"You sound white, so you must be white..."

It can only be expected that we have recurring applicants. It's the nature of the beast. Some applicants are far more...memorable…than others, though.

The specific person who serves as the central focus of this blog post is an interesting character. For a variety of reasons, really, but the most notable one being that he continues to apply for work through our agency despite our having made it clear numerous times that he is not a candidate we will ever work with. In an abstract sense, I admire the man’s optimism. I don’t admire the man, however.

Background: Once upon a time, he applied for a job, and I decided at the time that he was not an acceptable fit for our customers because his work history was utter trash. It was the usual, well, garbage (pun intended): He couldn’t hold a job to save his soul; had huge gaps in work history that he was unable to explain away; etc, etc. During the phone call wherein he learned he was not going to be gainfully employed through our agency, though, I was mildly surprised to learn this made me a racist. [For what it is worth, I was able to get through this revelation with a bit of soul-searching and a lot of wine therapy and moved on.]

Fast forward five years and pretty much everyone in the office has talked to this guy at some point or another. Those of us who have been there for a bit of time have had the pleasure of speaking with him on multiple occasions. Let us ruminate on one specific instance when the most mellow guy I've ever known picked up the call:

Oh, before we get into the specifics, let me tell you that my coworker (the incredibly mellow guy) is of Asian descent. While obvious during a face-to-face meeting, his English is about as accent-free as it can get when interfacing over the phone. Ok, fine, maybe he sounds like he grew up a corncob’s throw from Nebraska, but no judgement here.

Getting back into the specifics: Our Favorite Applicant (OFA) had called to follow up on his most recent application. Mellow, accent-free, English-speaking Asian coworker gets the call and politely tells the guy we're not going to work with him due to his weak work history, withholding the fact that he is also wildly unprofessional in just about every metric one can come up with. OFA starts spouting out that my coworker is racist, our company is racist, and we're not giving him a job because he's Black.

My coworker reiterates that it's merely due to his weak work history and our past interactions with him, which have all been extremely unpleasant due to his attitude.

More spouting of "you're racist" comments.

At some point in this conversation, OFA calls my coworker out for being white, and that's why he's not giving him, a Black man, a job. My coworker calmly tells the guy that he's not white. He's Asian, thank you. Guy yells (and, yes, I did hear this through my coworker's handset from about ten feet away) that, "Well you sound f****** white, so you're obviously f****** white!"

Coworker (it's impossible to ruffle this coworker's feathers, which made this all the more awesome) explains to the guy that he is making a baseless assumption of his race by what he sounds like and that it's obvious the guy has some kind of preconceived notion that people who speak English without an accent are automatically white, which is an extremely uneducated and childish notion. He doesn't care what race the dude is, and, as an English-speaking Asian male, he is still turning down the application and will not be making an employment offer.

During the ensuing diatribe, my coworker holds the handset a few inches from his ear until the volume dials down a notch and concludes with, "Thank you. We appreciate your feedback. Have a nice day." He hangs up, calmly types the conversation (including all the cursing) into the man's file, saves it, announces, "I've never been accused of being white because I sound white. That's a first," and moves on with his day.

Epic.