It started with an old, white lady walking by me. As I greet her, she suddenly turns and looks away from me; I’m standing barely a foot away. Her husband does likewise. I shake my head, thinking, “More of these people?” I decide to test it out, so I call another Caucasian coworker to go greet the old lady. My coworker is several feet away from the woman and before she can even finish saying hello, and the woman turns towards her, “Oh, hello, I have some questions for you!” The old woman rushes up to her and asks her questions for a few minutes.
Afterward, I go to the girl saying, “I knew that would happen. What is wrong with these people? Am I supposed to be mowing their lawn or cleaning their pool? Am I supposed to be their manual labor around the house?” She tries to argue, as she does, that the woman has questions just for females, which makes so much sense why she tried so hard to ignore me.
I’m walking away and I see the old woman in the fitting room waving at her husband who is nearby. I decide to be a nice person, and I try to tell him, “Your wife is…
Cutting me off, he puts his hand in my face, saying, “Yes, yes! I already know!”
No, you don’t know, you old pile of garbage. What am I, offering you some discounts? “Excuse me? Your wife is trying to get your attention.”
He doesn’t even say more than, “Oh,” and turns and walks away from me. As you can suspect, I no longer exist.
I tell the same coworker what just happened, and her reply is, “Really? Wow.” Yeah, really, some people’s money shouldn’t be added to my paychecks, it’s an insult. Needless to say, when they arrived at the registers, as I was the only cashier, I was nowhere to be found. So someone else had to appear to help them. I really didn’t want to touch their money, it would disgust me far too much.
Customer Types: Capitalist, The Hand, Modern Slave-Owner, The Racist, Sexual Discriminator, Unapologetic
Tags: ancient, cash, cashier, caucasian, check, crusty, delapidated, discriminating, discrimination, discriminator, face, garbage, hand, money, old, pay, paycheck, prejudice, prejudiced, racist, register, white, wrinkled
Memoirs of a Retail Salesperson 
July 25, 2010 at 10:52 pm |
At least you get ignored.
A white Australian father regularly stands a few feet away from me while he lets his adult mental patient daughter ask me repeatedly if I am an Aboriginal (native Australian race) and then goes on to be very rude and aggressive stating for the whole world (well, at least my level of the department store) to know that she thinks I am Aboriginal, because my skin colour is brown. I know it is not her fault but I would love to give her father a good bop on the nose for not teaching her how to behave, regardless of her disorder.
I am of Jamaican and Tongan descent.
Is it better to be acknowledged or ignored?
July 26, 2010 at 7:38 am |
From my personal life experience, I can react to action, but silence has always driven me crazy. I find it hard to react to nothing. But, they do say I am one of the only people to greet everyone in the store–which is why I run into so much weirdness; where everyone else greets when greeted, so they run into far less. Haha.
Although the actions of the daughter are irresponsible on the father’s part, what is the rule… If a customer makes you feel uncomfortable, to take you out of the situation or take them out of the store? (That’s usually why I run away, too. Haha. Unless I’m pissed off, then I stand there and escalate a little more.)
July 29, 2010 at 10:22 am |
do u have a twitter
July 30, 2010 at 12:37 pm |
none, they do not allow you to give complete thoughts.
July 30, 2010 at 1:44 pm |
My sentiments, exactly. Social networks are an invasion of privacy. it’s like the owner of the account has basically left a key to their home for anyone to waltz in and take their information.