I work for the TSA. Most of you don’t like that very much. I am terribly sorry for the things that cause our negative reputation. I know it’s well deserved. I really am sorry.

I personally need the health insurance very badly and appreciated the $22-per-hour starting wages — which have gone up since then — pretty well.

One of my coworkers is patting down a Native woman. The woman has two long braided lengths of hair. My coworker grabs the braids and makes a “giddyap” motion like one would do with reins on a horse and says, “Hu-ha! Giddyap, cowboy!”

They put the coworker on bin running for a few months and made her take a sensitivity class.

I still feel bad about this.

I’m a woman, currently working in an electronics and gadget store. I could stop right there.

I am working alone one day and a man comes in.

Customer: “I need a DVI cable.”

Me: “What length do you need?”

He tells me and I go and get one.

Customer: “This isn’t a DVI cable!”

Me: “Yes, sir, it is. It even says so right here on the packaging.”

I show him the text on the packaging that says, “DVI Cable.”

Customer: “No, that’s wrong, and you’re wrong. DVI cables don’t look like that!”

He gets mad at me for getting the wrong cable and starts to yell. I do not budge. So, he utters his famous last words:

Customer: “I’ll go somewhere else where a man can help me get the right cable.”

And off he went. My guess is that he really wanted a VGA-cable, as they look similar, but what do I know?

Related:
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 20
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 19
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 18
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 17
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 16

A mother and her grown son are shopping in the store. The son keeps trying to hit on me.

Son: “Konnichiwa! You’re so kawaii!”

I try to ignore this, but this causes the mother to blow up at me.

Customer: “Stop being so stuck up and racist! You should be glad my son is worldly enough to speak Asian to you!”

I have never met him before and I am not Japanese. I just respond:

Me: “Sorry, no English.”

They had previously heard me speaking English with my friend. I then just walked away.

Related:
Don’t You Speak Asian?, Part 4
Don’t You Speak Asian?, Part 3
Don’t You Speak Asian?, Part 2
Don’t You Speak Asian?

I am organizing the installation of flooring for an older customer.

Customer: “I don’t want any black men to install my flooring.”

Me: *After a pause* “We don’t select which individuals exactly will install the floor; you’ll get who you get.”

She had a fit about it, demanded white installers, and asked to speak to my manager.

I’m so glad she did because my manager is a real big black dude with a black-sounding name.

Turns out she didn’t want to speak to the manager after all.

This story takes place during the end of my tenure with a game store chain, after I’ve settled into a familiar groove of thirteen- to fifteen-hour shifts, six days a week — also known as “absentee coworker syndrome”. I’ve also gotten a chance to get to know all the regular customers.

One of my regulars is in the store checking on the stock of our Nintendo Wii units, wanting to know when we’ll get more, etc. The guy easily drops $300 a week in my store and has two adorable, well-behaved kids, so we’re on fantastic terms.

Unfortunately, our district manager is visiting our store and brought her friend [District Manager #2] with her for advice on how to run our store.

It’s worth noting one more fact. I am the sole white employee at this store. The neighborhood in question is predominantly filled with those of darker complexion than myself (African, Latino, etc). Both of the district managers in my store are, you guessed it, whiter than new-fallen snow.

I’m chatting up my regular when I get pulled over by the district managers to a corner out of earshot, where the following exchange takes place.

District Manager #1: “What the h*** do you think you’re doing?!”

Me: “Um, my job? What do you mean? Did I do something wrong? He already has the Premium Membership card…”

District Manager #2: “Not that. Why’d you tell him when you’re getting more Wii consoles?”

Me: “Because he asked? I don’t get it.”

District Manager #1: “We don’t give that information out to people like that!”

District Manager #2: “Exactly. When you give them that kind of information, you either get robbed or you get more of them. That’s not the image we’re trying to cultivate here.”

District Manager #1: “Yeah, we’re trying to bring in more… profitable clientele.”

Me: “I don’t… I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘them’?”

District Manager #1 & #2: *In unison* “Blacks.”

District Manager #2: “We want bleach-white soccer moms, not a bunch of sooty street rats.”

My eyes must’ve popped out of their sockets in horror at what they just said, because my district manager immediately begins trying to backpedal.

District Manager #1: “What he means is that middle-class people tend to spend more money.”

The incredibly racist conversation continued for a few minutes before I promptly excused myself back to my store and helped my customers. Still, that little bit pretty much eroded any respect I had for Senior Management. 

Luckily, the parent company — which controlled two video chains and my game chain — went belly-up a month later, and both district managers lost their jobs overnight.

Me? I went on to a data center internship that paid more and was a ton of fun.