BUSINESS LIFE: The racist customers who can take their custom elsewhere
By far the best thing about being a newspaper columnist is the correspondence. This morning alone I have dealt with: 1) a letter from the "Northwest State Correctional Facility", beginning with the improbable line "I am a prisoner and an FT subscriber"; 2) a suggestion from someone that I go on a blind date with their daughter; and 3) an invitation to speak at the European Relocation Association annual conference next year.
However, occasionally a message arrives that is not so entertaining, and one such note landed a few months ago in the form of an e-mail from someone calling themselves "Richard" who, after generally trashing something I had written, and addressing me as a "spoilt snobby shite", helpfully suggested I get back to "India or whatever filthy medieval country [I] come from".
I usually delete abusive messages without a thought, but found myself staring at this one for some time. For a start, I was staggered that a reader had not realised, in spite of my 3,456 mentions of the fact, that I am from the English West Midlands, not India, and that while Wolverhampton is indeed filthy and medieval, it is a city not a country. Furthermore, I could barely believe someone could be stupid enough to send such a racist message from an e-mail address revealing not only their identity, but also that of their employer. There was absolutely nothing to stop me from cc'ing his boss in a violent reply.
Planning to do just that I mentioned the missive to a manager, who immediately advised me to resist the temptation to react. Female columnists were forever receiving misogynistic correspondence, I was told, and I should do what they did: delete it and not dwell on it. I remember wondering briefly whether sexism was as bad as racism, but my anger at "Richard" was quickly eclipsed by something more profound: the sense of being uncool. There is an unspoken rule in journalism that you do not admit to being bothered by reaction to your work, and I had broken it. I deleted the message without a response.
However, in recent weeks, with Zinedine Zidane's head-butt of Marco Materazzi during the World Cup final inciting debate about how people should respond to racist taunts, I have started thinking about the message again, wondering how businesses in general should deal with such incidents. The customer is supposedly always right, but what if the customer in question is a moron?
It transpires the question is one that has troubled everyone from football clubs dealing with racist fans to Indian call-centre agents dealing with customers who imitate their accents and accuse them of being illiterate. But there is little consensus on how staff should respond.
At one end of the spectrum there are those who believe all racist taunts should be endured with equanimity. These include managers of call centres in India who insist on detachment at all times, their attitude being epitomised in an article on the internet that advises agents to deal with abuse by "counting from one to 10", "destressing with a breathing technique" or "keeping a photograph of a loved one" on a desk so they can glance at it "for reassurance and moral support".
At the other end are those who try to be proactive. These include football governing bodies such as Fifa, which are increasingly warning they will not tolerate racist abuse from fans and are prepared to use fines, dock points and kick clubs out of competitions. There is also an Indian organisation called The Young Professionals Collective, which recently blamed turnover rates as high as 60 per cent at Indian call centres on racial abuse, and argued that customers who repeatedly make racist comments should be barred or reported to local police stations around the world.
But while most companies, including the Financial Times, regard racist behaviour by employees as gross misconduct, few (the FT included) have a policy on the issue of racist abuse by customers. This is surprising as diversity is the fad of the moment and racial abuse is a real problem. This month the British trade union Usdaw reported that 500,000 UK retail staff suffer verbal abuse every day, some of which is racist. Maybe companies are so focused on new, subtle forms of racism that they are neglecting old-fashioned racial abuse.
On reflection, I do not think there is a need for detailed policies on what to do with abusive customers. The last thing the world needs is companies publishing more idealistic twaddle on race. Besides, every case needs to be dealt with differently. Someone being racially abused face-to-face in a shop is in a much graver situation than the one I found myself in. The police might need to get involved in the former, and while in retrospect I think my employer's response could have been more sympathetic - an offer to see the message or deal with it on my behalf would have been appreciated - ignoring "Richard" was clearly the right thing to do.
However, there is a minimum that all staff should expect from their employers in such scenarios, and that is simply an acknowledgement that the customer is in the wrong. It is a disgrace that some call-centre agents in India have been fired for simply daring to respond to racial taunts, and that some retail staff are told just to get on with it after horrendous abuse. It is one thing to turn the other cheek of your own volition, but quite another to be told to do so.
At the risk of sounding like one of those posters you see in London Underground stations, everybody, even call-centre agents and newspaper columnists, should be entitled to work without fear of intimidation and to receive support, even just of the moral variety, when things go wrong.
