My best friend “K” and I have worked for the same company for the last seven years. It’s a small company and it’s where we met. The owner has a few other businesses and every year for New Year’s Day he hosts an annual bbq at his house for all his employees. K usually doesn’t attend because he spends the holiday with his own family. In 2019, K attended for the first time with me and we left early. I’m not sure what happened but K was visibly upset and any time I asked him about it, he would say he just preferred not to talk about it. I left it alone.
With the pandemic, the bbq hasn’t happened in the last few years but this year it was back on. I assumed K and I would be attending together again but when I asked him, he gave me a firm no. I told him I had had enough and wanted to know what the issue was. I didn’t understand what could have possibly happened that turned him off from attending since our boss was always friendly, as well as our co-workers and the folks from the other businesses.
K admitted to me that he had experienced some “microaggressions” while there. He ended up arguing with a manager from one of the other businesses who told him he was acting like “AH.” I can admit that the company has more foreign employees than locals. K being one of the few local employees there but no one there is racist. And from the way K told it, he started the argument anyway. I told him not to worry about those people and we should just go and have a good time. K sort of just shrugged and I thought we were good to go.
Day of the party came and I went to go pick K up and he tells me he’s not going and that he thought he made that clear. I told him he hadn’t and we began to argue. I lost it and told him he was being too sensitive and that if they were really racist they wouldn’t have hired him (which I stand by). I told him that words can’t hurt you and words was just words and that he was giving it too much power.
I left in anger and went and enjoyed myself at the bbq. We haven’t talked since.
I’ve tried calling him and talking to him at work, but I’m being ignored. I asked my brother’s girlfriend about the situation and she thinks I was being insensitive to K. I still think he’s overreacting but I’m also second-guessing myself because maybe I shouldn’t have yelled at him for not wanting to come.