ANTI-SEMITES IN CORPORATE AMERICA

Note: the following is a guest-post from a friend who lives in the South.


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About 4 months ago I took a new job. All bright and shiny I arrived to a sales meeting where I found some particularly loud and robust sales guys. Not at all unusual as this is often the type of personality that you find in sales and they are harmless.

At one point they started really bagging in a newly fired President for the North American Operations. To my shock and horror one of the guys said "well what do you expect, he's a Jew! This drew hoots and tsk tsk sounds from the other guys.

Later and not wanting to make a big deal of it (mostly because of fear) I casually asked about the comment to my boss. I think I said, "what's up with the Jew comment?". To which he replied "why, are you a Jew?".

My inclination was to say oh no, of course not, not me. But sometimes valor overcomes discretion even in cowards like myself and so "Yes, I am a non-practicing Jew". The words came out of my mouth before I could think to lie and so I braced myself for the worst.

To my surprise he said something to the effect of sorry and I hope you were not offended. I told him no problem and let's forget about the whole incident. He agreed and I did not forget but decided to let a sleeping dog lie.

However, in the next meeting (one week later) the boss, my boss made a point to tell the whole crew that I'm a Jew. My normally almost translucent skin turned about four shades of Pantone red. The guys all looked at me with this awful maniacal grin and one guy actually said " prove it, drop your pants. Another threw a penny that bounced off my face and said are sure your a Jew? A real Jew would have caught that penny before it hit the ground.

They all laughed at me.

I guess this is the price you pay for living in the south. Can I please come home? I don't recall anybody throwing pennies at me in Portola Valley.

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For once I do not know what to say.