Giving You Hell(sinki)
(I work in retail, but my shift is over and I am sitting at a café near my work place reading a newspaper. A regular customer of my store, who is always rude and demanding, approaches me. It should be very clear to anyone that I’m not working at the moment, but it doesn’t seem to bother her at all.)
Customer: “I’ve been meaning to ask about your name. Why do you have such an unusual name?”
Me: “It’s a Finnish name.”
Customer: “What does that mean?”
Me: “Finland, the country.”
Customer: “Why would you have a Finnish name? Were your parents hippies or something? No wonder you can’t get ahead in life.”
(I ignore the insult, since I’ve seen her throw tantrums from the smallest provocation.)
Me: “My parents are Finns, as am I.”
Customer: “You are not from Finland! You don’t have an accent and you don’t look foreign!”
Me: “Well thank you, but I really am from Finland.”
Customer: “I should have known! You’re here to leech off our welfare!”
Me: “You’ve seen me working, right?”
Customer: “So what? Why would you come here if not for the benefits?!”
Me: “Not that it’s any of your business, but my whole family is living here for a year because of my father’s work. My father wanted that I and my brother come along, even though we haven’t lived with our parents for a few years now. He just wanted us to have the experience and to be near us. He pays for our rent and expenses, but my brother and I decided to get jobs because we know that he is really stretching his funds to make this happen.”
Customer: “A simple question: how much do you get in government hand outs in a month?”
Me: “I haven’t asked for or received a single penny from the British government. And furthermore, if I wanted to live on benefits I would have been better off staying in Finland.”
Customer: “Liar! Finland is a third world communist country and you are all too lazy to do anything about it. You should be trying to better yourself in your homeland, to help it out of the hole it has gotten itself into, not run away to live on OUR money! That’s why you are here, I know it! I am the customer! I’m coming to call your shop tomorrow to make a complaint about you!”
(I want to avoid her coming to the store to complain, because no one wants to deal with her rage fits.)
Me: “Okay, you are right. I’m here to take your tax money and jobs as well. I’m sorry about that, but you know how things are in Finland. We would have starved over there, or we might have been put into prison for our anti-communist views.”
Customer: “Well, I guess it’s understandable in some cases. At least you had the decency to learn our language!”
(She suddenly cheered up and offered to buy me coffee. I declined because I couldn’t think of a more hellish situation than having coffee with her. After that, she always asked for the foreign boy, meaning me, when she came to the store. She was still the rudest and most demanding customer. Lucky me.)
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