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Burger joint, downtown. I'm running a wee bit late. I run late so often these days that on-time is early for me.
Wow, that is...a very long line. Full of many people. The woman at the counter doesn't look like the brightest wick in the wax, and the kitchen staff, who are visible, seem to have switched to decaf in a moment of misguided solidarity, so I figure I'm camping for a while.
When I came in, a man and his two kids were standing at one of the registers. I didn't hear what was going on, but after a moment, the man went and stood in line behind everyone else. So...there's only one line, then, with Slowpoke McGillicuddy on register and a dozen people in the lobby. Maybe the manager could throw a little backup out onto the floor...
I'm waiting in line directly behind the man and his two kids. Addendum - the large, soft-spoken, older black man and his two reasonably-well-behaved-for-a-fast-food-joint pre-adolescents. There is a reason for this level of detail which will become clear in a moment.
Finally, the man reaches the front of the line, and the clerk looks cow-eyed at him and asks what he'll have, which the manager pre-empts with a "No. You're not serving them." To the man, he said, "If you're going to be rude, you'll have to leave."
Cue the sound of a record needle skipping across the surface of the record. I swear, it was so harsh that I thought it was a joke. These two know each other, I thought, and this is one of their little jokes. After all, I've been standing behind this gentleman for five minutes and have seen no obstreporous behavior whatsoever. So, surely, we will all have a big laugh and a hearty handshake and the order will be taken and we'll all get on with our day.
Nope. The manager meant it. He reiterated his insistence that the soft-spoken man and his two enthusiastic youngsters leave the premises, and then a third time. After which, the soft-spoken man said in his soft-spoken voice, "Please!" And then the manager escalated. "We have three people here who won't leave after being warned..." And the man fled with his two boys.
What the hell did I miss?
So I'm standing there in front of the clerk with my eyebrows meeting in the middle and my jaw hanging open and she says, "Can I help you?"
"Uh...no," I said, and left.
Was I just witness to a racially-motivated discrimination incident? I've never seen a manager get angrier at a customer for less reason. If the gentleman had been obnoxious while standing at the closed register, that might have been one thing, but what I saw was a man standing quietly in line and encouraging his two boys to do the same, for better than five minutes, with no attempts to remove him until he was at the counter. Even the lady at the counter, not the most conscious of elements in the drama, looked a bit taken aback.
And as I started to convince myself that race might have been a factor, the thought of eating there again just made me feel sick. I'm not entirely convinced that I missed much of the drama, though. It seemed to me that I picked up enough detail to get the general plot.
I hate the thought of writing a letter to the owners of the burger joint, because, to me, racially-motivated incidents are heinous enough that I'd want to be certain to have my facts straight before making noise about them. I even wrote this post as carefully as I could.
If the guy had been pounding on the counter while his two boys swung from the ceiling, that would have been a different animal, but hanging out here has given me some insight into SC behavior - and I just wasn't seeing it.
Love, Who?
Wow, that is...a very long line. Full of many people. The woman at the counter doesn't look like the brightest wick in the wax, and the kitchen staff, who are visible, seem to have switched to decaf in a moment of misguided solidarity, so I figure I'm camping for a while.
When I came in, a man and his two kids were standing at one of the registers. I didn't hear what was going on, but after a moment, the man went and stood in line behind everyone else. So...there's only one line, then, with Slowpoke McGillicuddy on register and a dozen people in the lobby. Maybe the manager could throw a little backup out onto the floor...
I'm waiting in line directly behind the man and his two kids. Addendum - the large, soft-spoken, older black man and his two reasonably-well-behaved-for-a-fast-food-joint pre-adolescents. There is a reason for this level of detail which will become clear in a moment.
Finally, the man reaches the front of the line, and the clerk looks cow-eyed at him and asks what he'll have, which the manager pre-empts with a "No. You're not serving them." To the man, he said, "If you're going to be rude, you'll have to leave."
Cue the sound of a record needle skipping across the surface of the record. I swear, it was so harsh that I thought it was a joke. These two know each other, I thought, and this is one of their little jokes. After all, I've been standing behind this gentleman for five minutes and have seen no obstreporous behavior whatsoever. So, surely, we will all have a big laugh and a hearty handshake and the order will be taken and we'll all get on with our day.
Nope. The manager meant it. He reiterated his insistence that the soft-spoken man and his two enthusiastic youngsters leave the premises, and then a third time. After which, the soft-spoken man said in his soft-spoken voice, "Please!" And then the manager escalated. "We have three people here who won't leave after being warned..." And the man fled with his two boys.
What the hell did I miss?
So I'm standing there in front of the clerk with my eyebrows meeting in the middle and my jaw hanging open and she says, "Can I help you?"
"Uh...no," I said, and left.
Was I just witness to a racially-motivated discrimination incident? I've never seen a manager get angrier at a customer for less reason. If the gentleman had been obnoxious while standing at the closed register, that might have been one thing, but what I saw was a man standing quietly in line and encouraging his two boys to do the same, for better than five minutes, with no attempts to remove him until he was at the counter. Even the lady at the counter, not the most conscious of elements in the drama, looked a bit taken aback.
And as I started to convince myself that race might have been a factor, the thought of eating there again just made me feel sick. I'm not entirely convinced that I missed much of the drama, though. It seemed to me that I picked up enough detail to get the general plot.
I hate the thought of writing a letter to the owners of the burger joint, because, to me, racially-motivated incidents are heinous enough that I'd want to be certain to have my facts straight before making noise about them. I even wrote this post as carefully as I could.
If the guy had been pounding on the counter while his two boys swung from the ceiling, that would have been a different animal, but hanging out here has given me some insight into SC behavior - and I just wasn't seeing it.
Love, Who?
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