770: My Lying Eyes
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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbearped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. The new guy had been there for a month, and he was coming to meetings all the time, and the meetings were in Zoom, but he never turned on his camera. One of his co-workers, Phil, says that wasn't a big deal. Lots of people do that. This was a tech startup. Maybe it's just engineers, maybe it's our company culture, like I always have my camera off. But then his fourth week on the job, the new guy turned it on. And then that's when I was like, who is this guy? And when you say, who is this guy, why, what were you seeing versus what you were expecting to see? Well, so when I interviewed him, he had his camera on, and literally he looked different, like physically, just different. Also, during the job interview, every time this guy would answer a question, he would give this big smile. It was almost as if he was tying a bow around his answer, and just like, in this pleasant smile. He's charming. This guy on the Zoom, that pleasant smile. The smile at all. In fact, just the opposite. He was sort of a scowy, dark presence, but there was another part to it. The other part of it was trying to find the most PC way to say this, but he's Indian. And so there was a part of me that I'll put it this way. I'm Asian American. I've had Caucasian friends mention to me, like, hey, that guy over there, he looks exactly like you. And I'm like, dude, that guy does not look like me at all. So I sort of had that thought too, and I felt a little bit guilty about it, to be honest. I was like, oh, I guess this is the right person, and it's kind of on me. Wait, wait, but are you saying that you thought, oh, wait a second. He looks really different, but maybe I just can't tell with an Indian person, like am I racist? Is that what you're saying? Yes, but I'm not racist. Yeah. But a thing that was the question in your head. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I felt kept out of this to himself. There was another person who noticed that there was something different about the new guy. There's somebody else who feels boss, super, who also supervised the new guy, who hired him, and he was Indian. Suba was struck by one detail in particular. So the person who interviewed, you know, he had curly hair, dark curly hair, memorably curly hair, like this was a thing that hit Suba about the guy, the first time he interviewed
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