I’m in a very small branch of a popular UK bakery, and I do mean small; the floor is about the same size as a small bedroom. It’s about 5:00 pm on a Friday, and as it’s my birthday, I’m going out that night and staying with a friend, so I have a huge backpack stuffed full. The store is such a small size that I and three other customers — the guy in front of me at the till and the couple at the hot food counter — fill it.

When the couple turns around after getting their food, it puts them right next to the guy at the till. However, I’ve already been standing there behind him with my items in hand while he’s served. Note that I’m really tiny and not always easy to see when standing behind other people, but I am in full view of the couple. He gets his change and leaves.

Cashier: *To the couple* “Hi, what can I get you?”

Customer: “Just these, thanks.”

I am taken aback and reply admittedly slightly louder than I intended.

Me: “Oh, all right, then.”

Customer: *Giving me a dirty look* “Well, you can go ahead if you want. We were here first, though.”

I step forward without acknowledging her tone or her look, and the cashier gives me an apologetic look as she realises what’s happened. As I’m digging inside my backpack for my purse to pay, I notice that the customer leans backward to talk to her partner. I have my earphones in but my music switched off, as I always do when I’m at the till.

Customer: *Loudly, with great emphasis* “Jesus. H. Christ.”

Me: “I can hear you, y’know.”

She never said another word.

We have just opened after lockdown and it is our second day back at work. Due to government restrictions, we can only let a certain number of people in and can only allow for limited service — mostly sales. We have therefore put a barrier on the door with a staff member constantly manning the barrier. This time it is, unfortunately, my turn when a horrible old woman stops at the barrier.

Customer: “Well, are you open or not?”

Me: “Hi! Of course we are, but it’s only for limited service due to maintaining social distance. How can we help you?”

Customer: “Well, obviously, I want help with a phone. This is a phone shop, isn’t it?”

Me: “Yes, so tell me how can I help you with your phone. What seems to be the issue?”

Customer: “It’s obviously not working. I wouldn’t be here if it was working, would I? My phone isn’t working and I want to see what phones you have. Are you going to let me in or not?”

Me: “At this moment, due to how small our shop is, we are not allowing browsing because we cannot do that and maintain the two-meter social distance. I can, however, pass you to an advisor and they can discuss your options. Is that okay?”

Customer: “So, you’re saying I can’t look at phones? How am I supposed to know what to buy if I can’t look at different phones?”

I am slightly frustrated because I have literally just answered that.

Me: “As I explained, our advisors will go through certain phones with you on the computer; however, you cannot physically hold phones or even browse through the ones we have in store. If that is okay, please let me know.”

If she says yes, I will let her in.

Customer: “This is ridiculous! If you can’t serve me, why are you open?! You shouldn’t be open! And what are you, a security guard? People like you are usually…”

She trails off, rolling her eyes. I am a brown female, and because of what I wear, I am very obviously of a certain religion people associate with violence. I wish I could say I’m surprised.

Me: “Excuse me? People like me are what, exactly?”

Customer: “All you salespeople.”

It’s very obvious that’s not what she meant.

Me: “Look. I have already given you all the options. If you don’t want to speak to an advisor, you are free to browse our options online.”

Customer: “Open the door so I can speak to someone!”

Me: “Okay, there are guided markers on your right; please follow them.”

I open the door and the woman turns left.

Me: “Excuse me! Excuse me! Please go to the right!”

The woman pretends not to hear me and stops at one of the phone displays and begins looking at a phone. I am so mad at this point I have to regulate my breathing to not scream at her.

Me: “Miss, if you are going to ignore me and browse despite the fact that I told you not to, I am going to ask you to leave.”

The woman still pretends she can’t hear me and strolls on. I speed to one side and stand in front of her to block her. 

Me: “Please move HERE.” *Points* “You are breaking the government-mandated social distancing rule.”

She turns her head the other way and stays put. At this point, my white colleague comes over to my side.

Colleague: “My colleague has been very patient and very clear. Please move or leave this store. If you can’t do either, I am going to call the police.”

The woman rolled her eyes and moved to the right. My colleague motioned that she would take over so I could go back and destress.

When I went through the back, my managers asked me what happened and when I relayed the whole scenario, they said I should have asked her to leave when she began her racist rant. I know they would have supported me, but I am always afraid of being confrontational because of my ethnicity and religion. 

I later found out that my colleague kicked her out five minutes into their conversation because she kept making racist remarks about me.

Related:
A Continuing Rise In Cases… Of Racism

When I am fourteen, my grandmother takes a friend and me to Scotland. She usually takes a grandchild and my other grandmother, but my other grandmother wasn’t able to come this time. She is very much a planner, and every detail about where we will be staying and how we will get from one place to another is planned months in advance… Well, almost everything.

One night, we realize that we have no train tickets to get us to the place we will be staying the next night. My grandmother is very frustrated because she thought she had planned everything. This is before widespread Internet, and well before smartphones, so we decide to call down to the front desk and ask them about arranging either train tickets or a taxi for us.

My grandmother has a very soft voice that struggles to be heard over the phone, and the friend with us strongly dislikes talking on the phone, so the job falls to me. I don’t remember much of the initial conversation, but we are given some options and hang up to discuss them.

We get close to making a decision and realize that the lady at the front desk has forgotten to give us one crucial piece of information: the prices! So, I call back. There’s a different lady at the desk now.

Me: “Hi, this is room [number]; we’ve been trying to arrange either train tickets or a taxi?

New Desk Lady: “Yes, I believe my colleague was assisting you with that. She is just about to leave, but I’ll let her finish taking care of you.”

