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 La:

Over 5 years ago, I received a job as a timeshare clerk at a hotel while I attended college. This particular 5 star hotel timeshare employment environment was predominantly white.

I was the only black female working with two other white females greeting potential clients and executing timeshare contracts for the sales reps. All the managers were white and mostly male. All the timeshare sales reps were white men except for one black male who seemed middle aged and kept to himself. This environment was highly competitive among the sales people, but for me (non-sales), everyone was generally friendly and welcoming.

My manager was an older white female. She awkwardly kept mentioning she didn’t get the chance to participate in the interviews and there must be something “special” about me why the “guys” choose me over so many others. Through out the days, she kept nagging me about smiling. The thing that got to me, I was always smiling in the first place – what gives? She never told the other girls to smile, one of which came to work the same day as I and kept this permanent concentration look on her face all day. Through out the days, she would walk pass the front desk area and tap on it with this rapid obnoxious tapping parody - directly in front of me, as if to say “smile”. Most of the times, she never even looked at me to see if I was smiling or not. Everyone was annoyed with her for this, it was highly disruptive. After the third day of this craziness, I privately told her I felt like I was being singled out. To my astonishment, she abruptly said “well, I need to see when girls like you keep a smile on your face, it makes you look pleasant”. Ok, this might sound odd, but I remember leaving her office feeling dirty and ashamed of myself of some sort - “girl like me”? Eventually, as I got back to my station, I had a delayed response of anger and I made up my mind to leave.

Now, on my fourth or fifth day, there was a heated argument between the only black rep and a young white male manager. The argument spilled into the lobby and the black male w