Human Beans
I spent my birthday on the couch with a nasty cold that’s still lingering. Lots of coughing, sniffling, “poor me” moaning, and napping. As I’ve mentioned before, I never have nightmares about the vampires, zombies, and post-apocalyptic literature I teach. Unless I’m sick. When I’m sick, the monsters come to play. This weekend, I dreamt that I was a zombie with a penchant for chocolate-covered caramels. While there’s nothing frightening about chocolate covered caramels, the scary part was walking into a candy store and having people run from my dead oozing flesh. Damn it, my zombie money is as good as everyone else’s! What’s a zombie gotta do to get some service around here! I also dreamt that my students were vampires. That’s actually not far from the truth. One class in particular makes me feel as if they’ve sucked the life out of me.
Anyway, this weekend was a great time to sit on the couch and catch up on some blog reading and commenting (if I haven’t gotten to your blog yet, I’m coming! My Google Reader runneth over). At one point, after the Nyquil had kicked in and I started to feel I had some fight in me, I engaged in a particularly, let’s say, vibrant discussion on another blog about the role of racism in this election (Hint: It’s a BIG factor). You should know that I was right and everyone else was wrong. Okay, I’ll be fair, there were a few others who were right as well. But I was more right. Anyway, another commenter made the very astute observation that we all carry prejudices and biases with us whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. At first, I was offended by this. I am not a racist!! I’m voting for Obama! Some of my best friends are…oh, wait….
A few weeks ago, Mr. Dingo was doing some home repairs and needed a special whozawhatsit to finish the job. After a quick search online, we found the part on sale at the local Home Depot. I dragged myself on down to the store leaving Mr. Dingo cursing and sputtering under the kitchen sink. As I wandered around, a nice Indian guy in the Home Depot apron approached me and asked if I needed help. I told him what I was looking for. He said that they had it in stock but that the manager had the key to the display case and he was at lunch at the moment. So, I told the gentleman that I was going outside to make a call (I had to call Mr. Dingo to let him know that the cavalry was going to arrive at least 45 minutes later than expected). The guy promised that he would hold the item for me.
***15 minutes later***
Me: Hi! We just spoke a few minutes ago, you’re holding the whozawhatsit for me. Is the manager back?
Nice Indian Guy: I’m sorry, Miss, I just came on this shift. I don’t know what you are talking about.
Me: We just spoke 15 minutes ago, you said that you didn’t have the key to the display case that has the whozawhatsit but…
Nice Indian Guy: That wasn’t me…and we don’t have a whosawhatsit in stock.
Me: What? We just spoke! 15 minutes ago! You said you had it in stock. You had to wait for your manager.
Nice Indian Guy: M’am that wasn’t me.
Okay, folks, one thing you need to know about Dingo – do NOT “M’am” me. You also need to know that despite all evidence on this blog to the contrary, sometimes I can get completely irrational and act like an ass. I know, I know! I hope it doesn’t change your opinion of me, but there it is. I am sometimes an ass. This was one of those times.
Me: Did you think I wasn’t coming back and sell it while I was gone?
Nice Indian Guy: M’am, I didn’t sell anything. We didn’t talk. Maybe that was someone else.
Me: NO. I specifically remember talking to YOU.
Nice Indian Guy: Maybe it was Nice Indian Guy Number 2. (turning to the next aisle). Nice Indian Guy Number 2, do you remember helping this young lady?
At this point, my “Oh Shit” meter began clanging like Big Ben on New Year’s Eve. As Nice Indian Guy Number 2 came around the corner I realized that not only had I been an ass, but that I had been an ASS. You know what made it even worse? The Nice Indian Guys didn’t look anything at all alike. The guy that I had actually spoken to was my height and wearing a white pinstripe shirt. The guy I had waved my racist banner in front of like a NASCAR flag, was at least 6 feet tall and wearing a green polo shirt. Did I say that I was an ass? I just wanted to say it again, just in case you missed it the first time.
I was mortified. For all my talk of seeing people as “people,” that morning, all I saw was skin tone and ethnicity. No, no, don’t try to tell me that I just made a mistake. It was more than a mistake. While it may not have been racist in that I had some Nice Indian Guy stereotype, it was racist in that I didn’t see these two gentlemen as individuals. It was a “they all look alike” mentality.
