I had one guy come into my office once, also covered in crazy neo-Nazi tattoos. When I didn’t give him the answer he wanted, he started calling me “a dirty wetback bitch.”
I escorted him out after saying, “Sir, I’m white.” :smack:
I’m obviously latino and i’ve been called a “dirty jew”. They think wetback bitch is the lowest thing possible so he is insulting you by calling you that, it’s not that he actually believes you are a mexican.
3 months after 9/11 I was outside of a hotel while a man asked for cab, then told the bellman “I don’t want one driven by some damned towel head either.” The bellman responded that it would be quite a long wait before that might happen.
[quote=“brickbacon, post:40, topic:596680”]
Nonsense. It would help if either of you had an understanding of what you are talking about instead of knee-jerk reverse racism bs.
“Protected class is a term used in United States anti-discrimination law. The term describes characteristics or factors which can not be targeted for discrimination and harassment. The following characteristics are considered “Protected Classes” and persons cannot be discriminated against based on these characteristics:”
Oh, okay, that is good to know. Ignorance fought!
Of course, demanding that someone treat others with respect and dignity (as in, not calling someone a bitch, or just assuming that every other person in the world is a “racist”) would not be discriminating against them, would it?
Long wait for a non-towelhead cabbie, or long wait to be driven by one because all the cabbies had removed their turbans?
Could be. Or it could be a round-about way of complaining about perceived out-sourcing. Or it could be that those clients have very little experience with a given accent and thus honestly have trouble understanding what’s being said to them. (Yes, there really are areas of the country where the only time people hear a foreign accent is when they call customer service/tech support. And unfamiliar accents always sound thicker and harder to parse than familiar ones.)
At the cafe where I work, not too long after we opened, a guy came in and asked to speak to the manager. Well, the assistant manager, a woman, was in charge because the overall kitchen manager was gone for the day. The guy blustered “I want to talk to a MALE manager!”
I could see Karen’s lips get tight, but she didn’t act rude, just told him that in that even he’d have to come back the next day. “But can’t you give me his phone number?”
When that was refused he left in a huff. Never came back and so we never knew what he wanted.
My company has outsourced its first-line tech support for all of our company-issued laptops, to an Indian call center.
On one occasion I could hardly hear my contact because of the loud cheering in the background - sounded like they were watching some kind of soccer game or something. The person didn’t succeed in helping me fix the problem, either.
On another recent occasion, the person I was dealing with didn’t even understand my problem, tried to give me some completely wrong BS about “not supporting that feature” (an essential feature of the laptop), and finally forwarded it to local tech support who solved the problem in 5 minutes.
So… there are Indian call centers, and there are Indian call centers. Some are no doubt decent, ours is awful. Language was definitely a barrier with both of the calls I mentioned and in the first one, the professionalism (you do NOT have the soccer game on while answering client calls!!!) was also a huge issue.
Back to Chimera’s colleague: The people dealing with her were assholes, to be sure, and it was really unfortunate that the woman got unjustifiably caught up in the backlash against outsourced jobs. I don’t know the legality of discrimination against someone because of national origin (is that a protected class?).
I’d find it hard to believe there’s a law that prevents refusing to talk to someone via an outsourced call center, but the company doing the outsourcing can then refuse to provide service to such a client.
rereading more of the thread, national origin is explicitly protected. So from a legal standpoint, the colleague could not have been fired for that. The customers, however, are not responsible for hiring her, so I don’t know what the laws are in that situation.
There was a legal documentary (oh hell, it was an episode of LA Law, but sometimes those brought in real events as story lines) in which a doctor with neurofibromatosis was fired from his job in a clinic because patients refused to see him. He sued on the basis of discrimination because of his disability, and won… and the employer paid rather than reinstating him.
The parallel being: he was fired because clients wouldn’t go near him, not explicitly because of his disability, but the defacto reason was because of the disability. The call center woman could conceivably have been fired for a similar chain of events (and I know she quit vs being fired so it’s a moot point).
Life isn’t fair sometimes and I don’t know what the answer is except to get people to stop being stoopid and that is not happening any time soon :(.
Same situation in Canada 
I think it was about 10 or 15 years ago the Ottawa newspaper did a survey of which cab dispaters were willing to accomodate a similar request about the choice of driver.
IIRC, a customer can ask whatever they want. If there is any hint that a business is accomodating a request, the business and manager is in trouble. Just because a customer asks you to use race, creed, colour, etc. to discriminate against your employees in terms of work assignment - that does not allow an employer to do so.
A customer can take their business elsewhere. However, if “elsewhere” appears to be picky about which employees it chooses, they will eventually face a discrimination case.
Similarly, a student can spout whatever they want, they arenot an employee - a teacher has to be very careful how they respond. The trouble nowadays is that teachers get it from both ends - students and especially parents are convinced they are doing no wrong, and school management or school boards are unwilling to stick up for their employees no matter how obvious the right choice is.
