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With Gruden fresh in our minds, is this email offensive? (1 Viewer)

Gawain

Footballguy
Was cc'd into a reply on the below. Doesn't sit well, but not sure if I'm hyper aware at the moment.

Account gets Tuesday delivery, I call on Monday.

Yesterday was Columbus, Indigeneous whatever day and they were closed.

Need a delivery to tomorrow.

Let me know, ASAP

 
It's a little annoying and disrespectful, yeah, but I wouldn't get my panties in a bunch over it.

Is this your boss? I don't like his tone. He needs to check himself. 
This, someone I would look to avoid being closely associated with.

 
"Indigenous whatever" sounds really bad but I bet they meant:

"Yesterday was Columbus/Indigenous/Whatever day."  

"Happy Holidays/Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa/Whatever."  Same vein.
Exactly.  With the renaming of the holiday many people are unaware of the new name and are not meaning anything derogatory and just trying to convey the situation of a business being off for that holiday.  

 
Exactly.  With the renaming of the holiday many people are unaware of the new name and are not meaning anything derogatory and just trying to convey the situation of a business being off for that holiday.  
Figured part of my job is making sure HR knew of possible issues so forwarded it over. Received a call back and that was the first question, "Do you know it's Indigenous People's Day?" 

My issue with that interpretation is that he could have simply said that the account was closed for the holiday, not gone into the "Indigeneous whatever" well. 

It's a little annoying and disrespectful, yeah, but I wouldn't get my panties in a bunch over it.

Is this your boss? I don't like his tone. He needs to check himself. 
Salesperson. He wrote the first email to a group of 8 people. They then forwarded to a group of 20 that I was on. You'd think people would learn...

 
Figured part of my job is making sure HR knew of possible issues so forwarded it over. Received a call back and that was the first question, "Do you know it's Indigenous People's Day?" 

My issue with that interpretation is that he could have simply said that the account was closed for the holiday, not gone into the "Indigeneous whatever" well. 

Salesperson. He wrote the first email to a group of 8 people. They then forwarded to a group of 20 that I was on. You'd think people would learn...


Wait, did you know that it was Indigenous Peoples Day before contacting HR - because if not, I can see you being more offended than you should have been.  If you did know then I personally think contacting HR is a little over the top unless there's been separate issues with the guy.  Agree with others that he should have worded most of that email differently but I could easily see somebody not knowing the official holiday name and just saying what he did with no ill-intent at all.

 
Maybe I'm in sensitive but my reaction would be "meh". My 16 year old however would be offended. Different generation.

 
Wait, did you know that it was Indigenous Peoples Day before contacting HR - because if not, I can see you being more offended than you should have been.  If you did know then I personally think contacting HR is a little over the top unless there's been separate issues with the guy.  Agree with others that he should have worded most of that email differently but I could easily see somebody not knowing the official holiday name and just saying what he did with no ill-intent at all.
I knew that it was Indigenous People's Day. I came from a world of managing Millennials / Gen-Zers who were very socially conscious. The company was socially conscious. Current world is older, less diverse and likelier to skew right. 

If this had been a direct email, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. My concern was that there were 28 people on the chain and a real possibility of more as the original message was forwarded through various teams. The distribution potential was what made me send out an FYI. I don't know all the people in the thread. I don't know the personal history of all the people on my team. It's my job to look out for them, especially if they aren't comfortable saying something.

 
eggshells, we are walking on them. 

just b/c a group of people may be "socially conscious", you cant expect everyone to cater to every level of their "offensiveness" Its impossible b/c there is no ceiling to it. We are creating a would where "inclusion" is actually taking us backwards. When everyone has to scrutinize everything they write and others hang on their every word and look for "gotcha moments" and points to it like it defines this dudes whole ideology

This email was pretty innocuous overall. When did we let Gen Z have complete control over what is said and done, esp to the point where we need to tell everyone else to watch what they say or change the way they think? We are looking to reprimand people over the idea that others "might" be offended, instead of asking those who are "Why" they are so offended over words. 
 

 
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eggshells, we are walking on them. 

just b/c a group of people may be "socially conscious", you cant expect everyone to cater to every level of their "offensiveness" Its impossible b/c there is no ceiling to it. We are creating a would where "inclusion" is actually taking us backwards. When everyone has to scrutinize everything they write and others hang on their every word and look for "gotcha moments" and points to it like it defines this dudes whole ideology

This email was pretty innocuous overall. When did we let Gen Z have complete control over what is said and done, esp to the point where we need to tell everyone else to watch what they say or change the way they think? We are looking to reprimand people over the idea that others "might" be offended, instead of asking those who are "Why" they are so offended over words. 
 


So is this about offending the Italian-Americans over Columbus Day ?

 
So is this about offending the Italian-Americans over Columbus Day ?
no, its about everyone being so sensitive and afraid of everyone's hurt feelings, that an innocuous, out of place word—which could easily be debated may have had bad punctuation or placement—would have warranted a notice to HR and possibly disciplining this guy bc he "may" have triggered someone. IDK what type of work they are doing, but if something like this was potentially causing such massive harm in the business, then we need to look at those who can't keep being productive and instead scrutinizing misplaced words in an email. We have given too much power and attention to these types of non-issues. 

 
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And its not officially only indigenous people's day. Columbus day is still a thing and reccognized.

It does cause confusion, so its entirely possible that this guy was making a joke like "ah, whatever day it's called" and it didn't come across like that in text. 

but again, we jump straight to the "this is offensive and thats it" conclusion w/o even looking into the meaning behind the statement. 

