Woman says her coworker kept mocking her Thai lunches. Then he asks: ‘Do you people eat anything that doesn’t smell like this?’
She states she made him explain the joke to the room, then took it to her manager.
A woman who has lived in the U.S. for about six years after leaving Thailand says she answered a coworker’s lunch jokes by making him explain them aloud. According to the Daily Dot, a Reddit post describes a 29-year-old who has held her job for roughly a year and packs Thai meals from home to cut costs. She states a colleague, 34, started with questions about the smell whenever she heated them up.
The remarks spread to her curry, her chicken and rice, and a fried rice he asked whether she had loaded with strange ingredients, she writes. She points out that one colleague eats fish and another warms up eggs, and he never reacts to either. She adds that he called those foods normal, and when she asked what set hers apart, he shrugged and stated she already knew the answer.
The breaking point came with pad kra pao, which she describes as a meat and basil dish over rice. She states he announced the smell had returned and asked, “Do you people eat anything that doesn’t smell like this?” She pressed him on what “you people” meant, then told him she could not follow American humor and needed the joke explained.
Coworker tells others she is difficult
She admits the confusion was an act, meant to make him justify his comments to the whole room. She recalls that he insisted it was only a joke about odor and told her she was overthinking. He then added that “you people always take everything the wrong way.” When she asked whether he meant Thai people, she states he claimed she was distorting his words to make him sound racist. She writes that two coworkers watched, and one of them quit laughing along.
She recalls advising him to pick up some manners before judging what others eat, then walking out with her food. She writes that he now describes her to colleagues as hard to work with. “I came here to work and make a living, not have somebody comment on my lunch every single day,” she wrote.
Two days later she states he remarked “At least you’re giving us a break from the weird stuff today” over a plain chicken and rice lunch, and he insisted it was praise. She adds that a coworker from the break room told her he now sees that the jokes target only her meals. She also writes that the man told someone she wanted him fired before she had spoken to her manager.
She recalls meeting her manager privately, who asked for specific incidents, when they happened and who saw them before agreeing to talk to him. The woman states she hoped the remarks would end and did not ask for him to lose his job. She heard he has complained that she went around him, and she had no word from the manager after one day. All details come from her account in the post and could not be verified independently.
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it unlawful to harass a person over national origin. Its examples include “offensive or derogatory remarks about a person’s national origin, accent, or ethnicity.” The page states that the law does not prohibit “simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious,” while harassment is illegal when it is “so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment.”
Complaints about remarks at work have ended in departures before, as seen when a Texas employee quit mid-meeting after reporting a supervisor. An employer’s response to a complaint can also change a worker’s situation quickly, as with an ICU nurse pulled after complaint.
Title VII applies to employers with 15 or more employees.
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