I started a job at a sawmill and at first things were good, it seemed liek the group I was working with was a good bunch of folks but a couple of things have stood out to me.

  1. This sweet older lady that I was shadowing for the first day, we were joking and talking the whole day and i thought she was just a really nice person. And then one day I overhear her in the lunch room saying "they just don't deserve to live honestly" when referring to addicts, like wtf? how can someone be so pleasant and then turn around and say something so barbaric.

  2. I was shadowing another guy who seemed friendly and we were getting along well, and then one time while a group of us were standing around just talking, he was complaining lightheartedly about his wife when he starts dropping bombs like: "Best place for a woman is in the kitchen" and "A woman looks best behind a vacuum" there were more but I don`t remember cause I was honestly shocked.

I was looking forward to getting to know the people here and getting in on the group dynamic but now im not sure if im gonna be able to stand anyone here lol, so far it was only these two but going forward I want to be able to counter reactionary bullshit like this when I hear it. Chapos how do you counter this shit when you come across it without pissing off your coworkers?

  • _else [she/her,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    how can someone be so pleasant but turn out to actually be bad? because awful people mostly do awful shit and think awful things because they want simple warm fuzzy nice, and the world is a big difficult complicated mostly fucked up place. easier to just call someone bad than have to recognize their pain and the injustices done to them, including your culpability in those injustices.

    have you ever been to the south? or met anyone from there?

    appropriate counters vary depending on your audience. for the tear stained, I like to go with "yeah, who the fuck do they think we are? jesus? snortlaugh" as kind of an all around reminder that they're shitty people who believe in nothing and just use their magic woowoo bullshit to feel good about cruelty to the weak that lets them feel the false sense that they're strong and capable and not the throwaway scum of the earth disposable tools of the billionaire class.