[BanannaMan]

All the talk of racism here in the US, and touched on in another thread here, reminded me of the time I took a job in manufacturing.


Sometimes it only needs to start with a few people.

I went to work at a factory that, totally unknown to me, was having serious racial tensions.

I worked in one of the less populated areas of the plant and was introduced to two black guys as the people I would be working near.
Both were as nice as anyone has ever been to me and helped me learn my job as well as helping cover for me until I did! LOL

We are still friends to this day and whenever we see each other in public we stop and talk for 30 mins.
One of them is the father of Charles Haley, the famous American football player.
So....working with these guys I had no idea there were racial problems.

Different departments and different jobs took their lunch break at different times so my first night in the company cafeteria I arrive and no one else is there.
I get my food and pick a table across the room and have a seat back to the wall.
Slowly people began to trickle in and I am kind of looking around to see who's there when I see a very attractive black girl looking right at me
and as she leaves the food line she walks right up to my table and asks if she can sit down.
So of course I say yes.
The cafeteria never fills up while I am there so I fail to notice any racial tensions going on.
Same thing the next night. We have a great time laughing and conversating. Thinking nothing of it.

Then on the third night...Just as Jackie (the black girl) sat down another very attractive girl comes up to us. She is Korean and speaks in broken English but she manages to get out....and you could tell she had practiced these words....Can I sit with you? I'm not black or white I don't know what table to sit at. It doesn't matter what colour you are at this table, I want to sit with you!
We welcome her to sit down and she is just overjoyed to be there.

I ask Jackie , "What is she talking about?" and then she tells me....
All the white people sit on the other side, all the black people sit on this side.
Again Sookie, the Korean girl says. "it doesn't matter what colour you are at this table". And it didn't!
Haha turns out I had sit in Jackie's regular seat!
The three of us became great friends! Had a really good time with these girls!

Well, a 40 year old white guy having lunch, laughing and talking with two very attractive and much younger women of different races about blew the roof off the place!!!
We were the talk of factory for while! LOL
But in a month or so other people started eating on either side of the cafeteria and soon began talking to each other again.


The three of us continued to have lunch at our regular table for the little over a year that I worked there. ( still friends with these girls too!)


Didn't go unnoticed by the top brass either. The CEO as well as many of the other top company officials thanked me for "improving employee relations".


Sometimes it only takes a handful people to remind others that we don't have to hate each other!


And remembering this is definitely my smile of the day...maybe my smile of the week!