Criminally Stupid Assumptions

The following was relayed to me by my boss after the employee in question left the company:

Employee: *Walking into boss’s office, looking grave.* “I need to report two coworkers for… illegal activity.”

Boss: *Concerned.* “Illegal activity? What kind of activity?”

Employee: “They were talking about… doing crimes!”

Boss: “Crimes? What crimes?”

Employee: “I don’t know exactly… but they said they were going to a convention with other criminals, and they were going to learn how to do crime there!”

Boss: *Blinking.* “…Wait. Are you talking about CrimeCon?”

He knew this because I was the employee in question, and I had told him about the convention earlier since I was taking that Friday off to attend it.

Employee: “Yes! That was it! You heard about it, too? Are there a bunch of criminals coming to town?”

Boss: “No… That’s a true crime convention. It’s for fans of murder podcasts, documentaries… people who are interested in hearing about crime stories. Not… actual criminals teaching classes on… uh… ‘doing crime.'”

Employee: “Oh.”

Awkward silence.

Boss: “Wait, wait, wait. You seriously thought criminals have a convention? That they advertise it, book out a convention centre, hang banners, and then gather to swap tips on, like, robbing banks or something?”

Employee: *Defensive.* “Well… we live in a world where gay people can close down the town centre and march in the street, so there’s really no way of knowing what’s next!”

At that point, he knew it was best not to continue. Educating the stupid is one thing, but the moment it descended into bigotry, it wasn’t worth his time.

A few months after this incident, she had quit the office as everyone was just too ‘worldly’ for her.