Pride and Prejudice for Morons

One of the things I love about working for NABABNA is that NABABNA embraces diversity.  It is wonderful to work for a company that:

• gleefully offers health insurance to domestic partners, completely not caring if your domestic partner is of the same sex or the opposite sex of you (which, if you listen to the stupid, stupid man who is running our country, is completely wrong and we're probably all going to hell)
• promotes on the basis of who the best person for the job is and pays everyone in the position the same wage, not promoting or paying based on race, gender or sexual preference
• is heavily involved in community programs that benefit all people and will not contribute to community programs that exclude based on race, gender or sexual preference

As you can imagine, this sometimes draws fire from the, oh, how do I say this tactfully?  The absolute morons who think that they are better than everyone else and how dare we support anything that they personally feel is wrong?  Now, people, I don't have a problem with you believing what you want.  That's your right as an American.  However, that does not give you the order me to change my beliefs, it does not give you the right to suppress others because they are of a different race, gender or sexual preference than and it certainly does not give you the right to perform hate crimes against said others as well.

So, anyway, NABABNA has been involved in sponsoring Pride Festivals.  And there are people who don't like this.  Which is fine, I accept that they have a right to their opinion.  Just like I have the right to think that they are silly, narrow-minded people.  And if they don't want to bank at NABABNA because they don't like the fact that we support Pride, that's also fine.  Go ahead and leave.  Maybe you can find the local branch of the We Hate Everyone Who Isn't Us bank.

What I do have a problem with is when these people think that it would be a great idea to call and feed me their propaganda.  Here is a conversation that I had last month with a customer.  Or, I should say, soon to be ex-customer.  In order for you to get the true effect of the call, imagine that the words in italic parentheses are what he is actually saying.  So if he said "You people" his tone would indicate that he was placing us on the same level with (leperous dregs of society).

A banker calls up and tells me that he has a customer who wants to speak to a supervisor but won't say why.  This happens occasionally and so I ask the banker to transfer the customer.

DM:  Thank you for holding, sir.  My name is Dana and I'm a supervisor at NABABNA.  How may I help you?

Self-righteous idiot who is going to annoy me very much (SRI for short):  Yes.  I was driving through Name of City yesterday and I saw that they were having a Pride Festival (Ritual Slaying of Small Children).  And then I saw representatives from NABABNA (representatives of SATAN) had a booth there.  This is disgusting.

DM:  Well, sir, NABABNA prides itself on it's diversity (yes, I said pride.  Yes, I did it on purpose to indicate that I thought he was a narrow-minded bigot and I now hated him with a fiery passion) and...

SRI (cuts me off):  Well, your diversity (diseased-ridden values) is why you will be losing me (akin to royalty) as your customer.

DM:  I'm sorry to hear that, sir (I am rejoicing and singing praises to God).

Here's what this guy doesn't know.  I have five male friends.  I love them all very, very much and they are all gay.  And when you start knocking gays and saying that they shouldn't have the right to marry or adopt or breathe, you're talking about my extended family.  And you're ticking me off.  So I love the fact that NABABNA is out there supporting Pride.  And if you don't like it, well, I'm sorry to see you leave but I hope that someday you will see the light and realize that you're not any better than anyone else.