向种族主义顾客说“不”
迄
今为止，当报纸专栏作家的最大好处就是可以收到很多读者来信。单是今天早晨，我就收到了以下内容的信件：1）一封来自“西北部国立监狱”(Northwest State Correctional Facility)的读者来函，开篇令人难以置信：“我是个犯人，同时也是英国《金融时报》的订户”；2）某读者建议我跟他们的女儿来一次约会；3）还有读者发出邀请，邀请我在“欧洲搬家协会”(European Relocation Association)明年的年会上发言。
但偶尔也会有一些不那么有趣的信息。几个月前，我就收到过一封这样的电子邮件，是自称为“理查德”的什么人发来的。在对我写的某篇文章进行了惯常的严厉批评、将我称为“被宠坏的势利傻蛋”之后，他以帮忙的姿态，建议我回到“（我）出身的印度或是哪个肮脏落后的国家”去。
我通常会不假思索地删除辱骂性信息，但这次，我却发现自己对着这封邮件盯了好一阵儿。首先，我很吃惊，尽管我已经提过几千次，但某位读者仍然没弄明白，我其实来自中英格兰西部，不是印度。而且，虽然伍尔弗汉普顿确实又肮脏又落后，但那毕竟只是一个城市，而不是一个国家。此外，我几乎无法相信，竟然有人愚蠢到这种地步，通过一个既能表明其身份、又能表明其雇主身份的电子邮件地址，来发送这样一条种族主义讯息。我轻而易举就可以进行言辞激烈的回复，并且同时抄送给他的老板。
就在我打算这么干的时候，我向一位经理提到了这封信，他立即建议我抵住诱惑，不要做出反应。他告诉我，女性专栏作家永远都会收到歧视女性者的来信，而我应该像她们那样：删掉它、不再去想。我记得当时我确实想了一会儿，性别歧视是否跟种族主义一样糟糕。不过，我对“理查德”的愤怒很快被另一件更深刻的事情给压下去了：那就是感觉缺乏自控。新闻业有个不成文的规则，那就是你不能被读者对自己作品的反应打扰，而我却触犯了行规。最后，我删掉了这条讯息，没有进行回应。
然而，最近几周，齐内丁?齐达内(Zinedine Zidane)在德国世界杯(World Cup)的决赛上用头撞了马克罗?马特拉齐(Marco Materazzi)，引发了关于人们应该如何应对种族主义谩骂的争论，于是我又开始想那封邮件了，并且想知道各公司一般会怎样处理这类事件。人们认为，顾客永远是正确的；但如果顾客是一个白痴，那该如何是好？
这是一个令所有人烦恼的问题，从那些与种族主义球迷打交道的足球俱乐部，到那些与模仿话务员口音、指责话务员没文化的顾客打交道的印度呼叫中心话务员，所有人都会遇到这个问题。不过，关于员工应该如何应对，却没有一致的看法。
在各种观点中，一个极端是认为应该镇静忍耐所有种族主义谩骂。持有这种观点的人就包括印度呼叫中心的经理们，他们在任何时候都坚持冷漠超然。网上有一篇文章可以概括他们这种态度，文章建议话务员面对辱骂的时候，“从1数到10”、“用呼吸法减轻压力”，或者，在桌上“摆一张钟爱之人的照片”，以便可以不时地扫一眼，“获得安慰和精神支持”。
另一个极端是那些试图采取主动的人，其中包括国际足联(FIFA)等足球管理机构。它们日益警告称，将不会容忍来自球迷的种族主义辱骂行为，并准备对类似行为采取罚款、扣分和取消比赛资格等惩罚。一家名为The Young Professionals Collective的印度组织最近称，印度呼叫中心高达60%的员工离职率应归咎于种族主义辱骂行为。它强调，那些一再发出种族主义言论的客户的电话应该被禁止呼入，或者应向全球各地警察局汇报。
然而，尽管多数公司，包括英国《金融时报》在内，都将员工种族主义行为视为完全失当，但几乎没有一家公司（包括《金融时报》）就客户的种族主义恶习制定相关政策。在多样性成为当今时尚，且种族主义恶习成为一个真正问题之际，这种情况令人相当吃惊。英国工会组织商店雇员工会(Usdaw)本月表示，50万英国零售企业员工每天遭受辱骂，其中一些就属于种族主义性质。或许企业更加关注以隐蔽形式出现的新种族主义，而忽视了旧式的种族主义行为。
仔细思量之下，我认为，对于如何处理有种族主义行为的客户，不需要制定具体政策。这个世界最不需要做的一件事，就是公司就种族问题发表更不切实际的空话。另外，具体问题要具体分析。某人在商店内当面受到种族主义辱骂，要比我自己在本文开头所说的情况更为严重。前者可能需要警方介入，而回头想想我的经历，我想，我的雇主的回应或许可以表现得更有同情心一些――如果他要求看一下那封信，或者替我去解决这个问题，都会让我感激不尽。但显然，不去理会那个“理查德”是明智之举。
然而，在遭受种族主义歧视的情况下，所有员工都指望雇主能够做出最低限度的反应，而这个反应也仅仅就是承认客户的行为是错误的。令人感到耻辱的是，仅仅是由于敢于对这些种族主义辱骂行为作出反应，印度一些呼叫中心的话务员就遭到了解雇，在经历了可怕的种族主义辱骂后，一些零售企业的员工还被勒令继续忍受。你自愿把另一边脸送过去给人扇耳光是一回事，但如果是有人命令你这么做，那就是另外一回事了。
