The basics: Marcus Bradley has worked at Lowe’s in Danville, VA for 11 years. He was on his way to make a delivery when his manager called him, telling him not to make the delivery. It seems the customer (pictured in several of the stories, but not named) had called and demanded that her delivery driver be white; the manager complied with the request.
That manager has now been fired. Mr. Bradley, having done nothing wrong, still has his job. The customer, however, has no regrets, yet, about her request:
I said “yet” because I have a feeling that with her picture and city listed, it won’t take long for folks like 4chan or Anonymous to track her down and out her publicly, and she may feel differently about her demand if that happens.
Meantime, I think she is a total fucking douchebag and deserves to be pitted: piss on you, you unhappy, miserable, rotten, filthy, lousy excuse for a human being; may your progeny find themselves hopelessly confused by life and unable to reproduce; may your life be filled with the same kind of blanket disapproval and rejection that you inflict on others, and may there rest of your days be as restless and uncomfortable as you desire to make other’s.
Tangential pitting can include the now-unemployed manager and people who think that racism in America doesn’t exist.
I’m reserving judgement on the manager - I suspect the company’s training puts a lot of emphasis on ‘the customer is always right’, and not much on ‘…except sometimes, the customer is sometimes an idiot racist who should be told to fuck right off’.
Perhaps you missed the statements from Lowe’s included in various stories:
They also tweeted about the incident:
Yeah, I understand the manager prolly just wanted to make a customer happy, but as a manager, they are paying you to think (a little) and he should have realized this was something unusual (and just flat-out wrong) that needed consultation with one of his bosses. Knowing right & wrong and knowing your limitations as a manager are part of the job, IMO. Certainly being able to see controversy coming and getting out of the way are things a manager should be able to do competently.
When did we get this right? I must’ve missed it, because there’s a hell of a lot that I want that I don’t have.
WRT racism, we should be happy that this sort of thing is unusual enough to merit being national news, and that the manager involved is swiftly and publicly given the boot.
Only the most spineless of managers would require consultation with their bosses before making a command decision on an issue like this.
Seriously, what competent manager would think to themselves, “hm, I better check with my boss to see whether it’s appropriate/legal to replace the black delivery guy with a white delivery guy”?
When I worked in Texas, we had a doctor on staff who was as American as apple pie and baseball, but had an Italian last name that could have passed for Spanish if you really butchered the pronunciation. We would regularly get calls from new patients (invariably old white people) who clearly didn’t want a Mexican doctor, but didn’t want to just come out and say “Is this doctor so-and-so a Mexican?” I told my employees to play dumb, and many hijinks were had as the callers would ask all these backdoor racist questions like “Where did he go to school?” and “Does he speak any other languages than English?”
I would love to introduce her to the much older woman whose grass I mowed yesterday. A friend asked if I’d give him a hand doing a widowed neighbor’s yard work. It was a pain in the ass, but I got our lawn tractor onto my utility trailer, drove over, and mowed her largish lot.
Afterwards she invited me in for horribly sweet lemonade. She thanked me profusely, telling me the church was a lifesaver. I told her I was there not on behalf of her church, but because her neighbor Mike asked me to lend a hand. I told her Mike was a caring neighbor. She asked what church I attended. I told her I didn’t. She told me if she knew I wasn’t a Christian she would have never allowed me on her property.
I could have, actually. It was close to knee high, so I bagged it making two passes. My buddy (her neighbor) took the clippings to his property to compost.
Crazy racist old lady is not an anomaly there, unfortunately. Lots and lots of people there still living in the 1950s, race relations wise.
Old lady should have been told that the dispatcher has no way of controlling which delivery driver comes to her house. If she can’t handle that, then she can put on a clean housecoat and bring her baggy ass down to the store to pick up her close-out washer.
I have a hard time blaming the manager here. He, as you said, probably resorted to the “make the customer happy, even the assholes,” training he received. Put the blame where it belongs here, on the racist bitch. Tell her she is not welcome in Lowe’s again. Period.