The co-worker of a friend of mine was fired because she used the phrase “not my circus, not my monkeys” in the workplace and a black employee complained that it was racist.
I’m sorry, but unless the person used the phrase to describe an entirely black group of employees, and everyone else is white, that’s ridiculous.
There has to be more to it.
There are many, many references to the saying on the internet that show that no one associates it with race. Your friend should be able to assemble these examples and file a protest.
When I hear stories like “a friend of a friend was fired for X”, I am always dubious. While I don’t doubt that someone would object to something like that, I doubt someone would be fired for it. They may get the person into HR and explain to them about things that can be taken wrong (the expression in question has nothing to do with racism, the same way black ice has nothing to do with racism), but fired for it? They would be open to all kinds of lawsuits on that one, for improper termination. I suspect the person in question who was fired had some track record of other problems.
Agree with Consolation - there has to be more to the story.
Popular saying? Maybe it’s regional because I have never heard it.
So, we’re at third-hand information? Sorry, I don’t believe it. While your friend may believe it and that’s what she told you, there has to be more to the story. Unless, of course, the company welcomes wrongful termination suits.
I also agree that there must be much more to the story, but the above statement is incorrect for at-will employment. In such employers, an employee can be terminated “for any reason, or for no reason…”
Maybe it speaks more to the employees not accepting responsibility for something , not racism . Whenever I’ve heard the term , the implication was" it’s not my fault " or “it’s not my problem” Was the employee asked to do something before they gave that response ?
Used all the time in my workplace… it always makes me think of the Wizard of Oz.
Wow. If this is true (though I have strong doubts as to its validity), then I feel slightly ashamed. At this point, we minorities seem to be looking for non-existent skeletons in an equally existent closet.
Anyhow, I don’t believe a single complaint would be enough to get anyone fired, especially if this saying is super common in whichever region this happened.
I have just recently embraced this phrase to help me make better choices on whether to jump into a dramatic situation within family or friends’ lives. Being able to state “not my circus, not my monkeys” helps me to back away instead of jumping in emotionally and hoping to fix an unfixable mess.
I had never even considered that it might be considered racist.
Another recent adopter of this phrase. According to a couple of the links that my friend Google supplied, it’s an old Polish phrase, so I’m not sure why someone is taking it to be racist in nature.
I agree with Powercropper (#10) and use the phrase the same way. A good friend, who happens to be first generation Polish-American, uses the phrase in both English and Polish for the same reason.
I would also think there’s more to the back story of the firing. Where we’ve lived, at-will employment is the norm with the exception of members of unions for public school teachers, postal workers, etc., so employers can terminate for no specific reason. We still hear stories of some precipitating event, real or speculative.
^^ Well, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to understand why saying something about “monkeys” COULD be interpreted as racist by African Americans. That said, the origin IS an old Polish phrase and Polish people find it very funny how it’s been appropriated in the US.
FWIW, the “not my monkey” phrase is a slogan used by a highly successful motivational speaker, Terry Watson, who is biracial. https://www.terrywatson.com/
I picked it up while GSIing for a Eastern European film course. It’s not racist.
I don’t believe this for a second. Not saying the OP is lying but I’m thinking the fired party is not being truthful.
Well… there ARE stupid bosses in the world. And people who take offense easily. Could be a bad combo of the two.
"I also agree that there must be much more to the story, but the above statement is incorrect for at-will employment. In such employers, an employee can be terminated “for any reason, or for no reason…”
That isn’t entirely true, it is complicated, while most places are at will (which means an employer can terminate employment at any time, or an employee can quit), in the courts and in how things play out that isn’t true. For example, that at will is modified by 'where not covered by law", and employer if they are found to have fired someone for being black, or a woman, or of some faith, anything that is protected by law, cannot be used in firing. Likewise, if an employer decides to lay people off, and a lot of them are older workers, they can run into problems with that.
More importantly, it also depends on the state, in states friendly to employees, like NY and NJ, juries can and will decide that something is improper termination, especially in something like this where if this is true, the employee was fired for something that may in effect be reverse discrimination, someone assuming that something was racist, went off the rails, and someone got fired. I can tell you that even in at will states, it is a lot harder to fire employees than the law would make you think, most companies are well aware that in the courts, or the court of public opinion, that firing someone can snowball on them, it is why they give malperforming employees warnings, why managers are supposed to document things, they spent a lot of time in grad school on OB and business law courses talking about things like this. Even if the law allows such firings, companies realize that it can be costly and may not protect them, much the same way that those warnings at ball parks and amusement parks that they have no liability for what happens to you, or when you sign a waiver, mean very little if you went to court with them.
Never heard of this one. I use “not my table” or “I’ve got no horse in this race” [a similar concept but not quite the same].
Sometimes a monkey is just a monkey.
The vast majority of people work for companies that don’t really have HR departments, and the vast majority of people who are fired never think of filing a law suit or a complaint with some official agency, even if it is blatantly unfair.
Honestly, the work/benefits world as experienced by people who are at large companies is in fact another world.