It's not like *I* lowered the tone of the conversation
I used to work for a pretty big IT firm with offices located all over Europe and the Middle East, handling distributor problems and providing first line support to account teams. A lot of the time, I'd receive emails from colleagues over in fuck-knows-where who I would never hear from again providing I did a good enough job addressing their queries and building whatever reports were needed.

One day I get support email forwarded to me from someone in Dubai looking for some missing inventory data, and the local team is having difficulty resolving this. No biggie; a few bits of tinkering around and the files are up and running.

A couple of hours later I get an email from the expat account manager, let's call him Mark, thanking me for my work as - and I quote here - 'it's not like we can trust these sandpeople to understand how a SAP system works'.

What the hell am I supposed to say here, exactly? The guy is by all means and purposes my superior, and the issue was a bit beyond the local team's grasp. Not to be rude, I email back:

'Hi Mark,

Thanks for getting back to me and letting me know the files have gone through without any problems. I'll talk to the UAE team about the steps needed to iron this out if it props up again so you can get a quicker response from them.

Foxy'

Polite answer, avoids the racist bullet shot at me. Be thankful I never need to hear from Mark again. Or so I think.

'Hey Foxy,

Don't worry about talking to the team, I don't understand what the hell they're going on about most of the time. Would much rather like to speak to someone who talks [sic] the Queen's English rather than some burkha-wearing sandy. I don't know any group I'd enjoying being seen with less.

Mark'

Why does everyone assume that just because I'm English, I must show some disgust to every non-white, non-Christian I've never met? I'm getting a bit tired of this now in all honesty, so I try and kill the conversation off.

'Mark,

I'm sure there are plenty of worse people out there than the 'sandies' you've willingly chosen to work with. It could turn out that under their burkhas they're ginger.

Foxy'

I then get a swift response accusing me of missing the joke and being offensive. Attached is a picture of Mark. Ginger Mark. Ginger, surrounded by bearded Muslims while he sports some whispy bum fluff Mark.

I send it back to him with his face crudely put onto a picture of Tusken Raiders. We never speak again except for a mailshot a few months later saying he was leaving the company.

Can't stand racists. Don't like gingers much either.
(FoxyBadger (try saying it backwards), Thu 25 Feb 2010, 13:42, Reply)