rSlash - r/Idontworkherelady "Black People Should Serve White People!"

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

r/Idontworkherelady In today's episode, OP is a black man attending a work event at a restaurant with his colleagues. He is very clearly a member of the party and not a restaurant worker, but that doesn't stop a Karen from handing him her keys and demanding that he go get her car. OP tries to politely explain that he's not part of the valet service, which prompts the Karen to call OP the worst thing you can call a black woman. I really wish OP had thrown her keys in the gutter! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R-slash, a podcast where I read the best post from across Reddit. Today's subreddit is R-slash I don't work here, lady, where a Karen says the forbidden word to a black person. Our next Reddit post is from Keyboard Bill. This happened about 16 years ago when I was in my late 20s. Now, one thing to point out about myself is that I have a baby face. Even now at 44, I'm tall and I have an athletic build, so I get mistaken for a young 20-something all the time. So you could just imagine what I look like at the age of 27 or 28. Now another relevant detail to this story is that I'm a black guy, and you can just imagine

what my life has been like. There are a few things in America more despicable than a young black man, right? So that's my life in a nutshell. Curse to forever be a young black man, right? So that's my life in a nutshell, cursed to forever be a young black man. So my team was having a retirement celebration for our manager, and we had a dinner party at a restaurant near our workplace after hours. The shindig ended up being about 25 to 30 people, mostly older, and it was nice. Our manager shed a tear to, gave a nice speech, blah blah blah. The restaurant was open for other business as well, so there were other small parties and couples there at the restaurant.

They ignored us and we ignored them. So fast forward to the end of dinner. We're all outside now, saying our final goodbyes and on the verge of dispersing. A few people start to make their way home and our group is now whittled down to about 10 to 12 people. Other patrons and pedestrians are coming and going, like normal, and there we are just chatting amongst ourselves. I should point out that our manager was still there with his plaque, a relatively large picture frame and a couple of gift bags. So again, it should have

been evident to anyone who was in that restaurant for the past hour that we were from that big group of people in the middle of the restaurant holding a party. At least you would think that anyways. And then it happened. Let's call her Karen. Excuse me, yes ma'am. Here are my keys. For... For you to get my car.

I'm sorry, but I don't work here ma'am. I don't have time for games. Here are my keys. As she's saying this, she tries to stuff her keys in my hand. Now I'm pissed. If you put your keys in my hand, I'm gonna throw them across the street and into the gutter. Then why do you have a badge on? As she's saying this, she reaches out to grab my badge which was on a lanyard hanging around

my neck. But before she can, I snatch it away. If you touch me again, I will consider it a salt and call the cops. I don't work here. She withdraws her hand and I release my badge, which she precedes a study for the two or so seconds it would take to figure out that it's not a restaurant

or a valet badge. I believe the restaurant contracts out their valet service. And having done valet work during college, I'm fairly certain that my business attire does not in any way resemble their uniforms. And furthermore, none of them used badges or lanyards. Then she looked me up and down, came back to lock eyes with me, and while she started to turn away, she uttered that word under her breath.

You know the one. I'm not gonna lie, it caught me off guard. And in the 15 years since that happened, I thought of the perfect comeback more times than I care to admit. But in that moment, I simply couldn't force words to come out of my mouth. So I just turned around and tried to shake off my shock and anger and proceeded as if everything was fine. Most of my remaining coworker group, a mix of black and white people, were unaware of

what had just transpired. But there was nothing to be said or done really. So we just kind of started small talking again. OP, I find myself wishing that she really had handed you her keys. I would have loved it if she spent the night fishing around for her keys in the gutter where she belongs. Also OP, I think you're applying way too much logic to this lady's brain. Like yeah, your uniform didn't match, and yeah, you were obviously part of that party. And yeah, your badge and land your clearly showed that you were not a valet.

But I think to people like this Karen, it's literally just them and then everyone beneath them. So, it didn't really matter what you were wearing, what matter to her was that you were someone beneath her, and therefore you existed to serve her. Down in the comments we have this story from Cancer Skittles. This reminds me of a story when I was 16. I was walking home from school and I stopped in a ride aid for a bottle of water. Some old white dude who had just paid for his stuff and was trying to flirt with the cashier

pushed his keys into my hand. Saying some nonsense about, bring my car around to the front, and he basically pushed me towards the door. With a mix of stranger danger and teenage dickery, I chucked his keys as far as I could into the parking lot, and I just started walking home. From what I could tell, they landed in the bit of a pickup truck. Our next reddit post is from Granite Blanco. The management company that oversees my apartment building has always been total garbage. Packages go missing from the mail room,

repairs take forever, staff is unfriendly, and it's not at all worth what we pay and fees. There was really only one solid employee, and he almost made up for everyone else's incompetence, the janitor Ron. He kept everything sparkling clean and he even pitched in when other people slacked off just because he took pride in the building.

Then the corporate oversight of the management company changed and the new boss was having all the properties inspected to do a quality spot check of the individual building managers. Our manager, the winner that he is, decided that the best course of action would be to just not come in the day of the oversight visit so that it would have to be cancelled. His hope was that the inspector would just inspect what he could without the manager

on site, which wasn't much since he'd already have made the trip out there. My apartment has terrible cell reception and no AC, so I spent a ton of time downstairs in the lobby which has both. As a result, I was able to overhear most of the planning for this visit. Our janitor, Ron, knew about the inspector's visit, so he was busy cleaning up the entire place in preparation. He fixed a few broken things that the repair guy ignored, and he even brought in fresh cut flowers to the lobby out of his own pocket.

