Story Time: I Messed Up

Hello and welcome to 2017! I hope you and your families had a relaxing and pastry-filled Christmas!

I thought I would start off the New Year with a short story.

In alignment with the new school semester and welcoming the new students, my college had a Welcome Back Lunch and Winter Carnival today. We served hearty soup, buns and drinks as well as had a photo booth, carnival games and free stuff for students.

I work at my college as a Student Ambassador, so I help with all the events at the school. Today, I helped serve the food. That mainly consisted of cleaning up soup spills, shoving buns into people’s hands and repeating the soup names to the point where I will probably dream of soup tonight.

I was working with three other people serving food. Amidst them, was an older Asian woman and her older Asian husband. They were kind, helpful and when I asked them if they wanted a break, they both selflessly refused. We had many good laughs while we worked together – I really enjoyed it.

At the end of the event, we all exchanged names and as the couple was saying goodbye, I said “xie xie” which means ‘thank you’ in Mandarin. She smiled and nonchalantly replied that she was Korean. I looked at her, mortified, and apologized.

I thought it was interesting how I assumed her and her husband’s ethnicity and chanced embarrassment by speaking in the assumed language. Obviously it was a mistake, and more importantly benign to her, but some people get defensive when others assume where they come from just by their looks. I know that people assume where I am from and depending how they talk about it with me, it can either be no big deal, or rude and tactless. Knowing from personal experience that somebody assuming your ethnicity just by physical appearance can be irritating, I was surprised at myself that I did just that.

From now on, I’ll ask before I assume where someone is from. 2017 is a new year and a new chance at changing ones thinking!