Miss Information is annoyed by a death threat
Ok. Miss Information is feeling a bit under the weather. She thinks it might be the flu. But it's Tuesday a day when the library is notoriously understaffed and frankly she isn't that sick. She isn't herself, but other than being a little shaky, a tiny bit headachy and slightly dizzy, it isn't that bad.Also it's a full moon. Ummmm...and there is a possibility that there is some PMS happening. In retrospect she should have stayed home. But she didn't.
So when a couple of the customers complained about noisy card playing in the browsing collection, she didn't have the sense to disengage and report it to the person in charge. Instead she went to the card players herself. She was as nice as possible, but told them to move their little Texas Hold 'em game to the casino floor of the library. Really, it's the teen area, but card playing is allowed there.
They argued. They've always been able to play here. (This is a lie, but Miss Information ignored it.) It's because they're brown, isn't it? They said they weren't leaving until they finished their hand. Miss Information asked them to deal her in. If they weren't leaving, she wasn't leaving either.
Since they wouldn't include her in the game, becoming, in fact, downright hostile at the suggestion, she decided to step away and find some assistance. There really wasn't anyone. So she went back, by now a little calmer. The kids were leaving.
She approached them more peacefully this time. She assured them they didn't have to leave, just move their game. Again they accused her of racism. This made her cranky. She didn't think to mention that the man who complained about their game was also brown. Instead she said something very stupid. She told them they were right. Bad mistake.
As one of them was leaving he uttered a threat. "I'm a kill you, bitch," were his exact words. Miss Information did not interpret this as a serious threat, but still cried for a while in the staff bathroom, mostly because she handled the situation so badly.
Later she heard that some boys, most likely her new card-playing-death-threat-uttering pals were threatened themselves on the way back to school. Good. Bastards.
Miss Information would like to assure everyone that at the time of this post she is still alive and still not a racist. She is occasionally a bitch, though, so they got that part right.
6 Comments:
Gah. The race card sucks, because there really is no good answer. It used to piss my (black) clerk off to no end. As she rightly said, it made "her people" (her words) look like whiners and fools to play that tune at every turn instead of holding it for when it mattered.
I completely agree about the whole race issue. Surely since it was him who brought it up it is he who has the race issue, not you?
Urgh, it makes me so mad, because, as kittenpie says, how do you answer it?
Full moon and PMS? And feeling fluey? Man, if it were me, there'd have been some scene.
You did mighty well, medear, by the sound of it.
Sophx
May I suggest some - or all - of the choice phrases from the "Forbidden Words" column as an appropriate response?
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/24/poster-of-recommende.html
Race card, gotta love it, ignorant kids. I have also had the race card thrown at me a few times. best one was when someone accused me a being rascist against Native Americans. I had to just laugh in their face since I am a mixed blood who dances at powwows.
You did good kid!
I hope you breathed/sneezed/coughed in their general direction so that they all could (eventually) share in your flu-ish symptoms.
Well, that was a no win situation. So sorry it happened. Unfortunately nothing you could have said would have satisfied them anyway. They were just looking to be jerks and that they were.
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