 
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And its not officially only indigenous people's day. Columbus day is still a thing and reccognized.

It does cause confusion, so its entirely possible that this guy was making a joke like "ah, whatever day it's called" and it didn't come across like that in text. 
Tone and expression is totally lost in written items like emails and texts.  Too easy to be taken in the wrong context and get blown way out of proportion.

 
And its not officially only indigenous people's day. Columbus day is still a thing and reccognized.

It does cause confusion, so its entirely possible that this guy was making a joke like "ah, whatever day it's called" and it didn't come across like that in text. 

but again, we jump straight to the "this is offensive and thats it" conclusion w/o even looking into the meaning behind the statement. 


Tone and expression is totally lost in written items like emails and texts.  Too easy to be taken in the wrong context and get blown way out of proportion.


I agree 100%..that is why this is a nothing burger.

 
And its not officially only indigenous people's day. Columbus day is still a thing and recognized.

It does cause confusion, so its entirely possible that this guy was making a joke like "ah, whatever day it's called" and it didn't come across like that in text. 
 
Perhaps then there is a need for retraining on the use of the Oxford comma?

As the email was written, with only one comma, there are two distinct days in the list; Columbus and Indigenous whatever. 
Had Strunk and White been followed, there would have been three distinct items in the list; Columbus, Indigenous, and whatever.

However, without the comma, I believe the first reading is correct and could easily be taken as a devaluation of the movement and the people that put a new holiday on the calendar.

ETA: you notified HR about this? 
Yep, that's part of the job. First is that if someone is offended I do not want to be on the email chain and have said nothing. Two, if one of my team members comes to me with this I want to be on top of it. No one's getting fired, especially not a union salesperson. 

 
Perhaps then there is a need for retraining on the use of the Oxford comma?

As the email was written, with only one comma, there are two distinct days in the list; Columbus and Indigenous whatever. 
Had Strunk and White been followed, there would have been three distinct items in the list; Columbus, Indigenous, and whatever.

However, without the comma, I believe the first reading is correct and could easily be taken as a devaluation of the movement and the people that put a new holiday on the calendar.

Yep, that's part of the job. First is that if someone is offended I do not want to be on the email chain and have said nothing. Two, if one of my team members comes to me with this I want to be on top of it. No one's getting fired, especially not a union salesperson. 


again....I'm struck at the idea that an email that slightly insinuated about the  "devaluation of the movement and the people that put a new holiday on the calendar" would cause an employee to give it more then 10 seconds of attention and cause them so much pain that it derails their productivity. 

Now if he sent an email saying "this whole Indigenous people's whatever day is just stupid and needs to stop" then OK , I can see giving that some attention. But if we constantly make mountains out of molehills then all we are doing is making people afraid to put anything in writing and scrutinize every word in fear of being taken out of context by someone somewhere. We are heading into a wold of everything generic packaged and plain white jumpsuits b/c everyone who perceives an offence,  no matter how small, gets to make waves about it and we give them priority. We've come a long way from "rub some dirt on it and move along" 

and I don't think you need to retrain anyone....spelling and grammar mistakes happen all the time esp when we are sending so many emails and correspondences on small cell phones.

 
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And its not officially only indigenous people's day. Columbus day is still a thing and reccognized.

It does cause confusion, so its entirely possible that this guy was making a joke like "ah, whatever day it's called" and it didn't come across like that in text. 

but again, we jump straight to the "this is offensive and thats it" conclusion w/o even looking into the meaning behind the statement. 
I heard on the news that Columbus Day is forcing Indigenous Day to move to another day.  :shrug:

 
The fact that the rest of the email is borderline coherent leads me to believe I should give the author the benefit of the doubt in terms of the phrasing, but I wouldn’t blame somebody else if they didn’t. The person is an absolute moron to send an email like that and if I were on an email chain that contained more than 10 people at my company I’d expect it to get reported. Everyone waxing poetic about people looking to be offended is missing the mark imo. I don’t think the author should get fired over it but somebody definitely needs to explain to them why that phrasing isn’t acceptable. That’s not something you just ignore regardless of intent. 

 
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Columbus, Indigeneous whatever day
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Peoples'_Day

Indigenous Peoples' Day
Also called First People's Day, National Indigenous Peoples Day, Columbus Day, or Native American Day
and

At least twelve states do not celebrate Columbus Day (Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin), as well as Washington, DC; South Dakota officially celebrates Native American Day instead.[5][18][19] Various tribal governments in Oklahoma designate the day as "Native American Day", or have renamed the day after their own tribes.[20] In 2013, the California state legislature considered a bill, AB55, to formally replace Columbus Day with Native American Day but did not pass it.[21] On August 30, 2017, following similar affirmative votes in Oberlin, Ohio,[22] followed later by Bangor, Maine, in the earlier weeks of the same month,[23] the Los Angeles City Council voted in favor of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day.[24] On October 10, 2019, just a few days before Columbus Day would be celebrated in Washington, D.C., the D.C. Council voted to temporarily replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day.[25] This bill was led by Councilmember David Grosso (I-At Large) and must undergo congressional approval to become permanent.
All those places can't figure out a common name, but you expect your boss to while writing an email?

 
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Exactly.  With the renaming of the holiday many people are unaware of the new name and are not meaning anything derogatory and just trying to convey the situation of a business being off for that holiday.  
On the list of federal holidays, they still call it Columbus Day.  I can see where the eee would be a great deal of confusion.  

 

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