
How a UK company handled an offensive private joke - creamyhorror
http://limpehft.blogspot.sg/2013/03/week-7-racist-joke-incident.html
======
yread
Wow. Just wow. So telling a racist (was it really racist? i think it was just
stupid, people make fun of things they don't understand all the time, if this
joke offends you, grow the F up! Would you really "cry" if someone who doesn't
understand your language said it sounds like random noises?) joke is totally
unacceptable, but calling people idiots, cows, goats, assholes, autistic and
aspergers is okay? And this guy knows Calvo has asperger because he doesn't
have empathy, but he's completely okay with causing them such an embarrassment
and making them cry and remarking it in cold words?

~~~
beyti
yep, I thought I'd be the only one to understand this story in that way for a
second. Glad it's not like that.

TIL, someone with lack of empathy thinks of other people lacking empathy.
shocking

------
anextio
I couldn't help but cringe at the author's continual use of the term "stupid
cow" to refer to the woman in question, or the reference to someone with ASD
as "stupid".

The response to racism should probably not be a needlessly gendered and sexist
attack ("cow") on a woman, or an ableist attack on someone with ASD.

~~~
robinjfisher
I agree. I got to the first "stupid cow" and stopped reading. The writer lost
any empathy I had for them at that point. The response to any form of
discrimination or harassment is not name-calling.

------
olgeni
> You see, at this point, I am already convinced that Calvo has Asperger's
> Syndrome. He is unable to see things from another person's perspective, he
> has no empathy so he cannot see why or how I would be offended by his racist
> joke.

#1

> His Asperger's Syndrome had made him unable to read the signs to see that I
> didn't like him - he had somehow convinced himself that I actually was his
> friend and that I liked him. Good grief.

#2

> I don't buy that Asperger's Syndrome thing.

Well, either he _is_ convinced, or he _doesn't_ buy it.

> I think Calvo is just an asshole. So much for modern psychology and medical
> science, someone's an asshole - you give it a fancy medical condition and
> suddenly they have a disease, a psychological condition.

#3

Just be thankful that "people with Asperger's Syndrome" are possibly less
prone to kick up a shitstorm on the 'net, because after the second "good
grief" you were well on the way to deserve a good one.

~~~
zerovox
The "I don't buy that Asperger's Syndrome thing." line was part of a long
quote from his friend, all highlighted in blue for some reason. I think the
author does buy it, but I agree that this story is extremely rude and I have
no idea why this has been submitted to HN

------
DrJokepu
> I realize these two individuals involved are Spanish and German - maybe they
> think it is okay to act like that in Spain or Germany, but no way, not in
> the UK.

This is exactly the kind of bullshit, patronising and condescending soft
nationalism / xenophobia that is very common here in the UK, us foreigners
face here every day and I'd be totally offended by it if I was the type that
gets offended easily.

~~~
capisce
Yeah, that condescending tone of superiority struck me as at least as bad as
the original (unfunny) joke.

------
hmottestad
I really hope I don't have to deal with something like this in my life.

The initial joke was racist. It seems to have been told out of ignorance and
not hatred, which is a huge difference.

The authors reactions are understandable. He/she is angry, however some self
constraint would be appreciated, especially as people actually suffering from
Asperger's could be offended. If you have written an angry email to someone,
you might understand the authors rash words.

Did the company handle this well?

Sitting in a room to face your accuser may be an effective method, however be
careful not to put people on the defensive. I remember having written an angry
email once, and I was put in a room alone with two people accusing me of doing
wrong. Without someone on my side I felt their actions were essentially
bullying me into their view of the situation.

Writing about all this online in a blog post? Seems a bit evil to those two
telling the joke, as their mistake is now broadcasted to the world. After all
their intentions were not evil, they did wrong and were told off and made to
grasp the possible consequences of their actions while probably being very
careful in the future to not make a similar mistake.

All in all. Interesting read about real world human interactions.

~~~
capisce
Well, he didn't call them out by name or post pictures of them or anything at
least.

------
warrenmiller
Sorry, he lost my sympathy at this line "The stupid cow". Someone complaining
about racism can't be spouting sexist comments on a blog.

