You Are One Hair-Width Away From Being Arrested
I’m a male with a full head of super curly hair thanks to a strong Greek ancestry. It’s a family joke that our family genes are the reason why people think Medusa had snakes for hair. I also happen to work at a library.
A few years ago, while I was at work, a lady complimented me on my outfit, which I accepted graciously. (I was dressed in business attire and admitted that I looked dapper in it.) She then proceeded to stick her whole hand into my mass of hair. I froze for a moment, absolutely gobsmacked.
Lady: *Snootily* “Oh. You use [Product].”
Me: *Coldly* “You try getting a brush through this monster without detangler. Now get your d*** hands out of my hair.”
The lady went from zero to a hundred in the blink of an eye and screamed for a manager. As this was a library, her voice seemed extra loud in the quiet environment. Everyone nearby looked up to see what was going on. She tried to remove her hand, but the curls snagged, so of course, she came away with a few strands of my hair while I yelped in pain.
My manager came at a run just in time to see this woman rip her hands out of my hair and my head being yanked with it before she was free. He ignored the woman, who was still yelling.
Manager: “Oh, my God, [My Name], are you all right?”
Lady: *Yelling over him* “No, I am not all right! Your employee just swore at me!”
Manager: “I wasn’t asking you. And of course, he did. He’s perfectly allowed to, after what I just saw you do.”
The lady sputtered in shock at the sheer gall of a lowly employee being allowed to swear at the all-important patron.
Then, [Manager] did the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard: he gave her a glorious dressing-down. By the time he was done, the lady was absolutely red in the face and speechless as this quiet-voiced man told her in no uncertain words what a lowly person she was.
He finished up by informing her that she was now banned from the library.
She finally just spun on her heel and left without another word.
We wrote up an incident report. [Manager] was very familiar with his patron (for all the negative reasons), so her leaving wasn’t a problem since he could look her up via her library card information.
[Manager] explained that everything was on the security video, and he planned to call the police since what the lady had done qualified as assault and battery. He was explaining that I would be fully in the right to file a report with them over this and gently advising me that I should, considering how boldly she had done it, when two police officers came in.
The woman had called the police on US! I think my emotions were more tangled up than my hair because I just burst out laughing hysterically and couldn’t stop.
[Manager] showed them the security footage, and I went through with pressing charges once I could stop laughing long enough to do so.
When all was said and done, my manager told me that I could go home for the day if I wanted to which, after a moment of hesitation, I accepted. I promptly went home and washed my hair three times.
Not only is it violating to have someone’s hand shoved up to the wrist in your hair, but you don’t know where the hair or the hands have been. What if my hair had lice? What if she didn’t wash after doing heaven-knows-what in the bathroom?! I was just so grossed out.
A reminder to everyone: DO NOT TOUCH PEOPLE WITHOUT PERMISSION.