This story reminded me of an experience I suffered.
Football team rivalries are often at the heart of banter in the workplace. But fans can be legally denied jobs by a potential employer if current staff support a rival team, a judge has ruled. Companies are allowed to base recruitment decisions on whether a prospective colleague might ‘damage office harmony’, Employment Judge Daniel Wright said. As such, he said, the boss of a business would not break employment law if he rejected a job application from a Tottenham Hotspur season ticket holder because his office is full of Arsenal fans.
It’s a good thing that this was not a big deal when I first started working for the Great Big Research Company in Chicago, after The Great Wetback Episode of 1986. Some back story is necessary.
When I first arrived in Murka back then, I stayed with Friend Trevor in Austin TX while my visa issues were resolved (long story, not worth the telling). Anyway, Trevor was hooked into some cocktail party or other so I tagged along.
I didn’t know anybody, of course, so I was leaning against the bar watching the passing parade — oy, what a show, Austin High Society in full swing — when a very tall blonde guy of about 50 walked over to get a drink, and we started chatting. Turns out that Bob was actually the recipient of this party, as his photographs were being displayed. They were extremely good, and I complimented him accordingly (being myself at the time a very keen amateur clicker). We chatted about f-stops and such for a while, and after that I felt comfortable in asking him whether pro photography was that profitable as a career. He looked amused, and said, “It’s pretty much a retirement career for me.” So of course I asked him what he’d done before, and again that amused look. “I played for the Dallas Cowboys,” he said.
I’d been chatting to Bob Lilly, legendary cornerstone of the Cowboys’ Doomsday Defense, Hall of Famer and “Mr. Cowboy” himself.
Of course I apologized for my gaucheness in not knowing who he was — blamed my ignorance on my recent immigration — but he just laughed and said, “It’s actually been a pleasure talking to someone who doesn’t want to ask me all about that damn Green Bay game in 1966.”
A lovely man and a thorough gentleman. (I was struck by his enormous hands — I have fairly large hands myself, but when we shook hands, mine disappeared into his grip completely — but his touch while firm was quite gentle, which I think is fitting of the man himself.) Anyway, on the strength of that fine encounter and because of where I was living, I became a Dallas Cowboys fan.
Which really helped when I moved to Chicago, home of “Da Bearce”, in 1987.
The Bears and their fans were still living in the glow of their 1985 Superbowl victory, and my status as a Cowboys fan was not helped by that infamous 1989 season (quarterback Troy Aikman’s first) in which the Cowboys went 1-15. Many were the rude comments sent my way — “Of all the teams in the NFL you could have chosen to support, you had to pick the Cowboys?” — but I just grinned and made sure to wear my Cowboys sweater at all office functions which didn’t require a suit and tie.
It helped that only a couple years later the Cowboys beat the Bears in the playoffs, and the anti-Cowboy jibes ended completely in 1991 when the Cowboys won the first of their several Super Bowls under Aikman and Jimmy Johnson, and the Bears became a second-rate team (then, and since).
Anyway, as being a sports fan in Murka is nowhere near as partisan a thing as it is in Third World countries like Britishland, my job at the GBRC was never insecure, in either the getting or the keeping, thank goodness.
I should mention that I’m no longer a Cowboys fan — no special reason, I just don’t care for American football, preferring actual football (where the ball is played with the feet instead of being carried like an egg or tossed like a beanbag).
Go ahead and hate.
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