~~~
paulnechifor
It's like an equivalent for Muphry's law[1] for ignorance: “If you write
anything criticizing ignorance, there will be ignorance of some kind in what
you have written.”

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphrys_law>

------
zimbatm
There was this time where I was in the mountains, in company of mountain
people. These people where quite friendly but one of them kept making jokes
about me being from the city, how we couldn't handle alcohol and how lame we
where. At the moment I understood that this guy wasn't really mean but that he
was clumsy. He didn't know how to approach my differences and did it so
aggressively. Just taking the "jokes" well hardheartedly and sending some back
showed him that I'm also a human like him.

Just to say. What we need is not more laws but more compassion.

~~~
b6
Well said. I'm an American in China, and I find that Chinese people who hate
me for crazy reasons are pure gold for improving relations between our two
societies, because onlookers get to compare what is being said with how I'm
acting, and can see for themselves that the two don't match up.

If the author had been cool about it, he might have succeeded in changing
their minds. It seems impossible that shaming and scolding and scaring them
could be as effective.

------
DanBC
> "do you know we can get them sacked, just like that. How can they possibly
> believe that they can get away with racism like that?

Well, that's just not true. Employees have some rights in the UK. It depends
very much on the contracts they have, and how long they've been working there,
and also the type of insults made.

In a work situation this kind of banter is not acceptable; but the handling of
it seems to be pretty lousy.

The blog author is uses remarkably offensive language throughout the post -
much worse than the "joke" that was told to him - certainly that kind of
attitude in the work place would be basis for disciplinary procedure. It's
hard to find any sympathy for someone using such language while they're
complaining about the language used by others.

It's also weird to call this single incident 'bullying' - perhaps there was
other stuff going on, or perhaps it was the start of a campaign, but on its on
it's not bullying.

------
creamyhorror
The irony is that if this blogpost was shown to the company in particular,
it's quite possible the author would face a disciplinary inquiry.

I think I know where this guy is coming from - these insults he throws are
typical of insults in Singapore, and considered uncouth but not sexist or
ableist. These concepts don't exist in the same ways in various countries,
especially in Asia. All the same, I hope he'll stop his public inveighing
against Ziege and Calvo, becaus he comes across as overly harsh and
unrelenting.

Ultimately I submitted this blogpost to highlight the action of the company,
not the blogger. He did the right thing in telling the people off and raising
it to management, but his insults show that he wasn't altogether perfect
either. These matters are complex.

~~~
lowmagnet
But the story wasn't really about the actions of the company. They only took a
small part in the story. Your title for it was completely mis-leading and not
representative of the majority of the post's content.

------
Svip
I never realised how offended I should be when Swedes and Norwegians tell me
that Danish (my native tongue) sounds like speaking with a potato in your
mouth.

Hey, Dutch people, your language sounds like mouth cancer! And German
shouldn't be spoken, it should be yelled!

~~~
hmottestad
Hahaha. I have on many occasions told people I speak danish by putting a
potato down my throat.

I will try to not say that anymore.

However, we hold grudges against those that invaded us. That goes for swedes,
danes and sometimes germans.

But we love going to your countries to enjoy your culture, your landscape and
your refreshing alcohol prices.

~~~
xyzzy123
> However, we hold grudges against those that invaded us.

Oddly enough, "list of ethnic slurs" on wikipedia has to defer to a whole
separate page for Germans. So you're not alone.

------
macavity23
I really feel for the boss in that meeting! That is one hell of a tough
situation to work through: people crying, accusations of racism that could
have enormous implications for the company. And they handled it perfectly,
very professionally.

The author of this post, not so much.

------
ChrisNorstrom
This has got to be some sort of experimental parody. Otherwise...

What's wrong with the world? In an era where porn, dead bodies, gore
surveillance footage, rape, nigger and holocaust jokes are just a few clicks
away, I can't believe there are people that still have the thin skin of a 5
month old infant.

I'm really inspired to start a web show where I dress up as, as many different
races as I can and make fun of them all. Everyone. Just everyone, no one would
be immune.

