The war in Lebanon reaches far beyond that land, in great and small ways. One of my lab members, Thaira (not her real name) is American and Lebanese, a dual citizen. Her situation illustrates how this hits hard here in the U.S., where many think of this as only a distant conflict.

Some of the harder issues for my tolerance – not that I should tolerate any of this – are local. Last week Thaira lost a great new job, in her initial two weeks of training, almost certainly because of the conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

Thaira is studying for her college degree; She’s a great student, and a wonderful addition to my lab, given her conscientiousness, her excellent people skills, and her broad perspective on human behavior. She’s lived on three continents and speaks multiple languages. Her years as a child and teen in the Northeastern U.S. make her English fluent, idiomatic, but softened by a very slight unplaceable accent, likely due to family, foreign language schools, and varied U.S. regional homes.

Thaira’s father and stepmother, plus Thaira’s younger siblings, have been living in Lebanon. Mercifully, her dad, who is quite ill, has just arrived in the U.S., along with his younger kids (they are all U.S. citizens). His wife, however, is not a U.S. citizen. Therefore, she was not allowed to come with her very sick husband, even with children who are not so old as to fend for themselves easily. Hard choices.  

Thaira and her husband have both been working at two jobs, to bring his younger brother in Lebanon to the U.S. for college. This brother was approved for a Visa just before hostilities broke out, but he had not received the Visa. His situation is not known now. His family lives in a dangerous area, and their home was close to one hit by a rocket a few days ago.

Thaira and her husband work in restaurants, he planning to own one someday, she as a means of income while she finishes college. It has not been easy. More than once when restaurants have learned that she is Islamic, they have not hired her, or have laid her off if already hired, or fired her, saying that customers found her hard to understand. Some have commented that she doesn’t look “like that, you know”, clearly signaling that they might not have hired her had they known she was a Muslim. Her blond hair and green eyes make her outside their stereotypes, clearly.

Very recently she was hired by one of the more exclusive restaurants in our area. This is very good for her:  Much more money because of better tips and a better work schedule that does not interfere with her schooling. She had two weeks training ahead of her, including a notebook of dishes with all their ingredients, and other information to commit to memory. With her people skills, intelligence, and previous experience, I expected her to be a natural. In addition, her language skills, I thought, would be a great asset to the restaurant.

One week into her training, war broke out. Thaira and her husband had three anxious days of no contact with their families. She did not sleep, and was very distracted in her training. She attempted to explain, but when she mentioned Lebanon, she was silenced and told no excuses would be tolerated. She pushed herself harder, and she mastered the menu, wine list, and the other things. Finally, as the last test before working independently, she served a meal to the cook and hostess, while her training waiter watched. He wrote up an evaluation, for Thaira and the manager.

Except that’s not exactly how it went. Less than 5 minutes after her test, Thaira was called in, and a four page, single-space evaluation was flashed in front of her; from the test she just completed, she was told. The manager read through the evaluation aloud. Thaira is clearly “not elite restaurant caliber”, as she did not master the menu and wine list until near the end of the training period. When a customer asked her about a red wine during training, she confused the facts about two wines she described. Furthermore, her English is bad.

However, it is her “final exam” that she has flunked, outright. Thaira is told she did not offer wine or beverages to the hostess (Thaira insists that she did, and asked that the Manager bring the Hostess in and ask her – perhaps the training waiter overlooked this, but the Manager refused.). The write-up accuses her of being difficult to understand in English, but gives no example. When Thaira asks for an example, Thaira is told that during the final test meal, “You said goodest, a word not found in English, over and over again.” (Thaira says: that word doesn’t exist in the other languages I know, either! I haven’t said goodest since I was about 2!”).

Thaira acknowledged that she was distracted during training, and this made her slow in learning all of the ingredients to the entire menu, as well as memorizing details about the wine list. She explained about Lebanon and her family situation, but said that she learned the material as she demonstrated, and disputes that she did make the two errors during the final exam. The manager just said again that there was no excuse for Thaira to do so badly if she were really a high caliber waitress, but clearly, she was not, at least not in this situation. And she was dismissed.

Thaira got the impression, more by appearance and the way things were said, that her identity influenced her evaluation. She acknowledges that the crisis in Lebanon definitely affected her concentration. What can a person do when crises make working up to standard all but impossible? What if biases also intrude? Why would Thaira’s “language problems” that were so apparent at the end of her training, not be evident in the lengthy round of interviews she had in getting the job?