When I was in high school, I worked at a restaurant where the dining room stations were assigned by seniority. The most senior waitress got the counter, and the most junior waitress got the back station which had one booth and four four-seat tables.

Every Wednesday night, at 7:30 sharp, a group from the Nazarene Church would come in and push the tables in the back station together so they could all sit together. They would order, and when their food came up, they would get angry if the waitress served them before they said their prayer. They would make her and me stand there, holding the trays of food while they said their “Praise the Lords”. The prayers were always excessively long, five or six minutes minimum — more if someone had recently died, gotten married, or given birth.

At about 8:30 pm, a group from the nearby Church of Christ would come in, and they would wait, standing along the wall because they wanted those tables in the back.

The Nazarenes would purposely linger over their coffee for thirty minutes or more to make the other church people wait. They would finally leave, and the tip would be in nickels and dimes that never added up to more than seventy-five cents.

The Church of Christ people would come over to the tables before I could finish cleaning them. They would sit down and repeat the performance.

I or the waitress, who were both making two bucks an hour plus tips, had most of our station taken up for two and a half or three hours by two very demanding and annoying groups for a tip that might be $1.50.

I couldn’t wait to get out of there. 

Related:
What Would Jesus Tip?, Part 2
What Would Jesus Tip?

When this happened, I was completely furious about this whole situation. But now, looking back on it, all I can think of is how blatantly dumb and ignorant some people are.

I’m a woman, and I wear a headscarf for religious reasons. At the time of this story, I was seventeen, and I had just gotten into the habit of wearing a headscarf every day. For the first few weeks, people who didn’t know me personally actually couldn’t recognize me with it on.

I’d gone over to play video games with one of my friends after school, and since she lived nearby and I didn’t have a car, I would usually just walk to her house if the weather permitted it. It was a nice spring afternoon, so I did just that.

As I entered my friend’s neighborhood, I suddenly heard the slam of someone’s front door. Coming barreling out of this house was a woman in her sixties, wearing nothing but a bathrobe and flip-flops. At first, I didn’t think it had anything to do with me, so I just glanced briefly in her direction and kept walking by until she shouted.

Woman: “Who do you think you are?!”

I stopped and turned. There was nobody else on the street or walking on the sidewalk that she could be referring to.

Me: “Sorry? Did you mean me?”

Her face turned red with rage.

Woman: “What do you think you’re doing here?!”

Again, I was still really confused as to what was going on, and I had no idea why this random person was just yelling at me for a reason I couldn’t discern.

Me: “What?”

Woman: “You don’t belong here!”

Me: “What do you mean? I’m just on my way to meet up with my friend at her house.”

Woman: “Your people don’t belong in this nation! This is America!”

This is kind of where it clicked for me.

Me: “You’re right. This is America. That means I have the right to practice whatever religion I believe in. That includes Islam.”

Woman: “Go back to whatever country you came from!”

This was the part that just made me mad. I’d dealt with Islamophobia before, but I’m not an immigrant, and I’d never been told to “go back to my country” for being Muslim before.

Me: “Lady, I was born here, my parents were born here, and their parents were born here. This is my country.”

She then started screaming, “PROVE IT!” at the top of her lungs over and over again. I had no idea what on earth to do. It wasn’t like I just had my birth certificate on me or anything, and besides, I didn’t want to have to prove anything to this lady. I just started walking away.

Then, she grabbed onto my hijab and tried to pull it off. She yelled, “PROVE IT!” again but, luckily, my hijab didn’t come off completely and just slid back. I had an undercap on anyway, so my hair was still covered. Instinctively, I pushed her away from me just enough that she let go of my hijab, and I took off running.

Several of her neighbors were emerging from their homes to get a look at what all the yelling was about, and I rounded the corner of the street my friend’s house was on. She was standing on the front porch with her mom behind her, presumably also drawn out by the woman’s noise, when I ran up the steps and promptly hid behind them. I quickly explained to them what had happened, and my friend’s mom ushered both of us inside while she called the police.

The police arrived, and the woman was arrested on charges of harassment of a minor after the entire street testified to what she had done.

