As Mark Twain said, “the right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause”
It doesn’t matter how high you are on the corporate ladder these days, especially if you choose to say bad things about people solely based on race. That’s the lesson learnt by Rainer Gartner, a Daimler manager in China, who let slip much more than was necessary during a parking altercation in Beijing.
Gartner, who had been a Daimler manager in the PRC for almost a year, reportedly made a comment along the lines of “I am in China one year already. The first thing I learned here is: All you Chinese are bastards.” This comes just over a month after Günther Oettinger, Germany’s EU commissioner, remarked that the Chinese officials he came in contact with had “slit eyes” and “their hair brushed from left to right with black shoe polish”.
Returning to Gartner, he apparently didn’t stop there, as witnesses reported he also used pepper spray on the crowd that had gathered around the altercation area. Other witnesses reported that the parking spot that caused discord was not even his and the person he was arguing with was actually the rightful owner of said spot.
Daimler issued an official statement apologizing for the incident. It said “the nature of the dispute and in particular the manner in which it was conducted, irrespective of any comments alleged to have been made, is adjudged to be not only of concern to the public but viewed by us as detrimental to the standing of our company, unbecoming of a manager of our brand and prejudicial to our good name.”
via Shanghaiist