by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Watercooler is the section of the blog in which we share with you real-life horror stories from the frontlines of race in the workplace. This week, we have a story from Margaret:

I used to work in a child day-care facility and it was the job of myself and my coworkers to also come up with fun activities for our kids to do. We did the usual arts, crafts, music and such and one day my former co-worker decided to have the kids make paper snowflakes. I said “great” and didn’t give it another thought because making snowflakes out of paper is something that almost every kid does at some point.

I didn’t realize what she was up to until she started to really encourage the oh-so-impressionable youth to “make all sorts of weird cuts and shapes” in their paper while telling the kids that the whole point of the “paper snowflakes” wasn’t to make paper snowflakes but in reality was her way of showing the kids how to make “Chinese words.”

“What? It looks just like it!” she tried to tell me.

Please email team@raceintheworkplace.com if you’d like to send in a story, put “watercooler” in the subject line, and let us know what name we should use for you. Pseudonyms and first names are totally fine. You can read more Watercooler stories here.