I accidentally said "racist" things at work

I've been seeing jokes about smoke alarms and I didn't get it until now. Thanks for the explanation
 
Much ado about nothing.

You'll do fine. No harm, no foul.
 
Fedorgasm said:
So I have this one employee that works from home and she interacts with clients over the phone.

In a meeting with several managers present, her manager mentioned to me that when he's on the phone with her she has this chirp sound every few seconds, it's her smoke alarm chirping because it needs a new battery. He said he told her to get fixed a while ago because it's unprofessional for our clients to hear that, and she hasn't fixed it yet.

So I laughed, and then went on a rant where I made several jokes about how crazy you have to be in order to live with that chirping sound 24/7. Got several laughs from the group. Her manager said he'd deal with her and then we ended the call.

Fast forward 1 week and I see a meme online about how black people don't change their smoke alarm batteries. I do some googling and discover that this is an entire stereotype that I never knew about. Apparently there are tons of memes and jokes about black people and smoke alarm chirping.

Now I'm horrified as I recall this meeting, because the employee and her manager are both black. And I was talking about how only crazy people could live with this chirping sound. Someone in that meeting could cry foul and claim that I was calling black people crazy or something.

For those that don't work in a corporate environment you wouldn't understand. These are the eggshells that we have to walk on in big companies. Nobody really buys this shit, but some do weaponize it to get their enemies in trouble.

Haven't gotten a call from HR yet though, so wish me luck.
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If anyone complains, just burn their house down. They'll never know what hit them.
 
Wrath of Foamy said:
How hard is it to change a bloody battery?
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Well, true story..... If we every had a problem with a client in a building,. we'd hide a smoke detector in the false ceiling of their office and wait for the fucker to start chirping low battery........ Of course when, we'd turn up we would say we couldn't find the source of the noise.... It would drive them crazy........
 
Fedorgasm said:
So I laughed, and then went on a rant where I made several jokes about how crazy you have to be in order to live with that chirping sound 24/7. Got several laughs from the group. Her manager said he'd deal with her and then we ended the call.
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I have no clue about whether this is considered racist in America, but mocking and undermining your co-worker in front of a bunch of higher ups is kind of a shitty thing to do. I sure as hell would appreciate it if my own colleagues had a quiet word with me about issues instead of making fun of me to bosses.
 
val_lixembeau said:
I have no clue about whether this is considered racist in America, but mocking and undermining your co-worker in front of a bunch of higher ups is kind of a shitty thing to do. I sure as hell would appreciate it if my own colleagues had a quiet word with me about issues instead of making fun of me to bosses.
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TS would have done it properly if the colleague was white.
 
Contempt said:
I have never heard that stereotype before. I have four smoke detectors but they are all wired in, so no batteries. Is that not a thing over there?
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My hardwired detectors have backup batteries. They will chirp when they drop below a certain voltage threshold.


About the smoke alarms going off thing: How the fuck do people live with that? Noises like that drive me insane in no time at all.
 
eddymotto said:
how many black friends do you have? if the number is >1, I would suggest that you have them pop by your place when you know that you will be on a business Zoom call so that your co-workers can see that there is no way that you could be racist.
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Don’t do this.

I called my buddy Clayton Bigsby, an award winning author and my neighbor uncle ruckus who is a hard working local handyman. Now I an fired
 
No, it’s not a black people thing. It’s a lazy people thing.

There is an Indian guy I work with who always had his smoke detector chirping in meetings, for like a year. I told him that all he had to do was change the battery.

And there was a Chinese guy who did the same thing.

I know what you’re thinking. A lazy Chinese guy?
Yes. In fact I’ve worked with several lazy Chinese people over the past few years. I didn’t know they existed until I began this job.
 
Jack Reacheround said:
No, it’s not a black people thing. It’s a lazy people thing.
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lazy and deranged, maybe.

mine started chirping awhile ago, i couldn't stand the chirping. i went to change the battery but realized you couldn't? so i ripped it out and my maintenance man gave me a new one lol. anyways, whoever can just tune that out for any length of time and not be bothered isn't all there in the head imo.
 
Jack Reacheround said:
No, it’s not a black people thing. It’s a lazy people thing.

There is an Indian guy I work with who always had his smoke detector chirping in meetings, for like a year. I told him that all he had to do was change the battery.

And there was a Chinese guy who did the same thing.

I know what you’re thinking. A lazy Chinese guy?
Yes. In fact I’ve worked with several lazy Chinese people over the past few years. I didn’t know they existed until I began this job.
Click to expand...
It's a stereotype that asians are hardworking so that applies to everything else they do in life. Just because you busted your ass off to get good grades doesn't mean they won't be lazy about replacing batteries. When I visit asian countries I found them to be pretty lazy if it wasn't something related to the work they're supposed to do. Like not walking a few feet to throw trash in the bin and just leaving it where they were.
 
Fedorgasm said:
So I have this one employee that works from home and she interacts with clients over the phone.

In a meeting with several managers present, her manager mentioned to me that when he's on the phone with her she has this chirp sound every few seconds, it's her smoke alarm chirping because it needs a new battery. He said he told her to get fixed a while ago because it's unprofessional for our clients to hear that, and she hasn't fixed it yet.

So I laughed, and then went on a rant where I made several jokes about how crazy you have to be in order to live with that chirping sound 24/7. Got several laughs from the group. Her manager said he'd deal with her and then we ended the call.

Fast forward 1 week and I see a meme online about how black people don't change their smoke alarm batteries. I do some googling and discover that this is an entire stereotype that I never knew about. Apparently there are tons of memes and jokes about black people and smoke alarm chirping.

Now I'm horrified as I recall this meeting, because the employee and her manager are both black. And I was talking about how only crazy people could live with this chirping sound. Someone in that meeting could cry foul and claim that I was calling black people crazy or something.

For those that don't work in a corporate environment you wouldn't understand. These are the eggshells that we have to walk on in big companies. Nobody really buys this shit, but some do weaponize it to get their enemies in trouble.

Haven't gotten a call from HR yet though, so wish me luck.
Click to expand...
I have never heard this as being a black stereotype. I think it's much more of a single woman situation.
There's a higher concentration of single black women, so we might just see more of it from them and some people online have made it a "black thing".
 
Funny enough I’m half white half black and my white mom doesn’t change her smoke detector batteries enough and I often hear the chirp when I visit her. The entire rest of my family is black (on both sides) since my mom was adopted at a young age into a black family. I have quite literally never heard that chirp in my dad’s house or any other family members (that I can recall) nor heard this stereotype until this thread 😂. The more you know I guess.

<seedat>
 
If you said something like, "forget the smoke alarm, how about these blacks amirite??" then you should be worried. But just the smoke alarm thing alone, you're good to go.
 
Just wait till you need to be around a bunch of older people that often don't wear hearing aids. Forget about the annoying chirp, the fire alarm siren could be going off and they very well would not know. They might see the doctor to complain about developing tinnitus all of a sudden.

When i visit my parents home every so often i need to change out the batteries of a chirping fire alarm that they can't hear.

Glad I don't work in corporate.
 
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