That morning, I was forced to confront the biases I carry around with me. But fate wasn’t done bitch slapping me yet. That afternoon I had another foot in mouth moment when our food delivery guy showed up with our enchiladas, tacos, and burritos. Our nickname for Dingo Girl is Bean, and she also has the title of Official Greeter of the Dingo Household — especially if she thinks there is food involved. So, when the buzzer rang and the Mexican delivery guy began to come up the stairs to the apartment, I didn’t want her running downstairs and getting in the way (or getting to my taco before I did). I opened the door and said “Wait right there, Bean”. The delivery guy said, “Okay,” and backed down a step or two.
I was confused by this and didn’t connect the two until I told Mr. Dingo what happened. “I think Dingo Girl scared the delivery guy even though I told her to wait —” To say my stomach dropped when I realized what had happened would be an understatement. I turned to Mr. Dingo, “Did I just say, ‘Wait right there, BEAN?‘ Did the Mexican delivery guy think that I was talking to him?” I think this was worse than that morning’s gaffe. “Please, please tell me that our delivery guy did not think I just used a racial slur.” Mr. Dingo was no consolation, “Yep, I’m pretty sure he thought you were talking to him.”
What kind of world do we live in where people are accustomed to racial slurs and have internalized them so much that our delivery guy would think that I would say something like that? And just accept it! He was gone before I even realized the misunderstanding and could apologize. He should have punched me in the mouth! That would have taught me! Or at least he could have pulled a McCain on me and said, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt!” That would have made me realize that I had just unwittingly insulted him. Okay, at least he should have said, “I’m sorry, but did you just call me ‘bean?’” so I had a chance to explain that I had not and so that he, too, could realize what a fool I had just made of myself.
It doesn’t really end there. My penance has been to tip well every single time I have Mexican food delivered. Yes, I could just tip that delivery guy really well one time and explain the confusion, but who am I kidding? Every time I have Mexican delivered, I say to myself, “Is that Mr. Not-A-Bean?” And I have no idea.
So, that’s liberal guilt in action. That’s why my Mexican food deliveries are more expensive than ever before. And that’s me admitting that, yes, we all carry prejudices and biases with us all the time. They are always just waiting on our lips like a herpes flair-up.
I am working to recognize and exterminate my unwitting prejudices. In the meantime, it’s good to deliver to Dingo.
Posted on Monday, October 27, 2008 at 04:41 AM.
Tags: It's All Relative, In The Neighborhood, I Hate Shopping, Dingo Girl, La Vida Loca, Oh the Horror!
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Comments & Trackbacks
Oh my gosh, your head was clearly clouded by the illness. Not “the illness” but just the illness. 
If I may get serious for a moment, though, the fact you realize these things and feel something about it is the difference between a mistake and deliberate ass-dom.
I hope you’re feeling better. Bowels and all (you might get that AFTER you check email).
Well, maybe his name is “Gene.”
Where did you get a picture of me when I wake up in the morning? Oh wait, that’s not me. All zombies look alike! Srsly, everyone has done the same thing to a different race or ethnicity. For some (most?) people, I think it has more to do with relevance than prejudice. We notice the things that are relevant to us at the time. You noticed Home Depot aprons bc that was relevant. The people in them just happened to both be of the same ethnicity and in the same department.
I got nothing on the bean fiasco, except that my Rottie’s name is Athena and my son calls her Beaner. Which gets uncomfortable in public.
I’m proud of you Dingo.
You said Cunt.
Not c**t, not C word, you said the real thing.
I don’t care if you’re a racist.
I was thrilled by the conversation we had going about racism and the campaign, and I hope that you felt sufficiently backed up. I saw where you were going with your references to the Civil Rights era and the use of the term “socialist.”
I think we’ve all gotten a bit crazy lately, and I’m counting down the days until it gets better (of course, there’s always the possibility that it could get a LOT worse, but I’m not expecting to be pushed off a sidewalk or anything...)
I think the most amazing part of your Home Depot story is that you talked to two different employees. Whenever I go there, I have to walk around for 45 minutes to find someone who isn’t on a break.
Happy birthday, feel better, and those stories...man, they’re tricky--but the poor delivery guy! But don’t feel bad--we’ve all had those foot-in-mouth moments when we realize we aren’t as, well, non-biased as we thought.
justrun — Thanks for the somecard! It made me laugh so much it eased my congestion, the snot just ran out my nose!
saratogajean — It would be too much to hope that was his name. That’s not the way my luck runs.