These people need to watch Comedy Central.

~~~
dolphenstein
BBC will do just fine. Ting Tong from Little Britain comes to mind.

------
jaimebuelta
Just for the sake of "cultural enlightenment", in Spain (and specially in some
regions) the word "friend" is typically used in a very light meaning. Not
meaning deep friendship, but just someone that you have an OK casual
relationship.

So, saying to someone that you are not his/her friend, that you don't want to
be, and you could never be can be considered quite harsh and even rude. I can
say that to my spanish mind, it hurts read someone saying that to someone.

------
waterhouse
_"To learn the sound of Chinese, it is very easy: just take an empty tin can,
stand at the top of the stairs and throw the can down the stairs. Listen to
the can bounce as it falls down those stairs and that is exactly what Chinese
sounds like. [...] TING TONG KLING KLANG..."_

Hey, that's not true. Hitting an empty soup can in various ways, you basically
hear an explosive sound with each collision, then a ringing as the can
resonates, then the ringing fades. Hitting it along the sides, the ringing
could be loosely interpreted as an "ii" vowel, but it also seems to be like
"ah-ee-uh" if I listen closely. Hitting it on the bottom, the vowel analogue
of the ringing sound is decidedly "uh".

It is only by linguistic convention that this sound is transcribed for English
speakers as "ting" or "bang". That actually makes some sense, because those
words begin with an explosive consonant and have a single vowel followed by
"ng", which can be compared to an approximately-pure ringing fading out.
Still, there is definitely no "n" or "ng" sound from the can; I'd transcribe
some of the sounds as "tuh" and "baeyuh". A human saying "ting" sounds very
different from the can. I think there are beatboxers who could make a much
better approximation, and I suspect a language with different sounds (some
languages have click sounds, for example) would transcribe it differently.
(Offhand, does anyone happen to know how other languages transcribe various
sounds? Bang, ding, thud, hiss, gulp, crash?)

If he wanted to make that point, he should have said, "Roll a tin can down the
stairs, then ask an English speaker to tell you what it sounded like, and
listen to the sounds the English speaker makes." If you're gonna make a crude
joke, at least make it work right. God dammit.

~~~
yread
I think it should be more like "Roll a tin can down the stairs, then ask an
English speaker to write down what it sounded like, and compare it to a random
Chinese sentence." I'm afraid even then the results wouldn't be similar at
all...

In Czech we would transcribe it bum, cink, prásk, řach. Which doesn't look
like pinyin at all. Incidentally, we also use a different transcription of
Chinese, instead of Wo chadianr shuaidao le we would write Wo čcha-tien-(r)
šuaj-tao le. This joke wouldn't work at all

But your comment is really awesome.

------
piqufoh
The UK response seemed to be "this isn't good, lets get some bureaucrats in,
maybe it will go away" and the authors handling of the situation was quite
frankly cold and a little vicious. Yeah the offenders were idiots (c'mon
they're actors), but surely the more admirably thing would be to tell them as
much and walk away. Calling the director / your agent / your Mum and Dad on
them seems a little weasly...

------
hackernewbie
They should not be talking about it publicly (internally it would be obvious
who these people are). They should not be describing them in equally offensive
terms, an idiot from a small German village. They should not consider getting
people fired 'because they can'.

Such a complete lack of consideration for someone with ASD is just
mindblowing. It reminds me of kids at school, they would treat the words of a
boy with asperger's syndrome at face value, when they come from a very
different set of motivations to everyone else. Prejudice against those with
Asperger's syndrome is far worse than the racism this person has experienced.

------
dennisgorelik
He deleted that story. Here's the cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Alimpe...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Alimpehft.blogspot.sg%2F2013%2F03%2Fweek-7-racist-
joke-incident.html)

------
lifeisstillgood
"and it is not up to you to decide whether or not he has the right to feel
offended or not."

That is probably the heart of the matter in all these situations.

The story itself though seems, err, one sided. But it has a great Panda
picture at the end.

------
pfortuny
I gather he has written this as a joke but so long, boring and uninteresting
that I gave up reading it.

If it is not, then he has got a problem being offended by a joke and at the
same time insulting people all around.

------
ionwake
What a hateful person

------
grapjas
I doubt the situation is better now than if he had simply ignored the joke.

