Indian sacked by McDonald's heads credit card giant in US

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2005/August/subcontinent_August880.xml§ion=subcontinent&col=

CHICAGO — An Indian American, who as a newly arrived immigrant was sacked by McDonald's because he could not comprehend his supervisor's instructions, now heads Illinois's largest credit card issuer.

Iftekhar Shareef, president and chief executive of National Bankcard Corp that has an annual sales volume of $100 million, has come a long way since that episode. "I had never been exposed to spoken American English," Shareef said. "Those days television in India was nascent and there were no Western TV serials."

One day, his supervisor at McDonald's asked him to fetch the mop. "I knew what a broom was, but I did not know what he meant by a mop," said Shareef. But the final straw came when the supervisor asked him to bring Pine Sol, a cleaner and disinfectant and found Shareef searching for it in the freezer. He was fired hours later.

Diminutive, unflappable and soft-spoken, Shareef is a frequent presence in Indian community events in Chicago. With success have come some of its trappings. Shareef owns a Bentley and said he finds most Americans looking intently at the rear seat when he drives it.

[powwowdancer]

1. Good On Ya!

Shareef owns a Bentley and said he finds most Americans looking intently at the rear seat when he drives it.

Typical... knee-jerk racial profiling. But, on the bright side, at least he's not in Texas being chased by marauding, armed, redneck, vigilante thugs who've appointed themselves as anathema to anything with brown skin.

Posse Comitatus,

:dem:
powwowdancer out

[Rich Hunt]

2. good

I'm sick of their b.s. little ethnic "system". I hope brown-skinned people run everything - it would be their worst nightmare.

[niallmac]

3. Way to super size yourself! Nice story.