A year ago or more, in October of 2015, there was an incident at my place of work when one of my white coworkers used the N-word in my presence, more explicitly, he called me a nigger after I asked him a question. I can’t remember exactly what the question was, something like “Hey dude, did you go running today?” To which he responded “Nah, Nigger.”
I was in shock and didn’t speak to him for the rest of the day. I first spoke with my managers about the incident, they told me that I could “Handle it however I wanted to.” This struck me as odd and didn’t seem like it was in accordance with Men’s Wearhouse policy. I was thinking to myself “I have to deal with this? Isn’t management supposed to handle these kinds of issues?”
Either way, reluctantly, I spoke to my coworker and informed him of how I disapproved of the use of the word regardless of race. We ended it there.
About a month later in November 2015, one of the managers, the tuxedo manager, at the store used a variation of the word in mine and other’s presence. She hung up the phone and said something to the effect of “That customer wanted to know if we had this shoe in stock. I was like ‘Nah Ninja’.”
She then turns directly to me and says “You see what I did there? I didn’t use the other word. You like that?” I stared blankly at her while she laughed and walked away. At this point, one of the other white workers decides to further the joke by saying “Did you ever see that Youtube video where the white people are all using the word ninja instead of saying the other word.”
At this point, I had to walk away in frustration due to the fact that I was being made the butt of a joke in front of other employees.
I once again spoke to the store manager about this. I explained to him that this is not the policy at the store and that this needs to be discussed with the entire store. What I wanted was some advocacy of the company policy so that I didn’t have to have these awkward discussions with every single person at the store who made racially insensitive remarks. His response was something to the effect of, “Well yea, but, everyone says things that aren’t PC at times and we should all be focusing on being more professional.”
I had trouble seeing how that related to me seeing as I’ve never said anything that could be construed as bigoted towards any of my coworkers. He said that he would bring it up at our quarterly store meeting, the meeting came and went and it was not addressed.
At this point, I was frustrated and it began effecting how I interacted with my coworkers. I was still professional and cordial, but I was not ‘friendly’.
A few weeks later, the store manager and I were planning on doing some work when he says to me something to the effect of “Ay boy! Get over here.” With a southern accent.
This wasn’t the first time he had done this. At this point, I looked at him and said “That is very offensive to call a grown man a boy. And to say it as if your dictating to me.” He realized that he messed up and apologized. That wasn’t the last time it occurred.
Roughly a month or so passed and things around the store were oddly tense. In hindsight, I should have spoken to HR at that point. But I wasn’t really sure if that would resolve anything or if it would make the situation worse.
The assistant store manager at one point told me that they were looking to promote someone to assistant store manager and I would be next in line. That he would start training me and I should take the initiative to start shadowing the managers so that I could learn store operations. Less than three weeks later, I would be written up for insubordination and tardiness.
Tardiness is an issue with our company, I know so because the regional manager told me so at a later date in a phone call about the early occurrences. He also told me that it’s an issue that they may never address because it’s a commission job, so if you aren’t there, you will miss out on sales. At the time of my write-up there was another employee who had been promoted to the same position as me.
He had been with the company for about 3 years and started at about the age of 18. Being a college student, he was consistently late by sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes a half an hour. I don’t think I’ve ever shown up a half an hour late. In fact, I’d venture to say that I have one of the best attendance records at the store other than the management. It was strange to me that he had recently been promoted in lieu of his attendance record.
Also, it was common knowledge around the store that management only promoted him because they didn’t want to lose him, but he had all but completely stopped doing his assigned job duties because of his dissatisfaction with the management not promoting him.
At this time, I wrote in my write up that I did not agree with the terms of the report and that I believed it to be retaliatory in nature because I spoke out against racial discrimination and this was an issue of workplace fairness. The regional manager called me a couple of days later to get my side of the story.
I explained all of this to him. He said that he would look at our timecard and see if it was in fact true that I was more or less, on time and being held to the same standard as others. Once he found out that I was in fact telling the truth, he removed the report from my file.
The attitude towards me from management was different from there on, it always had been a little bit different but now it was glaringly obvious, especially from the assistant store manager who always seemed to have an attitude around me more than the store manager.
I didn’t want to quit because I felt like I had been wronged and I shouldn’t have to leave because I wasn’t the one in the wrong.
About 5 months after the initial incident I decided to write the regional manager again, this time in greater detail. An incident occurred where I felt that the store management was attacking me rather than taking leadership and deescalating a situation with another coworker. I decided that I would enlist the help of the regional manager and also make him aware that I felt I was still being treated unjustly and that I was being targeted.
At this time, I also informed the regional manager that the reason the store manager refused to take action against anyone is because everyone in the store was aware that he was having an affair with the female manager that made the “Ninja” remark to me.
The regional manager decided to come to the store to have a meeting with the two store managers and myself. The meeting felt more like an HR obligation to state it plainly. I was receptive to his message and management pretended to be as well but nothing was resolved and more recently, the regional manager knew it wouldn’t resolve anything stating “I knew I’d be back here in a few months.”
The store manager continued to call me “boy” with a southern accent, other’s in the store picked up on the practice. Later the assistant store manager wrote me up for being disrespectful to the tuxedo manager. I didn’t bother to argue or ask how they came to that conclusion, this time because in my mind it was more retaliation and I had been nothing but kind to her. If there was an issue, they could have spoken to me rather than directly resorting to disciplinary action.
The final straw came when another coworker and I got into a verbal disagreement, she was harassing me and attempting to aggravate a situation that I exclaimed I was not comfortable discussing with her and eventually management got involved and once again told me how I was wrong, when all I wanted to do was not speak to her and she continued to try to do so.
I wrote the regional manager again and he came to the store a few days later. After our discussion, he sent me home for two days while he decided a course of action with HR. Their ultimate decision was to transfer me to a location that is roughly an hour away that I have no feasible way of commuting to because I don’t own a car.
I explained that to him and the representative at HR, and they told me that it was not their responsibility to make sure that I have transportation to work. They informed me that I was resigning from the position to which I responded that the transfer was involuntary and that I am not resigning, rather I cannot commute to a location that is an hour away from my home and this was no fault of my own that I was being transferred. The regional manager informed me that he was not aware of my transportation and that he would not be reversing his decision.
Thank you for taking the time to read about my story.
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