Every job I've had has been in customer service. Most of the time, everything's been fine. Everyone has had to deal with Karen's that need to have it their way, or that want to complain about everything - that's just a part of the job. It's when my race becomes an issue that I have a problem.
I was working at the customer service desk when someone came up trying to do a return. There was no receipt, the product didn't have it's tags, and they claimed to have used to cash to purchase it. It was a pretty expensive item so I wasn't going to be able to return it to a gift card either. Even if I wanted to, the system wouldn't allow it.
I explained that it wasn't going to be possible unless they had the receipt or knew when they purchased it so we could find the receipt in our system. I've dealt with customers like this before - a lot of the time it's not even their item they're trying to return. They either had previously stolen it from the store and were trying to give it back to us for cash, or they took it from someone else. I had worked there for quite a while so I knew what I was doing.
The customer didn't agree with me. They kept insisting that I got someone who knew what they were doing. I paged one of my supervisors, who's from Venezuela. He then yelled that we had to get someone who actually knew what we were doing and could help him "unlike these colored people who aren't even from here".
Unsure of what to do, we just got a manager. A white one. He explained to them exactly what we both had already said. It wasn't until they heard it from him that he left the store without a fight.
The color of someone's skin has nothing to do with their level of knowledge. Assuming they don't know someone just because they are Black or Hispanic or anything but white just adds to the problem we have going on in society.
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