Wow what an amazing send off! <3

I actually need help with what to do now, not with how I fucked up at the time.

It's basically a series of realtime chat rooms.

Yeah I was super confused at how this is a new thing because we've had chat rooms for forever? But ok I guess.

Hm, no code of conduct that I know of, and the only part of the training that touched on what I might call disadvantaged populations and how not to be an asshole was the ADA section. Under federal election law, you aren't allowed to discriminate based on the usual list of categories, though. Ugh.

We actually do get paid as regular employees of the county, so this is probably a good angle to take.

Gnh. Ok, Toasts, I have a problem and I'd like some insight on it before the very last Open Thread.

I worked my first election as a poll worker this week. It was very, very slow -- it was a primary for the congressional district I live in, we had about 30 total voters over nine hours. Anyway, as I'm sure you guys are familiar with, poll workers tend to be retirees with lots of time on their hands, so I was expecting a certain amount of uh, generational difference with regard to stuff like language and racial issues and whatever (I'm in my late 30s and queer, fairly visibly so). I was hoping to keep conversation light, I brought a book, and was just hoping to get through the nine hours as comfortably as possible.

Except....there was one person, an older woman, who just would not stop talking. And the stuff she talked about was peppered throughout with offensive racial stuff, ranging from commentary on "the blacks" and how "those people are," to the insidious infiltration of Guatemalans (very specifically for some reason), to actually using, multiple times, an offensive racial slur for Muslim people.

I want to say something, but I don't want to be blacklisted from participating in future elections. I have very little capital built up here, this being my very first time doing this, but I also strongly, STRONGLY believe this person should not be representing the county government! How do I approach this? If I email the coordinators, what even do I put in the subject line? Obviously SOMEthing needs to be said!

SAME

I think the problem that Halloween Jack is pointing out is that it never once occurred to the group of interns that the person receiving an exception from the dress code might have a medical reason for it, and just assumed it wasn't faaaiiirrr. This is an important thing for these interns to learn, and will serve them well in the future -- assume that things you think aren't fair actually have a sound basis and ask your boss questions about how decisions on exceptions are made instead of demanding equal treatment.

This is an object lesson in what a lot of AAM deals with -- namely, whatever it is, your boss probably has very good reasons for doing it, and those reasons are almost certainly not your business.