Shania — I know! Seen one zombie, seen ‘em all, right? I don’t even know how she got the nickname Bean. It just goes well with her real name and she was a tiny l’il thing when we got her.
Crissy — Yeah, I don’t discriminate with my curse words. One is just as bad (or good) as the next and I use them quite freely.
Mrs Chili — It really was an interesting discussion and I wish I’d felt better because I would’ve poured throgh my news article archive to provide links to show that I wasn’t just talking out of my ass. I’m glad you knew what I was getting at and provided some validation for my point of view or at least how I was arriving at my point of view. Your site(s) always has interesting topics and discussions.
flurrious — It as a fluke. Part of the reason I thought I was talking to the same person is because for the 45 minutes I walked around prior to being helped, everyone was on break.
stealthnerd — What’s odd is that no I think I am almost hyper-aware and I think that is just as bad.
That story is both totally awesome and TOTALLY MORTIFYING. I’ve never even heard of calling someone “bean”, but now that I have I am going to have to work hard to not do it!
i love post-apocalyptic literature. much prefer it to apocalyptic literature.
This whole thing had me cracking up.
I thought two Japanese-American women at work were the same person. My friend whose wife is Japanese-American is the one who discovered my mistake and called me on it. In my defense, the two coworkers really do look alike and have similar names. I swear!
oh dingo, the very fact that you are aware that you have dropped a couple of clangers means you are ahead on points.
Our brains are set up to reduce complexity and so we like to classify and put in boxes until we arrive at stereotyping as an unfortunate byproduct…
I know where you were coming from over at Mrs C’s, where discussions are always worth a look.
I’m off to google post-apocalyptic literature...I’ve obviously been missing out
Oh, I’m so sorry, but what funny stories! You poor thing.
wait… you not only saw AN indian guy in HD, you saw TWO, and they BOTH ***WORKED THERE????***
c’mon, seriously now. how many indian guys have you seen employed as carpenters? as plumbers? as ANY blue collar job other than taxi driver? they always go for the blindingly white collar stuff, MD/lawyer/professor, and they always perform superlatively.
if stereotypes weren’t the least bit true, we wouldn’t have them at all.
I worked with african american kids in NC for a whole year and it took me almost six months to get the kids’ names figured out - they all looked alike and their names were all equally tounge-tying. But here’s the deal, the company I worked for was an “African American” company and they hired me because I was a white woman. They had to get their quotas up!
You can always pull a Michael Scott and mark one of them with a pen next time.
NPW — “Bean” is not something I hear a lot of here in the Northeast. In Texas where I came from, it was a racial slur against the Mexicans that I heard used with a casualness that was appalling.
Memarie Lane — Apocalyptic literature is a downer.
R — Why didn’t your co-workers say anything? I think people need to call others out on stuff like this. A simple, “No, I’m X,” would have alerted you to your mistake.
rosie — I heard something recently (and I should Google it) about how we are predisposed to recognizing characteristics of our own racial make-up but not those of others. I need to take look a this. Not that it’s an excuse but it’s interesting. Let me know what you think about post-apocalyptic lit! I have tons of suggestions!
Ree — Unfortunately, I have more foot in mouth situations than I’d like to admit.
keng — KENG!!! I’m going to send you to diversity sensitivity training.
k8 — At the end of the year, did you look back and ask yourself how in the world you could’ve gotten them all confused? You were affirmative actionized!
coconutdiaries — I’m going to have to remember to bring my (Al) Sharpie pen next time! Funny how I’ve never seen a single episode of The Office but I knew exactly what you were talking about!
My suggestion: when you’re sick, let Mr. Dingo do all the talking. Trust me on this one.
As for your “incidents”, I’d just blame the fever. Remember: racism isn’t just mixing up people of the same ethnic background, or saying things at the wrong time. Racism is doing those things and not caring.
I am a little pissed here because the geek hiker dude has never.once.been.to.my.blog even though Iread and comment on his regularly, becuase I find a single guy fascinating. Not in the sense that I want to bone him, but because most single guys are, you know, HAPPY about being single. I got a lot of other stuff out of your post, I tend to agree that whether we admit it or not...but am not going to get into it any further. You are doing okay, really, and we ALL mess up.
