this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
326 points (96.0% liked)

Facepalm

2639 readers
1 users here now

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Potatos_are_not_friends 140 points 5 months ago (6 children)

This was definitely a trigger for me.

A few years ago, I had some great email exchanges about a position. I was an experienced dev, and I knew what they were looking for. But to make it official, I had to go through their HR person.

This was the first time I was going to talk to someone from the company, live in a video call.

And the moment we jumped on a call, her first words were, "Do you have a green card?"

I was born here. One look at my skin color and that was her question.

[–] dogsnest 66 points 5 months ago

So, you don't? /s

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago (1 children)

CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME? YOU ENGLISH? gestures wildly

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I have friend who told me that his father speaks broken english to non-native speakers. If they hire landscapers, for example, he'll start mimicking a hispanic accent and dropping words and deliberately changing grammar. His entire family is terribly embarrassed by this behavior, even if he means well. What a tool.

As we've been told since at least the early nineties: if a non-native english speaker can't understand you, just repeat yourself and ASK LOUDER. /s

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

And don't you forget to gesture! THEY NO UNDERSTAND WITHOUT! 👍🫱🤜👋💪

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

But why aren't potatos friends?

[–] Ibaudia 6 points 5 months ago

I used to work in HR. In my first week, the HR Manager walked around with me on the floor of our factory. We had a lot of Vietnamese employees. She wanted me to start learning people's names, but the first time we encountered a Viet person she whispered to me "hey, between you and me, I can't really tell them apart since they all look similar and have similar names, so if you can't remember them then it's no biggie". Like what??? Ma'am you are the HR manager.