I witness all of these things often at work. I work in somerset and often deal with people who often look/ talk down to my coworkers and I. Mostly due to social class but sometimes due to other things as I had my first interaction with a racist only two weeks ago.
I work at LensCrafters, I sell glasses, I help pick out frames and help patients figure out what they need in their lenses, as well as making adjustments and troubleshooting. Our team is pretty diverse racially, but it is a team with a majority of women. The customers we get are also quite diverse. It was something I noticed when I first started working there as I had worked in the same environment prior, but it wasn’t nearly as diverse in terms of race, class, or gender. It was something I noticed in most of my interactions, customers expect you to follow them and carry around their choices, talk to you as if they know everything and you know nothing when they don’t understand the difference between a progressive and a transition, and you’re just forced to smile and politely redirect them even when they talk to you like shit. Not every customer is like this but there’s enough in the day to make you feel like you need a drink or a smoke.
I came across a lady who was not rude to me to my face she actually was sweet, but she refused my help only to be later told by my coworker who did help her later on that this lady was racist and did not want my help because I was black. I won’t say that my feelings were hurt but there was this deep sense of disappointment as I had never experienced something like that before. I’ve always dealt with overt racism, the kind of people who won’t even acknowledge you or immediately berate you. But she only did so to my coworker who now felt sorry for me since no one had warned me of her earlier.
Most LensCrafters aren’t like this, mine is just located in one of the wealthiest malls in the state. Sadly, we group people into categories of people who are buying, not buying, and stealing, since our goal is to make as much money as possible, we don’t focus on those who are not ready to spend. We ask questions when people come in like do they have a prescription and other open-ended questions to determine if we should float around them or not. And of course, we take multiple factors in when we think someone is stealing, like having shopping bags from stores that aren’t in our mall for example. We work in sales while we are supposed to share them some days it can be more of a fight for them some customers only want to work with specific people, some move faster than others, etc.
While my team does not display a whole lot of power dynamics I see it a lot with customers, especially when married couples come in together, a lot of the time it is a cute interaction, very endearing and other times one is holding something over the other and talking to them like trash and it can be hard to watch and say nothing. It doesn’t impact my sense of belong at work but being in that mall 30+ hours a week does, on my walk to starbucks I see so many things that remind that I am not like these people, I don’t have the money to spend that they do, I don’t have the arrogance that they do, the lack of manners or awareness.