GH — I agree! And right now I am going back to bed in hopes that when I wake up, I’ll feel better — and no dreams of zombies or vampires. P.S. Get your single geeky self over to Kori’s blog RIGHT. NOW.
Kori — I told him! If he’s not over there promptly, I will release the hounds.
Happy Birthday!! Those stories, while mortifying, were absolutely hilarious. I hope them making me laugh made the humiliation you endured worthwhile.
Wait… You can get mexican food DELIVERED? That’s it, I’m moving.
Once at my old job, there was a Mexican guy in the kitchen that always slapped my ass and called me ‘J.Lo”. In trying to explain to him why being called that was offense, given the size of my ass, my genius brain decded to say, “You know how it makes you feel when people call you a wetback?”
I felt CRAZY guilty right away… Except, then he said, “What’s that?” I had to explain what “wetback” means, and then it turned out he thought it was freaking HILARIOUS. He’d never heard the term before and ran around calling all the other Mexicans in the kitchen wetbacks. It was awful, and hysterical all at once.
Megkathleen — If my humiliation makes your day, stay tuned. There’s more where that came from and I aim to please.
JR — Girl! Where have you been? As for getting Mexican food delivered, don’t even go there. You live in TX! You have the best Tex-Mex ever! What we have pales in comparison. And I can’t believe he had never heard the term “wetback”!
aw, well, it was an honest mistake. i think ive done the same thing. i hope you feel better! what a crappy way to spend a bday. you need to live it up when you’re on the mend.
ps- your pictures/photoshopping get me every time!
You poor thing! It happens to the best of us - and haven’t you ever had someone do that to you? I’ve heard plenty of “woman” and “blonde” stereotypes and slip-ups in my day. Your readers are right - at least you didn’t mean to do it. Perhaps you should consider increasing your contact lens prescription...maybe that’s why the Home Depot guys looked so similar.
haha - great stories. i can never tell people apart either since my head is usually in the clouds. i had a long conversation with a co-worker about the ufc. a week later i wanted to continue the conversation but i didn’t remember which of the two white dudes with a bald head it was - and they don’t even look alike. now i finally know who they are and one is way taller and bigger than the other. hehe.
I’ve longed for years to be in a position to be referred to as such:
“Hey, cracker-ass cracker, could you pass me the gravy?”
Alas, I find myself surrounded by too many of the aforementioned white-bummed Cauc.’s to really give myself that chance. Don’t beat yourself up too hard, Dingo. In my book, “Indian guy” is a great compliment. Now, “cracker-ass Indian,” that’s just wrong.
Instead of fighting labels, let’s just make more of ‘em. Shoot the moon. Maybe it will become a fad, and the whole system will come toppling down, prompting us to - all of a sudden - care what the Home Depot guy’s name is. Fast-forward to the future: Home Depot aisles will have living room furniture set up all along, with well-meaning people looking for screws having tea with a surprisingly well-credentialed man from Kandahar who’s just working at Home Depot until he can get his blogging career off the ground.
Hey there. Thanks for dropping by and leaving the comment. Made me smile on a crappy day.
Everybody’s been there, on your two guys thing. Well, maybe not everyone, but a lot of people. Or some, I suppose.
OK, it was just you.
i somewhat see and agree with your embarrassment… basically you went wrong by looking at the indian guy as ONLY an indian guy, and THE only indian guy who could possibly be in HD.
however i do object to the idea that categorizing via physical attribute is inherently wrong or prejudicial.
for example, why is it ok to differentiate people on such characteristics as height or hair color, but not weight or skin color?
why is it ok to identify someone as male or female, but not chineese or mexican?
i do stand by the fact that the probability of two eastern indian guys working in the same home depot in the same department is statistically very very unlikely.
brookem — Birthday celebrations have been rescheduled for tomorrow night! Woohoo!
Mel Heth — Wait, you’re blonde? And you get my jokes?
blakspring — Damn, white dudes with bald heads. Yeah, I would’ve been confusing them as well. Would you like to borrow my (Al) Sharpie?
Charlie Pratt — Charlie, your cracker-ass just cracks me up! If these Home Depot’s of the future have Wifi then he could live blog about the customers!
