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 Merq:

So there’s this guy, we’ll call him Frank, who is a first-generation Greek American. Now, Frank can only be described as a “special” kind of fellow… There are a million race-related stories involving him, but today I’m going to tell just one.

Our boss, Jim, is really the salt of the earth. Every one of his employees can list at least five instances where Jim has gone (far) above and (way) beyond his role as an employer to help resolve issues in their personal lives. It’s because of Jim that we are a surprisingly tight-knit team—an anomaly in our organization. So anyway…

Frank gets engaged, but he drops hints to suggest that he’d prefer that none of us show up to the wedding. Besides the larger Caucasian population of our small department, the group includes individuals of Nigerian (me), Egyptian, and Korean origin. But while many of us could care less about not being welcome at this wedding, I was more than a little disgusted at his refusal to invite our boss, Jim.

A little background on Jim and Frank: This man campaigned to the higher-ups to elevate Frank’s status from an internship to a high-ranking position within our department. This man got into heated arguments with said higher-ups when they refused to give Frank a raise. This man listened to Frank whine for hours on end whenever he argued with his fiancée (and they fought a lot), offering the best advice one could after 22 years of happy, stable married life. This man even went to Frank’s amateur league baseball games from time to time! The only problem was, this man was black.

While Jim was definitely admired and loved within the confines of the workplace, it appeared he would have to be “explained” at Frank’s mostly-Greek wedding. This apparently wasn’t much of a concern for another co-worker, Ira, who invited the entire group to his somewhat-traditional (Russian) Jewish wedding, even going as far as to ask Jim to be his best man. While he appreciated the sentiment, Jim (secretly a shy kind of guy) assured him that he would rather just lend his support from the sidelines. This was already much more than I was able to do, as I didn’t even attend (I appreciated the invite, but I really don’t like weddings).

With that fun bit of background information, let’s go on. A co-worker from another department came by to say her goodbyes on her last day. Her friend and ours had begun an inter-office romance that constantly made them the butt of everyone’s jokes. As she started to leave, she called, “Don’t worry. We’ll all get together for the wedding!”

Frankie-boy freaked out, and in a panic, screamed “You guys can’t come to the wedding!” (Did I mention our departing friend was Indian?) Of course, we were referring to