Stupid n****r

One of my sweet co-workers experienced firsthand the beauty of the holidays and the gentle heart of the American consumer on Sunday. 


He was working the register and had a really mouthy, awful young woman, about early 20's or so, and she apparently was with her mother who'd been rude to Eric before on another trip to Michaels.  Mom was roaming the store while her daughter was paying for her items.  This young lady was giving Eric an attitude about a part of her purchase and he apologized.  She was mouthy, telling him to shut up, quit saying you're sorry you're just sounding stupid, to which he apologized AGAIN, this went on a couple of times, he's a really sweet kid and was totally blown away by her rudeness.  Her mom walks up to the register and asks her daughter if she was having trouble.

"I wouldn't be but this stupid n****r is pissing me off."


Out.  Loud.  Eric is black.  One of the SWEETEST guys you will ever meet.  We get along fabulously, he's a hard worker, studying to be a nurse to work with the elderly.  And he was absolutely crushed.  We had a chat about this last night.  I told him that there are ugly people everywhere, she was ugly before she walked in the store, you just happened to see the side that day and you can't take it personally, she probably treats everyone she encounters this way.  Just look at people like that right in the eye and tell them, "Well, God bless you!  He loves you, too!"  They won't know how to handle it and you will totally knock them off course.


Last evening one of the girls in the floral department had to get on the speaker and kindly ask people to NOT let their children race around the store with merchandise in their hands and PLEASE do not let them lay on the floor and roll round and LICK the floor.  Honest to Pete, you have to ask people to not let their kids LICK the floor.  I found three carts of merchandise last night, packed to the gills and overflowing with items that people had picked up through the store and then DITCHED.  I often wonder how they'd feel if we showed up at their door, helped ourselves inside, and then went room-to-room picking up their belongings in one room and leaving it in another, dumping it on the floor, tossing it in a corner--destruction is always easy when you don't have to clean it up.


If you want to see the worst of mankind, go to a store during the holidays.  If you want to see the best of mankind, go to a store during the holidays.  You see and hear things you never thought possible.  There are some people that you just want to toss a slab of raw meat to and hope you pull back all your fingers.  Then there are those, like the ragged biker and his girlfriend, that cried while telling me about their biker club president who'd died at the age of 33 from heart disease and "I looked at his face after he died and I saw the face of a man that had seen the face of Jesus when he went Home!"  It blows your mind--the vastness of personalities and attitudes, the ugly and beautiful, every letter of the alphabet from A-Z that describes the human race walks through those doors. 


To hurl a racial epithet at a young man that is putting himself through college and working his tail off like the rest of us is to crawl on the elevator of attitude and descend three floors below human.  For every jerk that comes in the store there are 10 lovely people and I'm sure escorts would have been climbing over each other to escort her out the doors.  Eric was absolutely crestfallen but I told him this won't be the last time someone looks at the color of your skin and says something horrible to you, sad as it is, but you have to pull yourself together, hold your head high, and not let their ignorance dictate how you face life. 


Festering jackasses have been around since the dawn of man.  Look at Cain.  We have gone from a man killing his brother in a field over a fit of jealousy to black kids racing up to people and slamming them in the head so hard they pass out, or in some cases, die of their injuries, and I'm not being racist, every episode of this behavior caught on camera shows the perps to be black and the victims to be white.  Just the facts, ma'am, and video doesn't lie.  Does a white woman calling a black man a stupid n****r trump a black kid hitting a white woman so hard she dies of brain injuries?  No.  The enemy walks among us like a roaring lion looking to destroy us, whether with words or fists irregardless of color.  When you walk through life with a moral ambiguity, afraid to take a stand lest you offend someone you will be a target, behavior like this will continue.  If you see behavior like this, do you take a stand and call that person out?  Or do you swallow yourself and walk away, knowing someone else will have to wade through the carnage of someone's feelings crushed by words or property being destroyed or people being put out by a child's behavior?  I would hope I have the moral conviction if that should happen again to grab the phone, activate the store loud speaker, and inform the buying public there is an ignorant young woman at register five that has called my co-worker a racial epithet and would anyone volunteer to show this young woman the door and make it clear she is to never return again?  Do you say something to a parent who's letting their child destroy public property or hinder someone walking down an aisle because the child is throwing store merchandise across the aisles or running dangerously around corners and could bump an older person and knock them over?  Does this behavior stop when we stop crawling inside our safe place to hide and start standing up and saying and doing what's right?  To not say anything is to endorse such behavior. 

Now, what are you willing to do?