Hank — Hi, Hank! Wow, deja vu!
keng — Hmmmm… I think it’s okay to identify someone as Chinese or Mexican if it’s relevant to the narrative. I think it’s a bit different when it has no bearing on anything. If I said, “The Indian Guy at Home Depot was very helpful.” How is his ethnicity relevant? What purpose does it serve in my retelling? Why not, “The guy at Home Depot was very helpful.” As for two Eastern Indian guys working in the same Home Depot in the same department (plumbing) that is unusual. We all know that plumbers are white fat guys with gigantic ass cracks (not to be confused with cracker-ass Charlie above).
“Hmmmm… I think it’s okay to identify someone as Chinese or Mexican if it’s relevant to the narrative. I think it’s a bit different when it has no bearing on anything. If I said, “The Indian Guy at Home Depot was very helpful.” How is his ethnicity relevant? What purpose does it serve in my retelling? Why not, “The guy at Home Depot was very helpful.””
the question, then, becomes how you define “relevant to the narrative?”
if we all started only using words that were absolutely critical to communication, things would get pretty boring!
i mean, this is what they teach you in grade school, right?--use your adjectives and adverbs to create more descriptive, engaging prose. sure, “guy” is _sufficient_ to convey that you were talking to some male homo sapien, but when you say “indian guy,” i immediately have a much more polished, refined image in my head. if you said “short indian guy,” it’d be even better. does it suddenly become wrong to say “short fat indian guy?” is using an alternate word like “big-boned” better than “fat” or is it even more condescending? do we actually need to say “indian-american?” am i destined to become an “polish-lebanese-russian-syrian-american?” if, upon hearing that, you starting thinking that i probably like both golumpkie and tabouli, you’d be right. (i’d rather have been than lamb in the golumpkie though, and no garlic in the tabouli, please.)
prompted by your post here, my office-mate and i had a discussion about this today. the conclusion that we reached is that--like rosie said--the human capacity and outright NEED to compartmentalize and use inductive logic to form generalizations about the world in which we live cannot be eliminated. nor should it be! it’s a matter of filtration, of separating the constant barrage of information into useful and digestible chunks. those who cannot perform these mental operations end up institutionalized and/or heavily medicated.
stereotyping goes one step further, using the archetypes formed via inductive reasoning to _deduce_ details about individuals--moving from the general to the specific. and we all know the pitfalls of this kind of thinking: it doesn’t take into account variation and alternative. stereotyping has no space for exceptions.
i’ve already pointed out what i feel is the exception in your tale: that there would be not only one but TWO indian guys working in a single department in a single home depot on the same day at the same time. i’m honestly not lying when i tell you that i’ve never even seen an indian person SHOP in home depot.. and i go there a lot! exceptions will always occur, and they’ll always surprise us and upset the nice, neat, inductively formed hierarchies our brains are hard-wired to populate.
as for you calling the delivery guy “bean,” that’s just bad timing. LOL
thanks for the thought provoking post today.
ken
(i’d rather have been than lamb in the golumpkie though, and no garlic in the tabouli, please.)
beeF, not been.
keng — I think what bothers me about using ethnic descriptives is that you never (at least I haven’t)heard anyone use “white” or “caucasian” as a descriptive. “White” is the fallback, the default, it seems. The only time I have heard white used as a descriptive is when it is relevant to the narrative. Why is that? I also think because of stereotypes — even if you don’t proscribe to them — using an ethnic descriptive adds connotations to the story that may or may not be relevant or true.
As for two Indian guys at Home Depot, that’s not unusual for me because this Home Depot is in a very diverse part of town. However, if I had gone to visit The Cougar (my mom) in the ‘burbs where she lives, I may have been surprised and if I were telling the story to someone else, then the ethnic descriptive may have come into play for the sheer unusualness of it. I also see your point how it makes a story more interesting. The fact that they guys were Indian wasn’t a big deal to me. But, as you say, it’s unusual for you, I imagine it fleshed our your mental picture of my Home Depot. But did their race also bring to mind stereotypes—whether you believe them or not? Would the story have been different if I had just said “two guys”?
I agree with you and rosie that compartmentalizing is necessary but my question goes to how we compartmentalize and filter the information. I realize that trying to completely avoid ethnic descriptives can lead to silly results. I think it’s our methods and reasoning for compartmentalizing that has me thinking about how and when we use race or ethnicity to define people. One of the things that led me to write this post was a discussion on another board about using labels, encoded with meaning to describe people.
This has been a great discussion. Please, if you have more thoughts, let me know! Anyone else care to weigh in on this?
