This happened last year and though I’ve moved on, I occasionally wonder if I’m crazy so I thought I’d ask your opinion.
I’m a Black woman who immigrated to Canada in my 30s. For my first job in Canada, I worked in a global organization and interacted with a wide cross-section of people. The environment was fast-paced and the workload was really heavy, but the people were mostly great and I knew I was valued. I left after two and a half years and was able to give two months’ notice.
Early in my notice period when my leaving wasn’t widely known, a new VP was hired for a team I worked closely with in a different country. I hung around after a call (as asked) to be introduced to him. On the call at the relevant time were me, new VP (white male) his deputy (white female), and a team lead (female, not visibly a person of color). Part of my job was to create certain documents which needed a lot of back and forth. I explained my role and jokingly said something like, “I’ll be bothering you about documents soon enough!” He responded, “That’s okay, I like dark chocolate.”
I had been jumping to another call and my immediate reaction was confusion and taking him literally (wondered if he wanted a bribe) but I saw that the two other people had gasped and their eyes widened, so it sort of slowly hit me that “hmmm, I think he said that because I’m Black.” I grew up in a majority Black country and my radar is not always as tuned to some of the ways microaggressions present. When it hit, I shrugged it off, to be honest. I was swamped and it just didn’t stick.
His deputy took great offense. Important additional context here is that the deputy had applied for the VP job, didn’t get it, and felt humiliated (her words). Before the new VP even started, she’d complained that she looked him up on LinkedIn and he wasn’t qualified. I was sympathetic but told her to give him a fair chance. However, I knew she was predisposed against him from the get go.
After the call, she messaged me saying he was so racist and she was sorry that happened and he should lose his job. I told her thanks, but I hadn’t taken offense because I hadn’t realized at first and even so, I thought losing his job would be an extreme consequence. She pushed me several times to see it from her perspective, to the point where I no longer thought she genuinely cared about any offense to me, but that she saw this as her way to get rid of him. She reported him, her boss and our shared grandboss spoke to me, and HR investigated. I told them all I honestly hadn’t registered it as offensive in the moment but I saw that objectively someone could take offense and while I was glad they were taking it seriously, I was fine and didn’t need an apology, nor did I want to see him lose his job. At the end, I was told he was spoken to but would stay on. Fine by me.
The deputy occasionally lamented that he “got away with it” but I was too busy and sleep-deprived so I let it pass, wrapped up my work and left on good terms (I thought). A month later, I received a message from the deputy telling me that because I wasn’t offended, the VP was retaliating against her for reporting and she was put on a month-long PIP because she didn’t make the VP feel welcome, and therefore she was on the brink of losing her job which would leave her unable to pay her bills, so I needed to learn a lesson and think of other people because she was experiencing these events since she was the only one who did the right thing. It was a long, awful screed that blamed me for everything going wrong for her at work. I responded saying that I was sorry to hear she was facing difficulties but her blame was misplaced and she should report the VP for retaliation. She responded with more blame, said she was glad there was no racism in Canada (what?), and that it was nice that I could so easily absolve myself of all the harm he would go on to cause others.
Friends said I should forward her message to the company HR but I didn’t want it to go any further. (Side note: I still speak to former coworkers and she’s still there several months past the end date of the PIP she told me about.) It’s a lot (and I’m leaving out a ton) but I’d love to hear how you think it should have been handled.
There’s a lot going on here!
To start, I agree with your coworker that the VP should have been fired. That’s a disgusting racist and sexualized comment, and someone who thinks it’s okay to say that — on a call with multiple people, no less — and when he’s brand new to the job, no less — and to someone he just met, no less — is someone who has terrible judgment and terrible character, and it’s going to come out in other ways. When a brand new employee is saying crap like that, usually it’s better for an employer to just cut their losses and be done.
That’s true even though it didn’t bother you! It’s okay that you weren’t bothered; you’re allowed to have whatever reactions you want to things like that, and no one should be criticizing or second-guessing you for not being angry enough. But even with you not being bothered, your employer should be deeply bothered that their new VP thinks that’s an okay thing to say, and they should want to ensure someone like that doesn’t work for them — completely independently of how strongly you did or didn’t feel about it. (After all, think about all the horribly offensive things someone could say at work; it wouldn’t become okay if the target wasn’t that upset. As an employer, you don’t want people making comments like that in your workplace, period.)
Now, maybe the deputy took such offense to the VP’s words because she was already predisposed to dislike him. But it’s also perfectly plausible that she took offense because it was genuinely offensive. It’s also possible that the two things fed off each other; I could imagine someone in her shoes thinking, “They hired this unqualified guy over me, and now he’s spewing racist and sexualized BS on work calls and no one is doing anything?” Either way, it’s so reasonable to be disgusted by the VP that I don’t think the deputy’s previous dislike of him really matters. What he said is unacceptable no matter how anyone felt about him before it happened.
However, the deputy’s behavior to you crossed a line too. She should have accepted it when you told her how you felt about it and not pushed you to feel the way she thought you should. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have reported it, though — she should have (because, again, the comment was objectively a problem for bystanders and for your company). It’s possible that she worried you felt pressure to say you weren’t bothered when you really were; that’s a thing that happens, and it’s one of the reasons (but not the only reason) that companies need to act on bigotry even if the target doesn’t push them to. But she shouldn’t have hassled you about it. And she definitely shouldn’t have blamed you for her boss retaliating against her later (and you were absolutely right when you told her to report the retaliation) or said you’d be responsible for future harm he caused. If this guy caused future harm, he would be responsible for that, not you. She shouldn’t have tried to make you feel responsible — and ironically, for someone who was so concerned about the original offense, she didn’t seem concerned about subjecting you to more blowback from the incident.
So no, you’re not wrong. That VP is a racist ass, but your coworker wrongly shifted the blame to you for not responding as strongly she thought you should.
#coworker #blamed #offended #racist #comment #Manager
