Race and/or Gender Suck?

[EvilEmpryss]

This White woman walked up to the cellphone display at Wally-World. There were three young Black men behind the counter, and all of them looked over to see if the woman needed anything. When one moved to walk over to her, she waved him away with one of those dismissive gestures.

Just then, a White female employee joined them. The woman standing at the cellphone display looked up, saw her, and said with exasperation "FINALLY! Someone who knows something about these things!"

She never asked the guys a thing! And all she was looking for was a cellphone case! She was only there for about two minutes before the other woman showed up.

I'm not one who looks for racism behind every comment, but I get the impression that this woman was either racist or sexist to assume that only the White female employee could help her find a cellphone case.

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

Sounds like she was looking for advice about fashion, or something. Maybe it was more of a general Individual fail: one of those guys could have been gay, and/or had a fabulous fashion sense.

[LillFilly]

Hmm, tough call, I'd have to have seen it for myself. It was obvious they worked there? Maybe she really did just want a female's help.

[Mytical]

Don't think she would waved the one away if she didn't think they worked there. So I think it was just a huge fail any way you go. Sexist, racist, or what .. dismissing somebody like that is epic fail.

[EvilEmpryss]

The woman didn't want fashion advice (nothing about how she was dressed or groomed indicated she cared much about fashion), she just wanted to know which case would fit her phone.

All of the employees clearly worked there (they were behind the little corral of display cases with the registers, they were wearing dark blue polo shirts with dark pants, and they had their IDs around their necks).

I was mostly stumped that she would act like she'd asked the men for help, only to find they were clueless. From what I saw, she never asked them anything.

[wagegoth]

I didn't see it, but from the description, I would say she was racist. She may believe that only white people are good with electronics, or non-whites may make her uncomfortable in general.

[PepperElf]

damn. send her to any of my navy ships and she'll lose her mind then. on most of my ships, working in technical fields, my divisions were usually 1/4 to 1/2 non-white.

and when i worked in the IT field you couldn't even use pay-grade, let alone race, to determine level of knowledge, because we had some junior ranked geeks.


then again ... if i'm not sure if a case will fit my phone, i usually try reading the package first.

[thansal]

I used to get this fairly regularly, just on the other end.

I was the only white male (baring my boss) in the electronics store I used to work for. It was painful when I would have customers specifically want to talk to me about stuff instead of my co workers, or who assumed I had to be the boss (this one happened a lot).

The screwy bit is that this behavior isn't limited to any one group of people, I have seen it from just about any combination of race/religion/gender/whatever you want.

Seriously, always made me cringe having to deal with it.

[wagegoth]

I have seen it from just about any combination of race/religion/gender/whatever you want.

I'm pretty good at identifying basic Asian ethnicities, which has been very useful, because a lot of first generation immigrants come over with lots of prejudices. It can get very ugly.

[Treasure]

some times people are just intimated...other times, its a communication barrier - for example when my mom owned her flower shop, she had a young black man working for her, doing the "grunt" work - washing buckets, mopping floors - the kind of thing that her disability prevented her from doing (and she's had 3 or 4 different hires, before him, he's just the latest) and he would attempt to talk to her in the "street lingo" that he used with his friends - and end a sentence w/ "ya know what i'm sayin'" and mom would frequently look at him and tell him she had no clue at all what he'd said... eventually she had to let him go, b/c he couldn't communicate with the customers -

Perhaps the lady in the OP has had similar issues and has become "gun-shy" if you will, about having black men assist her, its not that she thinks they can't help her, maybe its pre-judging that they can't communicate with her...

doesn't make her attitude when the white female came over any better or right- since she acted like she hadn't been offered service, or like those who had offered it were incapable of doing so, when instead she is the one who waved them off... - for me, that's the major suck.

[Athaelia]

Let's not be so quick to judge or cry racism. The woman could have a justified reason for wanting the female employee's help. Though my suggestion is hypothetical, like everyone else' s responses, we don't actually know this woman. What if she's a battered wife, and is traumatized by men?

Since we don't know this lady, we don't know her circumstances as well. Not trying to be a buzzkill or a wet blanket, just giving this woman the benefit of a doubt...

[LadyAndreca]

Let's not be so quick to judge or cry racism. The woman could have a justified reason for wanting the female employee's help. Though my suggestion is hypothetical, like everyone else' s responses, we don't actually know this woman. What if she's a battered wife, and is traumatized by men?

Since we don't know this lady, we don't know her circumstances as well. Not trying to be a buzzkill or a wet blanket, just giving this woman the benefit of a doubt...

She could also expect men to talk down to her when it comes to electronics, even something like a phone case, and want a female employee. But not being there, I couldn't be sure.