveness of this is... debatable.
    • Somewhat justified for the residents as apparently Cox is a well respected doctor and suffering a little abuse from him can help them in the long run of their doctoral careers. Not so much with the patients he tends to verbally abuse.
    • Averted for a short string of episodes where a new Chief of Medicine takes over, observes the Janitor's abusive behavior towards JD, and promptly fired him.
  • In Star Trek: The Original Series, McCoy constantly verbally abuses Spock as a "green blooded bastard", among many other terms of endearment, all to Captain Kirk's amusement. There's some justification in the show being written in The '60s (later Trek series reserved such blatant Fantastic Racism for Aesop purposes), and in that Spock never seems anything less than amused by the insults (and gives as good as he gets), though its setting in a Utopian future aboard a military vessel makes Kirk and the crew's tacit approval of such behavior all the more baffling. And then it turns into an actual fight in "Day of the Dove": McCoy smears Spock, Spock gets angry and coldly announces his dislike of the whole human race, tensions rise, Kirk gets in the middle pointing out loudly that Spock's half human...which, despite being the only thing that wasn't technically an insult, is the line-crossing that makes him realize something is very wrong here, and then they start tracking down the latest emotion-manipulating Monster of the Week.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Averted—Counselor Troi's job is basically an H.R. manager, although in true Star Trek tradition she seems to be the only person in her department. On the command side there are a few references in the series to staffing issues that reach the level of disciplinary action being the job of the first officer, and Troi and Riker sometimes team up to deal with them. You can see this in "Hollow Pursuits", where LaForge reports Barclay's holodeck addiction to Riker. Other times, inexplicably, it's just Troi, despite the fact she's not technically in the chain of command for anyone on the ship, at least not until season seven when she takes the bridge officer exam.
    • Subverted in a specific episode, "Silicon Avatar". When a specialist arrives on the Enterprise, she's judgmental and hateful of Data, later turning out to be looking for an excuse to get him disassembled. Picard intentionally assigns them together to work on research, against Troi's wishes. When asked why, he explains that if her personal views are going to be a problem he "needs to know now", implying if it turned out to be needed, the specialist would be either relieved of duty or closely supervised.
  • Supergirl (2015): Subverted when Kara starts dating one of her coworkers. Her boss immediately informs her that they'll need to go see Pam in H.R. ("We have an H.R.?") and fill out the proper forms in triplicate, while Kara's sister gleefully says that they'll have to attend a mandatory sexual harassment seminar.
  • Torchwood has its H.R. concentrated in its boss, Captain Jack Harkness, which is basically the show's way of looking at this trope then doubling over from a laughing attack. In fact, while he does exercise the authority to make his team do as he says, one can lose count of when they have defied his command to the point all of them have Ultimate Job Security, threats of Retcon be damned. He also happens to have no policy whatsoever regarding office fraternization (mostly because he has the biggest libido in said office), and while Torchwood-3 has a thick enough veneer to pass as a serious organization (albeit understaffed), everyone from Jack on down has violated every security protocol ever established for Torchwood and has, through accidental or deliberate action, nearly screwed the entire planet over due to sheer incompetence/arrogance/idiocy to the point the HR division of his duties seems like the most hilariously ironic joke in the Whoniverse.

    Newspaper Comics 

    Podcasts 
  • The crew of Mission to Zyxx switches through several bureaucracies over the show, none of them well-run but at least one openly evil:
    • After a spectacularly poor mission result Nermut informs the team that they are suspended without pay until further notice. He calls back ten seconds later to inform the team that their suspension is over, as the duration is apparently randomized every time. They could have theoretically been suspended for decades.
    • Missions Operations Managers are denied rations during their annual performance review. When it's Nermut's turn he nearly dies of starvation because the person reviewing him happens to be on vacation.
    • As punishment for allowing someone to remove his restraining bolt C-53 is forced to spend an indeterminate amount of time attempting to pick up a small marble that is perfectly shaped to slip from his fingers every time he manages to grab it. Nermut considers this to be a punishment for himself as well, since he has to sit and watch until it's over.
    • Pleck is punished for using Dust on the job via Operation Six, which isn't described in detail but sounds a lot like C-53 mildly electrocuting him. The punishment backfires when Dar and Bargie think it looks fun and ask C-53 to do it to them too.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • Given a Hand Wave in Professional Wrestling, with the wrestlers preferring to beat the crap out of each other in the ring to settle their differences. This gets flimsier and flimsier every time a wrestler supposedly refuses to press criminal charges for the same reasons, despite being run over, set on fire and/or home invasions.
    • It's important to maintain the illusion that all of this could really be happening. In a world where Robocop is real, The Undertaker is somehow undead, and doctors, lawyers, tax collectors, and garbagemen can also be professional wrestlers while keeping their day jobs. And then show up a year later with a completely different persona.
    • Actually, it does make a bit of sense when a Heel attacks a Face. The logic being that if the face was to try to get legal satisfaction against the heel, the heel (being evil) would just use his nefarious resources to hire lawyers designed to drag out the case as long as possible, thus a) bankrupting the face with legal bills and b) the heel would probably win the case due to his slimy, smarmy, fast-talking lawyer. It actually makes sense (well, as much as wrestling can make sense) that the face would just wait until the Pay per View where he KNOWS he will get a chance to rip the heel apart with his bare hands, with no legal repercussions. When the attacker is a face however...

