Several years back, I worked in a medical/rehab setting with an, um, interesting man. He was an ex-Marine, complete with the buzzcut and types of views held by stereotypical Caucasian Marines. As in, he was the sort of guy who you met and immediately knew he was probably married to a Southeast-Asian woman (and he was), but you didn't get the impression this was because he found his soul mate and she happened to be of this origin, or that he was someone who was excited about having a multicultural household and sharing their backgrounds with one another. The guy's mentality was particularly jaw-dropping in that he wasn't an older guy -- he was in his mid '30s and had a toddler -- and that he had completed a bachelor's degree in, hmm, I think English or History -- definitely something more humanities-like than just a degree that you get because your job made you get one.
One particularly memorable aspect of this guy was learning -- from him -- that he had asked around and found out how old I was and also had made note of which salary range I was in. Keep in mind that my position required a licensable master's degree, and my job entailed doing diagnostic workups and assessing individuals to determine things like whether they could safely leave the locked unit and whether they needed more frequent nursing checks. This man's job required a high school diploma and experience working with people, and his job was to run groups using a preformulated curriculum. During a friendly conversation one day in which we were both making small talk about normal-old job annoyances such as the copier being broken and staff meeting running over into lunch or whatever, he told me he just could not understand how the administration was paying me more than him when I was only 23 or 24 or whatever I was at the time. He explained how he had seen that I was on some list as being in a higher pay bracket than him (duh?) and had asked around to find out just how old I was. I kind of shrugged it off, mentioning that they figure out the pay based on the responsibilities and the types of education required. He got really animated at this point, explaining that he'd worked there for five years, had military experience, was married, and had a kid -- all reasons in his mind why he should make more than I did. To which the only thing I could think of was a quick, "ah, I see what you're saying...OK, seeyalater!"
Another fun time with this man was after a staff meeting in which I had a friendly disagreement with a coworker of Muslim and Middle-Eastern origin. Afterward, he came up to me, slapped me on the back, and said, "you can't let her get to you." I told him she and I usually were on great terms, and we'd just disagreed about something, not a big deal. He said, "yeah, really, you can't worry about anything she things -- they're all terrorists anyway." At this point I really felt sorry for the man, and I calmly explained to him that I really didn't believe this, and that this maybe wasn't the sort of thing to say in the workplace. "It's true though. It's the only reason they come here," was his reply. Again with the, "uh, seeyalater."
At this point it's probably worth mentioning that this guy's last name was Seaman. Which ordinarily would be only slightly funny, but it was a bit more funny considering what a trainwreck this man was. And that he had been, um, a seaman. What made it really funny though was when another coworker mentioned that Mr. Seaman had a tattoo on his bicep of a cartoon sperm that said "Seaman" on it. Of course we all wanted to see it, so someone went up to him and said, "Hey I heard you have a cool Seaman tattoo...can I see?" He reluctantly pulled up his sleeve, and sure enough, there it was. Which really slightly redeemed this guy in my mind. I thought it was rather awesome, really. Except that apparently that afternoon he went crying to one of the bosses about how people were making fun of his name and making fun of a tattoo that he got when he was young and in the military and regretted getting. Apparently it was someone else's fault that people at work knew about the tattoo this guy had on his arm considerably above his sleeve line.
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