A recent online exchange reminded me of a former coworker from a job long ago. She was in her 60's. She was the single most anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic person I'd met since college. She ran an "investment" newsletter for some of her equally atrocious friends. One day she asked me for a clipart CD so she could "pretty up" the newsletter. She was, of course, doing this on company time. She ended up sending out a newsletter full of rainbows and unicorns. A few hours later she started getting angry calls from her friends about the "faggy" newsletter. She confronted me and accused me of sabotaging her by not warning her that "rainbows were gay now." (Did I mention she was paranoid too?)
"Rainbows have been a gay pride symbol for ages."
"Since WHEN?"
"Since you were in high school."
"How was I supposed to know?"
"Watching the news?"
She laughed and said, "I'd rather be drinking."
I considered that statement a nice summary of her life, personality and understanding of the world around her.
After that she declared me the "f*g sh** expert" for knowing that rainbows were used as a gay pride symbol. On the rare occasions when a news story involving homosexuals came to her attention, she would go around the office telling people to ask me about it as I "probably knew the degenerates involved."
I sometimes forget just how many truly horrible people I've worked with over the last 20 years.
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