The one black guy in my small office (Will) is inarticulate, and he knows it. He calls it ebonics. The rest of us are caucasians. He says things like “I *brought* a dozen eggs at the store.” And it’s obvious he means “bought”, so anyone who tells him he should have said “bought” more than once is busting his balls because they want to be a grammar nazi.

Most people do this to him, but I don’t. But sometimes, he’ll say something that is truly confusing, and I’ll have to clarify. The long story is below, but **TL;DR: he failed to clearly communicate something, and when I tried to clarify it, he got offended and stormed out, then blamed me later for not understanding, so I think he’s an oversensitive asshole.

Does that make me the Asshole/Racist?**

One day, my boss, Mike, decides to try to sell his house. Will knows a guy who runs a store down the street and wants to buy a house, so he suggests it, and brings the guy by to see it. The boss isn’t around, so the guy from up the street asks for a floorplan and says he wants to come back another day to look at the house.

Will calls the boss (who is now out of town), and the boss tells him to have the guy call his mobile phone, so they can discuss it. At this point, Will tells me “Mike wants me to have the guy call him, so I’m walking over there to tell him. Can I have some floorplans to give him?” I give him the plans and he goes.

Will comes back and hands me the business card for the potential buyer’s store and a phone number and e-mail address written on a separate scrap paper. He tells me the guy wasn’t at his store so Will got the e-mail address from someone working there, and I need to e-mail the plans so he can see them today.

Then he said, “He told him to call him”. And I said “Mike’s already talked to him?” “No”, Will says. “He’s gotta call”. At this point, I have no idea what Will is trying to say, and Will seems annoyed that I already tried to clarify what he said once.

So I say “If Mike hasn’t spoken to him, I don’t understand what you mean by ‘He told him to call him’.” Then, he says “Nevermind, I’ll do it myself.” grabs the paper he just gave me, and begins to storm out. (He doesn’t have a scanner or the plan files, so he won’t be able to do it himself.) I tell him not to be so dramatic, because I’m happy to send the e-mail.

So he puts the paper with the e-mail address back down on my desk, and I ask what he means by “He told him to call him.” and he storms out, leaving the paper on my desk. So, I sent an e-mail with the floorplans to the potential buyer saying, “Will asked me to send you these plans for the house”.

A day later, no one has responded to the e-mail, or called the boss, and Will comes in to ask me why we didn’t get a call. Apparently, he never left any messages at the store. He just got the phone number and e-mail address, and expected me to tell the guy to call our boss.

Apparently, this is what the phrase “He told him to tell him to call” was meant to convey to me. I think he totally failed to communicate that, and when I tried to clarify what he was saying, he threw a hissyfit and left. Am I an asshole for thinking he’s being a bitch, and it’s his fault, not mine, that the job never got done?