Monday, February 16, 2009

Bigotry: Too fascinatingly ignorant to kick out

Graveyard, like I work anything else these days.

One of those nights when very nearly every single customer isn't just drunk, they're likely already blacked out. Fortunately, at the time the store had cleared out momentarily.

An elderly man walked up to the counter with a coffee and almost immediately started laying into me with the story of his oh-so-interesting evening. I wish it wasn't actually an interesting story, though. I honestly should have kicked him out after about three sentences.

"Do you know what I am, boy? I'm DRUNK! But do you know what else I am?" he slurred.

"You're wearing an awesome hat?" in my defense his hat was pretty badass. It had a skull on it and said "Death Eater." I'm just hoping that's not some "yay racism" thing.

"I'm MILITIA, BOY!" Shit. Suddenly it occurs to me that this man is likely three things, other than drunk and militia: Stupid, Violent, and Armed. "There was this... are we being recorded?"

"Well, there's cameras but no audio recording as far as I know."

"OH WE'RE BEING RECORDED! Anyway, there was this NIGGER!" my smile disappeared. "This nigger government snitch! He was just sitting at the other end of the bar, and I kept shouting 'HEY! SNITCH!' and telling everyone 'Hey you know that nigger's an FBI snitch?' and you KNOW he's a snitch because if he wasn't he would have just gotten up and walked out! But he just stayed there and pretended to ignore me and got all red in the face! That's how you know the nigger's a snitch!"

My jaw hung loose at this point.

"We're working on getting this country back into a real REPUBLIC like it ought'a be! Only problem is I got a little HEEB in me. I got a little screwed by the- UNF UNF UNF," he said as he pelvic thrusted several times, "Hell, You've got a little Heeb in ya too, don'tcha?"

"Uh... actually I'm Irish." Should have kicked him out right then. Shoulda shoulda shoulda.

"HEY! HEY BOY! Never talk to a cop! never talk to the pigs! They'll throw you behind bars for even talking to them!"

"uh-" I started to say something, thought better of it and just stared on in horror. He started raising his voice at this point. At this point I started blocking what he was saying, and trying to ignore him, hoping he would just go away. He didn't strike me as the kind of person who would take kindly to being asked to leave the store.

A young lady came into the store, one of the few sober customers I had all night. The bigot was still shouting hate speech. She gave me a look as if to say "Are you with him?" All I could do was whisper "I'm so sorry about that."

Eventually he left... sorry the story is a little broken up. I'm not writing from my usual location, and screaming children fill the air with a cocophony the likes of which god has never heard. Not used to such writing conditions!

1 comment:

  1. This is why I avoid riding the MAX. Old drunk dudes and earwax dude from the other blog.

    ReplyDelete