Is She All White?

I’m a floor manager at a casino in southern California, and I am half Mexican which will become pertinent later.

Yesterday afternoon I was behind the bar for a bit while a bartender was running to the restroom. I went around and said hello to all the guests and checked in on them.

One lady’s mood suddenly shifted. She ordered a pack of smokes and complained about the price, no big deal. Then she started giving me the run-around. A new water, asking if we sold lighters (we give out free matches), wanting me to clear some trash, now a juice, etc. She wasn’t a fun customer, but nothing I couldn’t handle and haven’t handled a million times before.

This is until I am serving a black couple in the well. I completed their transaction and was walking around the bar to grab something, and I thought I heard this woman yell, “white power!” I thought I must have been losing my mind because surely, no one would yell that in the middle of a casino. So, I brushed it off and thought I must have misheard.

I’m making one more round and this lady asks me my name. I have a very white-sounding first name.

Me: “Chad.”

Customer: *Squinting.* “That’s only what they tell you to go by.”

Me: *Confused.* “Well, it’s short for Chadwick.”

Customer: “Where are you from? Did you get here via the Tijuana underground or something?”

I immediately asked her for her casino card and said:

Me: “Ma’am, we can’t serve you anymore. You’re being cut off for the next 24 hours.”

Surprisingly she actually said “okay” and accepted it.

My bartender came back at this time. As I was leaving the bar a patron stopped me and said:

Bar Patron: “You know she yelled white power, right?”

Me: “I thought I heard that, but I thought I was just making it up in my mind because it’s so crazy. We’re going to get her to leave now.”

I got security and the casino manager out to the bar. They began talking to her and she put on the tears about her ex-husband. When that didn’t work, she requested to escalate, the casino manager let her know that there was no one higher than her. Then the guest somehow knew the chief and she was going to go to him. She eventually accepted her fate and left.

She’s now excluded for thirty days and I’m a happy man. I can’t wait to serve her again in thirty days so I can get her kicked out forever.