I couldn’t make this up even if I wanted to. Larry Whitten, a hotel owner in Taos, New Mexico fired a bunch of Hispanic employees because they refused to shorten or change their names. Why? apparently because Mr. Whitten is afraid he cannot pronounce them correctly.

So basically, if you’re Martínez, Mr. Whitten wants you to be Martin; if you’re Marcos, you might as well consider responding to the name of Marc… And if your name happens to be Guadalupe, Esperanza, Montserrat or Salvador, well… I think you’ll be better off just shooting yourself.

[All this is happening in a town called Taos, which now makes me wonder if in a pre-Whitten era it was actually called Tacos?]

Does anybody know?