My family and I feel that she was undercharged, but there’s not much that can be done about it now. The woman was apparently a very well-known and wealthy person, and since I shoved her away when she grabbed my hijab and the altercation took place near her driveway/lawn (since I was walking on the sidewalk), she claimed that I had assaulted HER and that I had been trespassing on her property.

She did end up in court for her actions, but my parents did not want me in court as a minor because they believed it would be too upsetting for me at the time, especially since she was trying to use intimidation tactics and was threatening to sue my family, and the police agreed/advised that I shouldn’t appear in court. Instead, one of her neighbors who had witnessed the whole thing was willing to testify.

The woman ended up weaseling her way out of assault changes, but she was charged with harassment of a minor and was given community service and a court order for psychological counseling. She had to pay my family heavy compensation, and she is never allowed to have contact with me, my family, or my friend and her mom ever again.

I don’t think she was ever convicted of a hate crime, but I’d have to ask my parents; I’m not 100% certain. I live in North Dakota, which is still a very conservative catholic Christian area, so I’ve dealt with rude comments about my hijab and being Muslim before. However, the following summer, the woman was arrested a second time and given jail time after one of her neighbors called the cops on her (for what, I’m not sure) and when the cops searched her home, they found crack and evidence that she was selling it.

This happened during the spring and summer of 2021, and as of the spring of 2022, she’s still in jail on possession charges. I’m not sure how long she’ll serve in jail, but I heard her family sold her house to a nice couple, and her neighborhood is glad to be rid of her.

CONTENT WARNING: Antisemitism

In fourth grade (so I was about nine years old), our teacher decided to hold a little Christmas card exchange. We’d pick names out of a hat and do a little craft thing to make the card ourselves.

The teacher was a special sort of lady, and after gently asking around, she supplied students with ideas for Hanukkah- and Kwanzaa-celebrating students. She went over the cultural and spiritual importance of both holidays. She made it very inclusive and offered to help students make little artsy ideas if, say, a menorah was difficult to draw freehand.

I got a card with a minimalistic Christmas tree, marked heavily over with a big black X that said,

“Roses are red, 

Violets are blue, 

You’re a Jew, 

So no Christmas for you.”  

The student who sent me this card had deliberately been hateful, in accordance with what their parents had taught them. I burst into tears, and the teacher and students were all appalled. There was quite a hullabaloo about it.

The parents of the child didn’t see anything wrong with what their child had done. They simply claimed that the card had been factual and perfectly “creative” considering they had made the effort to make the “poem” for me.

That student’s popularity took quite a plummet for the rest of their attendance at that school.

Back in the days of video rentals, an angry customer stormed up to the counter and tossed a copy of the “The Passion Of The Christ” at me.

Customer: “Get me the English version, not the subtitled one!”

Me: “Ma’am, it only comes in this subtitled version.”

Customer: “No! My best friend said it wasn’t originally recorded in this Ara-whatever language you sold me!”

Me: “That’s Aramaic, and that was the language Jesus spoke at the time.”

Customer: “Idiot! The Bible is in English!”

I work as waitstaff at a busy downtown restaurant. I am trans, and apart from the occasional odd glance, I usually get by each day unscathed. Usually…

As a group of customers is leaving my table:

Customer: “I’ve left you a tip, and considering your life choices, I think it’s something that will save you more than any money ever could.”

I sigh, as I know what this means. Instead of a tip, the customer has left a religious tract, this one — judging by the title as I never read them myself — condemning “worldly lifestyle choices”.

That weekend, I am volunteering at an LGBTQ event, and who do I see across the street but the same customer who stiffed me on the tip?! They’re working for a religious charitable organization, ringing a bell, and asking for donations. I recognize the “charity” as one that is known to discriminate against LGBTQ people.

I walk up to them, smiling, and at first, they think I am going to donate money to their collection box.

Me: “Considering your life choices, I think this is something that will save you more than any money ever could.”

I stuffed a pamphlet about our trans charity into their collection box and went back to my volunteering duties. The look on their face from across the street for the rest of the day warmed me up on that very cold day!