How a UK company handled an offensive private joke

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.

#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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The author of this post, not so much.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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