Ron dressed up in a collared shirt and khakis for the visit. He didn't know the manager was bailing. The only reason why I even knew is because I was hanging out in the lobby late one night. So when the corporate inspector arrived, Ron was the only guy that he saw. And Ron was all dressed up, so the inspector shook his hand and started rattling off all the things that he wanted shown to him. Ron knows this building better than anyone else on staff, so you could tell he was a little overwhelmed at being seen as a point person. But even then, he knew the answers to every one of the inspector's questions. Meanwhile, a few tenants and contractors who

frequent the building pass by and they all knew Ron. They each brought up their concerns about the respective apartments. Those on staff who knew they were being inspected even made a point to say, yeah, Ron's the guy if you got a problem. So a while later the inspector must have finished his inspection because they recongregated in the lobby. The inspector told Ron that he wanted to get Ron's full name so he could make a note in the employee file of how well he's run the building so far, and that he'd meet with him later in the week to discuss fixes for the problems he found. Ron shocked, said, you want to meet with me again? And the inspector was like, sure, I'm looking forward to a long working relationship.

I like to meet with each building once a month. Sorry, what was your name again? For the file. Ron told him his name and the inspector goes, hold on, I thought that someone named, uh, Eddie was the manager here. Then Ron explained, clearly embarrassed and scared that he'd done something wrong, that he was not the manager. He explained that the manager hadn't even come in that day.

The inspector then went and spoke with a few people in the building on his own while Ron absolutely lost his cool in the lobby, thinking that he was going to get fired or get the building censored or something. Eventually, the inspector comes back, sits Ron down and tells him that he may not technically be the manager, but he is effectively the manager. So if he wants it, he can have a new job as the manager. Ron actually cried. Ron's been working as a contractor through a janitorial service, not directly for the

building. So he had no benefits, he was part time, he had very little job security and support. And he'd just gone from that to a cushy office job in the building he loves in the blink of an eye. I was sitting on the couch a few spaces down from them and I felt compelled to ask before anyone got too excited, hey, excuse me, can you do that? Or could someone veto this? The inspector turns to me and tells me that he's the new chief operating officer of the management company and the final hiring decisions are at his sole discretion. Then he has to I was and I basically said I was just leaving and I got out of there before my big mouth

complicated things any further. This week Ron officially started his new job as the building manager. We've got flowers in the lobby every day now, and a dripping false that I've been waiting six weeks to have fixed is scheduled for repair on Thursday. So, Ron didn't work there before, but he does now. Alright, so turns out that standing up the COO of your new company is probably not the smartest idea. Like, what was Eddie's plan to just be like, oh shoot, I was supposed to go into work that day. Oh, I forgot because it was on my calendar to go to work and you guys are paying me to

go to work, but I don't know, I just forgot man. I mean, obviously if you were there, then they would figure out how incompetent he was, but if he just blows them off entirely, then doesn't that make him just equally incompetent? Our next Reddit post is from BigSpie. This happened a while back, but I still get a laugh out of it. At my first job, which was an online directory and blog, we had a client who was entitled to a free, limited time premium listing. This included a short write-up about her business on our website, which would then be unpublished

after her premium listing had expired. Basically, she was on a free trial. I was on the editorial team, and I first encountered this person when I had to interview her for her write-up. My colleagues had advised me to be careful, because she was rather irritable and rude. But I spoke to her in English, which was not the primary language in my country, and she was really nice to me. During some idle small talk, we both discovered that we went to the same university. I wrote the article and everything was fine. Until her premium listing expired, the account manager who was assigned to her gave her weekly updates on the status of her account, and he reminded her that her premium listing would soon expire. She yelled at my colleagues on the phone, saying,

a distance as large and successful as mine with celebrity clientele should automatically have a premium account whether I pay for it or not. Then she refused to speak to anyone except the general manager or me. I was working as an editorial assistant at the time. Our general manager was busy at the time, so me, the sales manager and the account manager, all took the call over speakerphone in the conference room. As soon as they informed her that I was now in the call, her tone changed, and she was suddenly polite. She asked if we could republish the write-up that you worked so hard on OP, even though she was no longer using the premium package. She went on to say that, surely someone with your educational

background and who went to the same university as me would understand. I told her that it wasn't up to me to make that call because I was just an editorial assistant, but I would be happy to keep the right up published for another month if she decided to purchase the premium package for the next month, taking my cue from the sales manager I then said something like. A successful entrepreneur like yourself would have to understand that a premium service does come with a price tag. Finally, she agreed to pay for the next month to keep her accounts premium status. I quit my job shortly after that for unrelated reasons.

About three months later, I received a call from that same client. I was surprised because I had contacted all my clients who I'd worked with before to let them know that I would be quitting and to hand over their work to someone else in the department. She was complaining that her write-up had been taken down and that I had to do something about it. I informed her that I was no longer affiliated with that company, but that I would pass her concern along to my former colleagues.

The call ended, and I contacted my former colleague to let her know about the client's concern. Guess what? The client hadn't paid for the premium package for two months. Several months go by and one Sunday I'm woken up at 4 a.m. by my phone ringing. It's this woman again and this time she isn't even remotely polite. She was yelling at me saying that I didn't republish her article, and that her listing had gone back to basic. She said that my company should be grateful to have her listed because she had celebrity clientele, and that she herself was a celebrity in her industry.

I will admit that she was infamous, but not famous. I was so done with this woman by this point. So I repeated to her that I did not work there anymore, and if she wanted a premium account, she should pay for it like everyone else. But then I said that if she contacted me again, I would sue her for her harassment, and I hung up. It was an empty threat, but she never contacted me again. Years later, I found out that she'd been blacklisted because she never paid for a year's

worth of the premium listing. That was our slash, I don't work here lady, and if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put on your Reddit podcast episodes every single day.