I Fired Patricia for being a Racist
Not because she was a Christian
Patricia illustrates a double standard.
She once worked with me as a project manager, an older woman from the deep South at an IT firm on Manhattan’s upper west side.
Her southern gentility and mud pie recipe made her a popular figure among the newly minted code jockeys and engineers we’d hired. She rode herd on them with a gentle but firm motherly nature.
Her tailored suits and finely coiffed hair brought a touch of charm and class to our pizza-box-strewn office that occupied a brownstone across the street from the Dakota building where John Lennon once lived.
I enjoyed chatting with her. She was different. She represented diversity. She was kind and funny.
Patricia was also a racist.
I had no idea when we hired her. That’s not something people put on their resumes. It started coming out when my partners and I brought her into meetings to get her thoughts on new hires. We were growing fast and we needed to bring on a largish group of new technicians very quickly.
I’d been interviewing like mad and I had a stack of resumes to consider.