Original Desk Lady: “I already gave you all the information. Now you need to make a decision yourselves.”

Me: “But you didn’t tell us—”

The original desk lady hung up.

We ended up deciding that, for the distance we had to travel, three train tickets were probably going to be less expensive than one taxi ride. I waited a good long time before I called the front desk back, to make sure I didn’t get passed off to the original lady again.

Now that I’m older, I get that she just wanted to go home, but that’s no excuse for being rude to someone for wanting all the information.

I have Aspergers, but I don’t go about saying I do because it doesn’t define me. But it makes socialising and being able to work in groups extremely difficult for me. However, this is something I had to suck up as I had to do a lot of group projects for classes. There is one project that sticks out to me that was doomed from the beginning — a project worth 60% of my final grade for the class in question.

I was placed in a group of five people, none of whom were native English speakers, so there was a communication barrier anyway. But two spoke the language rather well apart from getting a few words mixed up here and there. As it’s the only language I speak, I offered to do my part of the project alongside a proofread to check for errors, etcetera, and we all walked away happy.

I don’t live on campus as my house is literally one train away and tickets cost me approximately £110 per month, which is what I would be paying per week to live in student accommodation. That meant we had to work out times amongst the daily commute I had to do.

We worked out a schedule that was suitable around commutes and other classes and I thought that was it. We had four weeks to do the project so there was plenty of time to do it. However, one person in the group decided to lag.

He refused to turn up for scheduled meetings, whined how he had to do the main bulk of the project, and just generally gave off an air of not caring. But there was a catch. His part was the second part of the project, and someone else in the group couldn’t do their part until he had done his, which meant I couldn’t do my part. A week prior, we met up and decided to make his part the last bit so we could actually do the work. But he didn’t turn up for the meeting, so we messaged him to let him know this.

We thought he would be okay with this but he threw a tantrum. He said he wanted to do the main bulk as he was the best at the class in question out of us all. Two days of arguing came after this and we decided we would do drafts of the parts we had switched to in case he didn’t do it.

The project was due on Monday morning at noon. I was working the whole weekend doing twelve-hour shifts. I sent a message saying I needed to have his part and the other person’s whose part was in between ours completed by Friday so I could work on it that afternoon when I finished work, and also the morning it was due. 

No response came. I sent numerous messages to him asking for him to finish his part but he didn’t respond to a single one. This began to really stress me out because the class in question was compulsory to get into my final year. I needed to pass. I continued to message him, as did the other group members as we were all getting frustrated with this guy. 

He finally sent his part over… three hours before the project was due in. This meant we had three hours to write three separate parts and put it all together, and for me to do the proofread. Not ideal, but doable.

We all got our parts done and they sent it all over to me so I could check it all for any errors. However, there was one big error. It turns out when we messaged him that we were changing our parts so we wouldn’t need to wait on him, he took it seriously, despite throwing a tantrum to keep his original part. This meant we now had two conclusions and the main bulk wasn’t even done and it was an hour before it was to be handed in. 

The other group members were furious when I told them this, and once again, he didn’t reply when I asked for the correct part. Basically, I bit the bullet and did the main bulk of it myself. I clipped it in and sent it in to be marked. I got a message from the guy in question a couple of hours later curious that I had “taken out” his part and redone it all. This did it for me and I sent him a very, very long response explaining I hadn’t “taken out” his part; he hadn’t done the part he threw a tantrum over as he didn’t want an “easy” thing to do but instead did the “easy” thing despite it not being his part. 

We scraped a pass, as in, by a couple of marks. The other group members were disheartened by this as we were working our butts off and here was this guy only doing his part a couple of hours before it was due in, and he somehow did the wrong part even after he refused to do that part. I emailed the lecturer and sent over all the correspondence to see if we could potentially be marked individually, instead.

This is something that is almost never asked, but I’d sent all the evidence over. Surprisingly, the lecturer agreed to do so but did state that, as the project was a group one, this would still remain the official grade but when it came to finals it would be taken into consideration. A week later, we received updated grades on the project and I was pleased that it was much higher than the one we had been awarded as a group.

When this guy found out, though, he threw a giant tantrum in the middle of the lecture hall, calling us names and cursing out the lecturer for “unlawful failure” and things like that. He demanded an appeal, but when it came to the hearing, he brought his father along, who immediately gave off an entitled vibe.

Only then did we find out he had done the correct part but had sent the wrong one over. He played it as though I didn’t make him aware and cut me off every time I tried to speak up, as did his father. Eventually, I just opened the messages on numerous apps and slid my phone over for them to read. There was the proof we had messaged him to send the correct part and he ignored us all. 

It was agreed if he sent the correct part over, we would be regraded again but with a 20% cap. Annoying, but we understood why this was. So, he sent his part over and they sent us out to mark it. I expected for us all to be called back in, but instead, he was called back in by himself. He ran out ten minutes later crying nonstop and we were called in. 

It turned out that the part he was supposed to send to us but didn’t was plagiarised. Only the first line needed to be scanned to see that this was the case. Plagiarism is a big no here, and he’d apparently already had a warning about it. This was the second strike and he was kicked out of all classes.

I am working as a waitress.

Me: “Good evening. What can I get for you?”

Customer: “Well, you tell me. I am allergic to sugar.”

The guy at the same table, presumably on a date, speaks up.

Other Customer: “Is that even possible? Like, wouldn’t you die without sugar?”

Customer: “Oh, I mean I’m on a diet. It is just what I tell people so I don’t they don’t add any to my meal. I think I will take the ice cream.”

I had to go to the kitchen to laugh. The guy left halfway through their dinner.