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • AI: The Somnium Files: It clearly doesn't exist in the Metropolitan Police Department because if it did, the secret organization of ABIS would be an H.R. nightmare. Boss alone makes constant sexual remarks to her subordinates often alluding to dominatrix behavior like making Date lick her toes (though he insists it never happens). Even her English voice actor Allegra Clark states that many of these jokes would probably get Boss fired. Not to mention Kaname Date, while he keeps his tendencies in check most of the time, the fact that his A.I. partner complains about his sexual remarks means she'd probably have reported him if she was human. And if Boss weren't also prone to hitting on Date, it might have been taken seriously. Boss also exercises some abuses of power such as blackmail and working her subordinates past their limits. She is benevolent and relatively reasonable, but she does make occasional extreme demands. Things clearly haven't improved in the sequel since the new Player Character Ryuki is partnered with an exceptionally perverted A.I., and he's clearly not that interested in reciprocating his remarks.
    Pewter: Hey! This is a hostile work environment!note 
  • Deadly Premonition's Francis York Morgan openly mocks Sheriff George Woodman and makes demands that would be out of line in real life (including demanding that George and Emily take off their shirts to show him their backs, among other player-induced antics including shoot everyone in sight, including the aforementioned cops - things that would have gotten reams of complaints phoned in to York's superiors and got him yanked off the case.
  • In Genshin Impact, this is one of Mondstadt's problems as a consequence of being a relatively peaceful nation where the Anemo Archon has a hands-off approach to the nation. Indeed, the people there have zero problems openly acting on their prejudice without consequences to themselves.
    • Eula, on account of coming from the most reviled Lawrence Clan, is discriminated on a daily basis by the general population of Mondstadt and is banned from all stores. This forces her to survive on wild game despite being very wealthy herself. Even with Eula joining the Knights of Favonius, this resulted in protests from civilians who are outraged at a hated clan member joining a heroic peacekeeping force. Despite de-escalating tensions, thanks to Amber and Jean's efforts, the people (bar Sara and Joel) by large still distrust her. On a minor note, this resulted in one of the Favonian Knights (Lawrence) being given an inquisitive glare for having the namesake of a hated clan despite having zero connections to them at all.
    • The nation of Mondstadt is (in)famous for having alcohol as their favorite past-time and culture, which results in a lot of them being raving drunkards. Thoma is an exception; he cannot handle alcohol very well and refrains himself from partaking it out of health concerns. Unfortunately, this leads to him bemoaning his status as a Mondstader and is worried that, should the people from his home-country ever found out that he has very low alcohol tolerance and doesn't drink, they will brand him as a No True Scotsman for not being a drinker.
    • The Adventurers Guild in Mondstadt (bar Cyrus, Jack, and, once she joins the guild, Anna) have little tolerance for their quirkier members of the group and have no qualms ostracizing them, these quirky members are Fischl and Bennet. The former is a Chuunibyou who believes herself to be the princess of a fallen kingdom of Immernachtreich who wields extraordinary powers and, despite her prowess as the Guild's investigator, she is seen as a joke by her peers with only Bennet believing in her story. And as for the latter, he is the leader of his own group called "Benny's Adventure Team" (consisting of Royce, Heckler, and Jack) who is born with an incredible bad luck that brings misfortune to everyone around him whenever he goes (regardless of intentions). His luck is so bad that his own party members secretly left him, leaving the boy as the sole member of the group. Of the three members that left Bennet, only Jack retains a good relationship with him.

    Web Animation 
  • Helluva Boss when Blitzo is about to threaten Verosika, her scary bodyguard Vortex comes up behind him and asks him "or you'll do what?" and he nervously replies that he will call H.R., which causes all three of them to burst out laughing. It makes sense as the idea of Human resources in Hell is laughable.

    Western Animation 
  • The premise of Archer, ISIS is a spy organization with incompetent employees. Pam, head of Human Resources, is a Fat Idiot, makes passes at everyone, and is tremendous gossip who in six seasons has never been shown doing any kind of H.R. work. Nothing stops the rampant sexual harassment, gunfire wounds and other inter-office debacles, such as Archer making Pam pee in fear. The fact that nearly everyone at ISIS is an asshole and/or deranged in some way possily balances it somewhat.
  • Averted in Futurama, where they have a bureaucrat employed for these kinds of purposes. In fact, the bureaucrats seem to have an organization of their own, with one assigned to each company. Of course they are not exactly helpful.
  • In The Simpsons, all the hiring and firing in the nuclear plant is done by Burns himself. Not only is there no H.R., but there's apparently no management hierarchy (except for "Homer's Odyssey", where Homer gets fired by Sherri and Terri's dad). Of course, in most episodes he only seems to have about a dozen employees in total anyway... It wasn't until "Left Behind" when the plant does have a head HR which has a high turnover rate before Ned gets this job, which he soon gets fired for being too efficient.

 
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Video Example(s):

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"I'll call HR."

When Blitzo threatens to call HR on Verosika for stealing his parking space, it only results in him, her & Vortex sharing a laugh together.

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Main / ActuallyPrettyFunny

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