I had to Google golumpki and you can never have too much garlic.
I think that what you experienced was not prejudice, even deep seeded prejudice. You saw someone that looked familiar (for whatever reason) and made an assumption. If it were two heavyset caucasion ladies with dyed hair, you may have done the EXACT SAME thing.
I really think that racism is the greatest sickness our country faces, and I think this election has brought it absolutely to the surface. I’m really hoping ONCE Mr. Obama is in, dialogue will truly open up. Or maybe not. But I’d like it to. For a more lighthearted (but-oh-so-true) side to all this (and some solace for you in your faux pas):
Shelly — If it were two heavyset ladies with dyed hair, I would’ve asked them if they needed directions back to Jersey. Just kidding!!!
Jen of a2eatwrite — That video is hilarious! WHEN Obama is elected, I truly hope that so many things change about this country.
I regret being so far down the comment line, because I have been lax in my commenting lately (and for that I am sorry, please still like me) and though I have NO IDEA what it feels like to get 37 comments on one post, I imagine you are all tuckered out from reading them.
Anyway, you are hysterical. Frea-king hysterical. That poor delivery guy, to just take “Bean” in stride! I would not have made the connection right away either. I think you deserve a bonus shot of nyquil for recognizing your blunder.
Dingo, you never hear “white” as a descriptive because YOU’RE white. Other cultures use it as a descriptive all the time! 
Tress — I read all the comments Tress! By bonus shot of Nyquil, did you mean the entire bottle? Because that’s what I did.
jr — I live in a pretty diverse neighborhood and I can’t say that I’ve ever heard it. That being said, I’m keeping my ears open for it now. And all this talk has me craving Tex-Mex, I’m so jealous that you have it at your fingertips.
Don’t worry- it happens to the best of us. Once my parents were having a dinner party and I was telling a story about a guy who was helping me change a tire. But he was Mexican and spoke very broken English and I speak very broken Spanish and I’m going on and on about we didn’t understand each other and I was a little nervous to let him help me because I couldn’t understand him and I’m downtown in a city that can be dangerous sometimes… what I’m not realizing is that my parents are basically signal flagging me down with their eyes because one of their guests was of Mexican descent as well. I felt terrible!
Just goes to show you never know and even the most open minded of people can carry a racial bias without even knowing it! It’s when people do and say thing intentionally is when you really need to start worrying.
It’s so hard to sum up my feelings on this subject in a comment box without totally breaking your blog. It would be a novel. I would never call myself racist and pride myself on not tolerating racist remarks from the people I surround myself with. That said, prejudice is a funny thing and a lot of times thoughts, and actions creep into my life without intent and I have to catch and correct them. It’s frustrating, especially because it’s so hard to acknowledge that, because I’m white I inherently look at the world from a position of privilege and cannot ever understand what it is to look at the world as anything but.
MsCatalysta — I am just imagining your parents trying to give you the sign to hush up. To be fair, as a woman with car trouble in an area of town that is dangerous, I wouldn’t have blamed you for being suspicious of everyone!
Rachel — I think you make an important point about being in a position of privilege and not truly being able to see things from a nonwhite perspective. I’ve had friends who went to China, Africa, etc. come back and say, “I was the only white person I saw for a whole week! Now I know what it’s like to be a minority.” Um, no you don’t. Your privilege is something you carry with you.
Happy belated birthday!
I think the important thing to note here is that you don’t plaster your makeup on like a trollop. That’s why the Mexican dude didn’t say that.
Good thing you don’t call your dog “Studly McManly” or “Fill Me With Some Hot Latin Lovin” because his reaction might have been different then.
stoogepie — Thanks, Stoogepie! I should’ve known that you would put some much needed perspective on this. Thank you.
I totally feel your embarassment, Dingo! I worked with 2 Indian women in my lab while I was a grad student and would always get their names switched. I also switched the names of all of the other people in the lab (including 2 caucasian girls who were always together, so seriously, how am I supposed to remember which is which when they are always both in front of me), but whenever i slipped up with the Indian women, I always cringed inside thinking that they thought I was a huge racist ass.
hamster_grrl — Ouch! That must’ve made for some embarrassing moments. I probably would have avoided calling them by name and reverted to “you” or “hi, Girlie!” —which is probably just as offensive.
This is my new favourite post. I haven’t read anything this funny for a long time. You are fabulous.
Craving burritos now, too.