Getting To Know Me

Evil

At my old job, we used to play this ongoing game. It was a lot of fun. The game basically consists of accusing other people (or yourself) of being racist. Here are some examples:

- Ethnic mixup: Referring to someone as one ethnicity, but they're really something else. Most common mixups are Chinese/Korean/Japanese and Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi. Whenever this happens, we all shout, "Racist!"

- Name mixup: Calling someone by the wrong name... the name of someone else who's of the same ethnicity. So, someone might say, "Hey, Ben, I haven't seen you since the last sales conference." When this happens, we'd all shout, "That's not Ben, that's Greg! You can't tell Asians apart. Racist!"

- Outright racism: Always handy, this is when you fall back on race as an excuse or a cheap joke. Like after you finish interviewing someone for an open job and your Indian colleague asks you what you thought, a suitable response might be, "No more Indians, please. We're over quota."

Oh, those were fun times. The other night, I met two of my former colleagues for dinner and drinks. Our mood was boisterous. I was being myself... in other words, the brain-to-mouth filter had shut down for the evening. We re-lived old stories. Like the one about a colleague who lost 40 pounds for her wedding day and then put on 60 pounds right afterwards. And she was 5 feet tall! And then I revealed my long-standing, unfulfilled feature request of the company Intranet site. Like any company Intranet, you can look up a person's contact info, their group, their manager's name, etc. But I had long wished that you can also look up a person's current weight. How handy would that be!

One of my ex-coworkers, at this point, slapped me with an accusation: "You're a fattist!"

This disturbed me. Was I? I couldn't be. I am the guy who owns a "Chubby But Cute" tshirt. I am also the guy who owns the chubbybutcute.com domain. (Ooops, actually, it expired last week. Reminder to self: re-purchase on GoDaddy before some cruel squatter swipes it from me, the same way they stole fundits.com from me!) I am the guy who has an unhealthy relationship with food. So no, I couldn't be a fattist, could I?

Thankfully, there is a scientific way to test. Internet, you are so great! The researchers at Harvard University have a series of tests that can tell you if you're biased, based on certain factors. Their most popular test, as you might imagine, is the racism test. You can also test for age-based bias, religion-based bias, and tons of other fun stuff.

I rushed to take the "fattist" test. If I were indeed a fattist, I would at least want scientific proof. The result? Somewhat of a surprise, even for me:


It turns out that I'm not a fattist. But in fact, I might be somewhat of a reverse fattist, showing a slight preference for fatties over thinnies. Well, I'll take that. Now let me go find that Chubby But Cute tshirt and wear it to the diner. I'm in the mood for their Lumberjack Breakfast (3 pancakes, 3 French Toast, 2 eggs any style, bacon, ham, sausage, and coffee).