In upstate South Carolina, I would guess most people work with a bunch of angry white men. In fact, I'm a 40-something white man, native of the upper midwest, who lives and works here in the upstate. I work for a very large company that has a good-sized branch office here. Anyway, the department I work in is about 20-strong, of which I'm probably the only one who voted for the winner on Tuesday.
Our department is primarily white men, 55-65, most of whom have worked together for 20 years now. A few younger ones, male and female, but they're of the same tilt politically. I firmly believe I'm the only progressive. A few people in this department are especially loud and obnoxious about their politics. I hear offensive "jokes", borderline racial rants, and more, every day, and it got worse as the election got closer. They were all way too overconfident on Tuesday, and had a pool going with how many EV Romney was going to end up with. The lowest number selected was 290. The loudest and most obnoxious of them said several times on Tuesday, regarding the president playing basketball in Chicago that day, "I hope someone goes Lee Harvey Oswald on him".
I knew how the election would turn out, and I was right. I knew Wednesday would be a good day for me to be at work. Needless to say, this place was a funeral home on Wednesday morning. Lee Harvey Oswald made another appearance, Chris Matthews was threatened, and I could go on and on. And it's continued all week, and is going on as I type this this morning. Doom and gloom, hearing such things as "I pulled all my money out of the stock market last week as I feared this would happen" and "I took my bumper stickers off my car yesterday because who knows what would happen to it around here after 'he' won".
I keep my mouth shut. It would not be in my best interests to get into discussions with these clowns, as they might have some influence over whether or not I remain employed. I work in a position where I do marketing work for the group, so I'm not "one of them" to begin with. And this is not a good region to be unemployed in, as far as being able to obtain a new job at a decent wage. A co-worker out of state of the same political bent that I am, that I've told these tales to thinks I should talk to HR, but we have an ineffectual HR rep here in our office who most likely shares their beliefs. She says no one even talks politics at their office. I could go to corporate HR, but I fear being exposed once this gets looked at. As I said, I keep my mouth shut, so it wouldn't take a genius to figure out who might have complained. We have an anonymous ethics hotline, but I don't know if a situation like this falls into that realm.
Anyone have any thoughts on how they would proceed? I could continue to keep my mouth shut, as this will lessen over time, naturally.
Wow, as an aside, I just heard that "by the time he gets out of office, over 60% of this country will be totally on entitlements".
Back to the narrative. Any ideas on whether or not I should say anything? I just feel like something needs to be said or done, but not sure what, and don't want to jeopardize my position.
