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How To Insult Your Colleagues.

by Kim on November 25th, 2006

When I was working in London, my boss once said to me “you are such a waif”.

I guess he meant that I was skinny…but for some reason, having worked in American offices, such a comment might have been considered unacceptable…and I took it as an insult.

Fast forward to today, a colleague of mine, who works for a HUGE, American bank, recently told me about a comment he had made, which his boss overheard.

I won’t say here what the comment was, for fear of insulting readers…but let’s just say that my colleague’s utterance included a color…which in American coloquilasim could mean cowardice.

And when he told me what he’d said, I bowed my head in utter disbelief.

Not at his actual comment because I knew what the joke was supposed to mean. — It was more his misjudgement in his choice of words…and also the fact that he didn’t seem to understand who was around him when he said it.

It was a slip up…he is not racist, nor is he a biggot…but he took it for granted that everyone in the office would understand his joke in the way that HE thought it was intended.

(Someone else in his office was scared of something that had to get done.)

I have to imagine this particular term came into being during an ugly period in American history.

My colleague’s boss advised him, in one of the best ways that you can respond to such a miscalculation in ethnic etiquette: “Please be aware of where you are.”

I guess my point is that I understand how difficult it is in today’s work place to understand and to be sensitive to every cultural and ethnic point of view, but we (Americans) have to try to be more intelligent and caring.

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