I had a rather shocking experience today which left me feeling shaken.I had just finished purchasing some items in a small shop when I heard a young man respond to a question from another employer with the words ‘It’s me you black cunt’ !I turned round and the young man seeing the shock on my face immediately apologized.I said I found the comments very offensive and they were racist and sexist.He apologized again.He was not being aggressive, this was said in a banterish fashion; what is shocking is that he was comfortable saying this without any thought.
I am making an assumption here that such comments were seen as perfectly normal by the management as no one said anything till I asked for the manager.At which point a man I had seen sitting in the office behind the counter immediately sprang to his feet and said he would deal with this later.I left with my purchases.
I pondered how to deal with this in an effective way.What would you have done?
Harmless Banter – Or Is It?
This entry was posted on 17/04/2009 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.