Verbal Mine Field
About 13 years ago an acquaintance of mine went into a grocery store to get some hair products. The GM department manager came and asked if he could help her. She told him what she was looking for. He asked her to come with him down the aisle. The conversation went a little like this:
Her: I checked the next aisle
Him: Oh that’s our products for regular hair.
Her: Are you sayin’ my hair’s not regular?
Him: Um I mean for ordinary hair.
Her: What are you trying to say, that my hair’s not ordinary.
Him: Er, I mean straight hair.
Her: I’ve got straight hair. I had the perm done this week.
Him: Um, ma’am
Her: Look just forget it.
If he had just said, those aren’t ethnic hair or African style hair products on that aisle, he could have diffused the situation. Now he just lost a customer for the whole store.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 0:21 and is filed under People, Racism, Speech, Stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
