A black woman walked into the hotel a few days ago and reluctantly comes up to me at the desk:
Woman: I need a room with two doubles starting tonight for a week.
Me: I'm sorry, we're sold out tonight, tomorrow and Thursday.
Woman: Are you sure you looked correctly? Check again.
(I quickly check again)
Me: Yes ma'am, I'm sure. Unfortunately we're sold out those night's.
Woman turns to my black coworker:
Woman: Sir, can you please check for me to make sure he isn't lying to me?
(my jaw drops at this and my coworker does a double take to make sure he heard her correctly)
CW: Sure, give me one second to look that up for you.
Woman: Ok, I need a room tonight for a week with two doubles.
CW: Sorry, we are sold out, just like my coworker told you.
Woman: Ok I just had to be sure I wasn't being played. Thanks for your help (directly to my coworker, not looking at me once).
Let me start off by saying that I've dealt with some minor cases of racism in my years in working in a hotel. I'm an Orthodox Jew and I wear a kippah at work so I get people checking in and the entire time that I'm checking them in, they're staring at my head and not paying attention. I'm fine with that. They're usually from the Midwest or some small town in Europe that hasn't seen too many Jews come through their towns. I've even gotten called things by people coming back into the hotel late at night after drinking for hours. I can deal with that. But to come into the hotel and act like that in the middle of the day in the middle of Manhattan is not so OK. I don't know if it was because I'm white or Jewish, but being rude like that deserves a wake up call. Welcome to New York. It's 2011. Get over it.
stories like this--and one i was involved in where a prospective tenant said "does this [difficulty in negotiating with you] have to do with you being jewish or something?"--are what compelled me to stop wearing my kippah at work.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me how lucky I am -- one of my coworkers is beyond racist, and I listen to her ramblings all day, but none of it is directed towards me or Jews in general, so while I yell at her from time to time to watch herself, I've never felt personally attacked.
ReplyDeleteJust remember: everyone's a little bit racist.
The biggest thing for me is that I couldn't tell if she was racist against me being white, Jewish or both...
ReplyDeleteI have to say, I feel quite lucky that I have not yet encountered such behavior in the workplace. None of my co-workers, nor any patient I have ever encountered, no matter how rude, crude or just plain stupid has ever made any racial slur of any kind--at least none that I have witnessed. It's such a shame that people in the 2011 still carry such hatred/ignorance. :(
ReplyDeletewow... thats sad... talk about being ignorant!
ReplyDelete