Your Company Made You Do What?! I’ve Got a Story for Ya

The world is in a constant state of change. That change will no doubt show up in your office. Companies will make radical changes to policies and procedures to protect their bottom line. Have you ever been asked or told you have to do something ridiculous by your employer?

I have a story. Years ago, I made a comment on the Ethan and Lou show that was considered offensive to a group of people by one person. I may or may not have said that a specific person likely smells like a sandwich from a big fast food chain.

Because this person was a certain race, I was making the statement about the whole race in their opinion. Someone alerted the fast food chain about my remark. I was, for obvious reasons asked to apologize. In fact, the company (fast food chain) wrote my apology for me and MY COMPANY asked me to sign it. For the record, they told me, they did not ask me.

The statement written for me said nothing about how I may have offended an entire race. Now, that should have been the statement if they believed I was being racially insensitive. The statement instead was that this certain sandwich from this certain restaurant does not smell like this group of people.

I want to be clear about this, nowhere in their wording was there a mention of anyone at this company being offended on behalf of this race. Instead they wanted to be clear that their sandwiches did not smell like these people.

Like, that's real. Maybe that can be their new ad campaign. Our delicious sandwiches smell like no one's race. Try our delicious, non-racially scented sandwiches today! For a limited time grab our brand new scrumptious sandwich that smells like no one you know.

DISCLAIMER - I was not being racially insensitive. I was talking about a celebrity who looks smelly. The listener in question attached race to this. I never mentioned race. 

That's my best story and it is true. My company actually had little involvement in the situation. They were doing their best to protect my job from this absurd situation. I just think the other companies priorities were a bit off, also whoever wrote it is lucky it never went public.

So what crazy thing has your company asked you to do or made you do? GO!