There are lots of laws that prevent a company from giving preferential treatment to employees on the basis of race, class, gender, or (in more enlightened states) sexual orientation.
But what happens when a client refuses to work with a representative or agent of the company who is of a protected minority? If, say, a wealthy customer at a bank refuses to trust his money to a Jew, can the bank legally reassign him to a Christian wealth-manager (ethics notwithstanding), or would doing so violate civil rights law?
Not give money to a Jew? What could possibly go wrong??!! I don’t know the answer, in fact, I thought the OP would be more about not selling Dax to a black man or a Billy Preston album to a honk. I’d like to hear a real answer as well, but could you expand on the OP at all? Not sure what you’re driving at, exactly.
Well, in our technical support field, there is not much you can do. We don’t accomodate racists, but we don’t really punish them either. If they get someone they refuse to deal with (and we probably have more people who refuse to deal with female tech support agents), they can damned well call back and get someone else, because we’re not going to transfer them to someone else to make them happy. About once a year I get a call from a female agent asking for a supervisor (I take supe calls) because someone won’t deal with her, and my answer is to tell them to hang up and call back, but he doesn’t automatically get to speak to “a supervisor” because he won’t talk to “a girl”. I can say that I have NEVER had someone demand a supervisor because they wouldn’t work with someone based on race. I can also tell you that if someone did do that, my response would be a very tense and very terse “You do not get to dictate to this company who we hire or who answers our phones. Good Day <CLICK>”
I have had people complain that they didn’t like the previous person’s accent, and I have to admit that most of the people doing that have southern accents. I guess that is a round-about way of being racist. But even that is extremely uncommon.
When I started, we had a woman from India in our training class. She didn’t last a month on the floor because NO ONE would believe that she was actually in the US. Felt sorry for her, but there really isn’t a lot the company can do about it.
That’s really terrible about the woman who was canned because of her accent. Prick Americans (not kidding – not one bit). Scary stuff about not talking to “a girl” as well. Fucking assholes.
There was a SP case awhile back about an elderly woman not wanting to be touched by a specific African American nurse, I recall the hospital letting her go so she sued for discrimination.
Here’s a specific scenario: my company is a for-profit education company that works with foreign nationals in homestay programs. All of our homestay ‘parents’ are paid for their time. On at least one occasion, a student has refused to stay with a black family.
Now, I believe that we were actually able to find another student willing to swap houses. But supposing that the student refused to stay with that black family, and we weren’t able to find another student to stay with them. Regardless of the companies policies as an equal opportunity employer, the end result is that the homestay family is denied paying work solely because they are a protected minority. What are the legal consequences of this?
I’m interested to hear responses. I have a black student who pretty much wants me to never *ever address him or speak to him because (I think?) he thinks I’m a racist white girl. Last Friday, he addressed me as a ‘dumb white bitch’ after I asked him to remove his earbuds (iPods aren’t allowed in class).
He told my (black) boss to ‘please not let that bitch talk to me and I’ll be fine’ and before my boss could answer, I said, “____, that is not an option. We’re gonna have to work this out or you need to leave the program.”
I was wondering later if what would happen if my boss -or any boss- tried to accommodate such a request.
*The kid has mental/anger issues that exist far beyond our classroom. He thinks I ‘pick’ on him because I require him to follow the rules.
Not that it’s the same thing, but I had a service guy come to my house to fix some technical stuff. It was fairly complicated. An Asian guy shows up (which here in SF is routine), but his English was so bad though, I couldn’t communicate with him. Finally I had to just asked him to leave.
WAG: If a business knowingly accommodates a customer request that the business discriminate based protected class, then that business is discriminating against its own employees on the basis of protected class.
I would think the proper response of a business is to refuse to accommodate the discrimination request and send the customer packing if the customer doesn’t like it.
Imagine if every customer came into a restaurant and said they don’t want to sit in the section with the black server because of the server’s race. If the restaurant accommodates the request, then the restaurant is discriminating against its own server on the basis of race. The restaurant should refuse the customer’s request.
