I’m not really sure how to start this. I’ve felt so ashamed of myself ever since this happened.
I used to work in retail and there was typically a lot of conflict between us and the customers. It wasn’t unusual to see my coworkers crying in the breakroom or customers leaving the store yelling because of insignificant things like expired coupons or whatever. I grew to really dislike our customers because of the environment.
One day this lady came in and she needed help finding something specific, so I walked over to her and tried to help. She said she saw a sign for something at the end of the aisle but she couldn’t tell me exactly what it was. I remember trying to be as helpful as I could. I asked her if she could show me the sign but she got upset and said something to me like “Im sorry, I thought you worked here” and walked away. I went back to the aisle I was working on and I was super heated so I started venting to my coworker, I started by saying something like “I hate customers like that” and after a minute she came into the aisle and said she was going to report us.
About a year goes by and I get called to the office to take a phone call from corporate. They ask me if I remember the incident and they say she claims I called her a bitch and referred to her as “that black lady over there”. I truly could not remember what I said that day and its been weighing on me for years. Bitch is definitely part of my vocabulary, and working in retail we would sometimes refer to customers as their race/ethnicity/age which could be taken as offensive, especially if you’re talking about them in the context I was. So it is something I could’ve said, but it’s so frustrating not remembering. I ended up denying the whole thing on the call because I was scared of having something like that on my record. I never ended up facing any consequences for any of it.
I’ve talked about this in therapy multiple times and I can’t seem to get over it. I’ve delt with discriminatory comments before due to my race, so I know how much it hurts. I can imagine being a black woman in america it is probably much more traumatizing. It’s so frustrating because she genuinely was being hurtful with how she treated me that day, but I’m left feeling so guilty about what I possibly said about her. I just wish I could apologize
Comments
We are all merely human.
Forgive yourself, remember the sorrow , and move on friend.
Regardless of racial issues, if any incident were reported a YEAR later at any job I worked at, no one in corporate would address it. They probably wouldn’t even believe it.
Are you saying she reported it a year ago, and corporate is only now getting around to deal with it?
Are you baiting people to say a response like, “Don’t feel bad. Black people always pull the race card.”?
I think the fact that you’re still concerned about the incident shows that you care about how your actions affect others… You don’t have to be the person you were in one moment forever. Take accountability by being honest with yourself and try to learn from it if you haven’t already. Extend yourself some compassion just as you would for a friend dealing with the same issue. You deserve to move forward without carrying the weight of that day forever.
Honestly fuck that person as everyone needs to vent sometimes and she shouldn’t have been reporting shit on you when you tired to help but she instead didn’t get instant gratification so decided to be an asshole instead.
In your shoes not stop worrying over this and move on, as 100 she isn’t worth the mental load you’re giving her inside your head/mood.
Also likely she added shit to make whatever you said sound worse than it was, otherwise she couldn’t make a complaint.
Man you need to let this one go. I say things significantly worse than this to people’s faces.
Granted, I know I’m an asshole. But this should not keep you awake a night.
Many years ago when I was in retail a customer overheard me calling them an asshole.
There were no repercussions she probably realized she was one.
EDIT: For context she wanted cash back with no receipt and made me go find my manager.
When I did I started out with “There’s this asshole…” not realizing the customer was standing right behind me. Whoopsie!
Honestly if you did say it, it sounds like a descriptor and not an insult. Why did she take a year to report you?