It is hilarlious to watch something like Judge Judy and see how poorly some people understand the justice process; at no time does any action allow you to retaliate in an illegal manner, no matter how provoked (illegally or not) you were.
Not sure - at one time, the discrimination clause in Canada did not apply for people living with you - i.e. renting a room, or say a four-plex with the owner living in one apartment. I would be very surprised if this is still the exception.
With fostering, for example, they do try to match up ethnic and religious together; not sure what the civil rights laws say about this.
However, in a plain and simple business, discrimination is illegal; most places are ahppy to use passive-aggressive tactics to ensure the obnoxious customer does not have the last word. People who are too dumb to realize there are exceptions (frequently!) to stereotypes re just that - too dumb.
CitizenPained – I would think that an alternative ed center would be even stricter. (Especially since it’s private – it’s usually the public schools that have a harder time tossing kids out)
We had a thread here a while ago – unfortunately I can’t find it – where a poster said he requested a white sales person because he didn’t like the grammar used by the black guy waiting on him.
Then he acted all pissed off when people told him he was an asshole for doing so.
In Northern Virginia, US flags are de rigeur for security and manual labor jobs. Many local police cars have them, and most of the janitors that I see are wearing US flags, either as a patch or as a badge or part of a badge.
You’d think so! 
One of my main complaints is lack of enforcement for the rules. But because of NCLB, we still can’t toss them as we have a contract.
So today, the kid in question was talking with two other black students a few yards away, totally off task, etc. – and with a black male teacher participating in the convo. What caught my attention? How they gotta stick with their own ‘kind’, stick up for the ‘brothas’, cause black people are ‘different’ and such. Keep in mind this convo was happening as they were off task and knew full well they shouldn’t be dicking around on the computers during reading time. But they were with the “Mr. Nice Guy” teacher and I get tired of redirecting my own coworker all the time.
I was grossly uncomfortable.
Too bad you can’t get some old-school nuns in there!
My point was, that if a student that pulls this type of stuff isn’t jerked up sharp, the teacher can’t control them. The teacher doesn’t seem to recognize that.
BTW, you shouldn’t read that I’m casting aspersions on somebody when I’m not.
AND, if a kid is out of line, ‘completely out of line’ and hasn’t been controlled…well, by definition that means that the kid hasn’t been controlled…the kid who is in her class! Now, the pop quiz: If a teacher cannot control a student in her class, can she control the class?
hh
Then she controlled the class except for the one student who was out of control.
Newsflash: It is very hard to force people to do what you want them to do. It is even harder to regulate their brain chemistry to act like normal folk.
More often than not, it is the system in question. Not the teacher. If a kid fears nothing and cares for nothing, you won’t get far when you try to confiscate his cell phone. Some kids just don’t give a damn.
That being said, I keep a pretty good handle on things because I do enforce the rules. I’ve sent kids home before. Today I told a student to move his seat as he wasn’t following the new seating arrangement. He had tried to argue his way out of it earlier and I said no…but he want back to his old seat, not his new one. I had already exercised the diplomatic route; time to get authoritative.
Sweet voice"E____. I need you to move your seat, please."
“I’m fine here.”
“I’m sorry, but your new seat is over there.”
“I’ll wait till Mr. _____ gets here.” (Mr ____ being my boss and the center director. Typical kids. Go to another adult to see if they’ll cave.)
“No; you need to move now. This is not negotiable.”
“I’m not moving.”
STOP! WARNING! KID JUST TOLD A TEACHER ‘NO’!
“I’m sorry you’re upset, but you need to move now or you need to go home.”
“I’m not moving.”
Keeping her calm voice:“I don’t think you understand; you need to move right now. If you can’t, I’ll call someone to forcibly remove you and that would be rather unfortunate to get arrested for something as juvenile as a seating chart. I’ll give you a few minutes to think it over. It’s your choice, buddy. Sorry.”(With the “buddy” and “sorry” coming out sincerely.)
Teacher walks off. Kids moves his seat. Students say to to each other things like, “She ain’t kiddin’” and “Oh shit!”
Now, had I done that with the other kid - the crazy gangbanger I hate the white bitch student - he would’ve got upset and rattled about how I was a stupid bitch who is dumb and “trippin’” and can’t leave him alone etc etc and would keep on muttering to himself until he made his way out the door. And while that would’ve been unfortunate that he just missed out on getting work done, it’s his own damned fault.
Sometimes telling a student to grow the fuck up already or get the f out is classroom management. And even though I’ve had kids who hated female teachers, white teachers, Jews, whatever, I still have to give them the same amount of respect and educational attention as the next. I bring candy every Friday. I gotta smile and say hello to the kid who called me the dumb white bitch just like I smile and say hello to the kid who said I was the best teacher she’s ever had.
I just get upset when I hear that teachers are supposed to accommodate other people’s prejudices because they’re minors or parents or whatever. I’m well aware that the most exposure to white people that my students have are their teachers. And I know that studies suggest that minority teachers get better results out of minority students, but it just seems all kinds of backwards to me.
again, didn’t mean to hijack.