After a comment like that I would make it clear that any additional comments along those lines would result in his permanent expulsion from the class.
It shouldn’t matter. You’re not there to be abused by students. Referring to you as a bitch goes beyond the pale. If he continues to behave in such a manner he should absolutely be ejected from your class and probably the program as well. If my administrator told me I had to accommodate his behavior I would lodge a protest with my faculty representative. If this isn’t possible I would simply quit.
If one of the students at my school used such abusive, racist and sexist language, he would be at least removed from that class and suspended from school (probably for three to five days, depending), and if it were persistent possibly permanently excluded. I can’t believe there was a thought in your mind that your boss might try to “accommodate” him. That kid needs to learn that he can’t treat people like that just as much as he needs to learn whatever you’re trying to teach him.
Several years ago I had a sizeable crew (about a dozen) of painters working on the exterior of an apartment complex. We were painting all the decks and balconies. Apartment manager informed me that a couple in one of the buildings told him they didn’t want any black or Hispanic painters on “their” balcony. I thought he should have had the balls to tell them to STFU, but instead he relayed the message to me. I told him, sorry, I’m not going to do that.
We were working in teams of two, so I put two black painters to work on that building. Never saw the apartment dwellers, never heard a word from management either. I asked a law school friend at the time if the request had any legal merit and she told me absolutely not, but I don’t recall the legal theory she gave me.
In my call center days, when I was a supervisor, there was an Indian guy named Deva who sat right by me. People gave him the hardest time and wouldn’t even listen to him at all, despite the fact that he was one of our better employees and would tell them, honestly, that the company they called had two call centers – one in Des Moines, one in Boise. On one occasion, someone was so racist and rude that I ended up taking the call (the guy was crying, he was actually a very nice, sensitive guy) and I ripped them a new one for all of the racist comments they had made towards him. Hell, even if he WAS in India, he was helping them very well, and there was no cause to treat him that way. Bastards.
I deal with sexists fairly commonly. They call into technical support, and when I answer, they go “Uh… this is technical support?” It’s something about the tone that makes it really clear that they were under no circumstances expecting a female. On a few occasions, I’ve had men try to give me a hard time, asking for a manager for no reason, or trying to get my manager’s name (to see if it’s a guy). I tell them, quite honestly, that I am the technical support manager, I’ve been there for years, and there really is no-one better equipped to help them solve their problem. Generally, though, I win them over pretty fast by knowing what the fuck I’m talking about.
Nobody’s ever worked up the nerve to ask for a man instead, but back when I wasn’t the manager and I did escalate these people upon request, my (male) manager reported that simply repeating what I said in a male voice got a polite thank you and appreciation for technical expertise, after telling me that I obviously didn’t know what I was talking about and that I had no business in a technical job.
Actually, I expect tech support to be in India. I also expect them to be more knowledgeable than most Americans and more polite too. I don’t understand the objection. It is not as though you are paying for an overseas call. What I object to on service calls are elaborate voice mail menus that somehow rarely have the choice I need, long waits for a human being, and tech support who cannot offer more than what is on their computer.
I have a friend who was teaching ESL in night school. One year she had a bunch of Romanian men. She is small, pretty and, at the time, young (this was at least 30 years ago). They simply didn’t listen to her. And once she made the mistake of admitting she didn’t know the answer to a question, but would find out and get back to them. I should mention that she is Italian, but came here and went to English schools when she was 12 and has only the very faintest of accents. Anyway, after said that, they wouldn’t listen to anything said again. Assholes!
I have had excellent technical support from people with strong Indian or Pakistani accents. Most of them speak very good to excellent English, although it may take some getting used to.
I have also experienced tech support people with such thick accents that communication is almost impossible.
The latter is a issue of genuine business necessity, and you are perfectly justified in asking for a different person.
He should be out on the street right now. What are you thinking?
Also, if your boss tried to accomodate the request, it would show that said boss doesn’t have a clue either.
Kick him out, or have him assigned to a teacher that can control a classroom that has students with mental/anger issues.