This is cracking me up so bad, because I could have written it about my own uncle! My mom’s brother from a tiny town called Glade Spring, VA.
For the record, he is white, but my mom and everyone else in my family is black. Don’t ask me how that happened. They all claim he is not adopted, so I just don’t know.
Do you guys refer to him as the white sheep of the family? 
Long ago, I had a (white, Georgia-boy) boyfriend who taught (black Kansas-girl) me [grunt-like sound that starts with an “R” and sounds a tiny bit like “burnt”] (perfect description, by the way - I cant think of a way to say it better)! He kept saying it, and after awhile I finally had to ask him what the hell he was saying.
Who knew that I simply should have asked for a black boyfriend, so that I could have understood him better?
From now on, when I go to the bathroom I’ll be sure to wipe my copperwindow.
:smack:
You know the difference between copperwindow and an asshole?
An asshole would never go to a Circuit City and make a copperwindow of itself.
One’s a smelly orifice which spews feces and the other’s an asshole.
I slogged through four pages of this for the punchline, and
That’s just not right.
(However, I now know how to get a rigorous proof-reading, should I need one.)
The answer to the thread title is quite affirmative. If as bad as the dialect usage got was along the lines of *“the mouse don’t work”, * it takes a professional-grade pedantic putz to make such an issue out of it.
And in Heaven’s name I hope the OP did NOT specifically ask for a “white” employee. Were I a store manager I might be willing to make accommodation for such a request from someone who’s obviously a foreigner right off the boat and can barely ask where is the restroom, as I would assume the person does not understand the culture. But a fluent anglophone explicitly asks for a white employee? I’d ban him from my store.
When the vast majority of the teeming millions agree that I was (am) an asshole, I’m able to overlook it. After all, I’m starting to seriously doubt that the number of the teeming millions are actually in the millions. But when both Q.E.D and Monty, two dopers with an impressive amount of knowledge, both agree I was in the wrong, I need to re-evaluate it. The way I it, either my concern could have been better handled by someone of my own race, or they couldn’t. If they could have been better handled by a caucasian, I feel I had the right, as a customer, to get the most helpful service. If they could not be better handed by a caucasian, if a black person is going to give me equal service as a white person, how is that racist? If the race of the employee is meaningless, it would have been like me asking to speak to another black employee. If that would have been racist, who would it have been racist to? Furthermore, isn’t Circuit City being racist by not hiring enough white people to work in customer service? Here in Vermont, the reason we don’t hire black people is because there aren’t any to hire. In a diverse place like NYC, the melting pot of the world, I fail to see how they can have that problem.
“Vast majority?” Has there been anyone here who didn’t think you were being an asshole, and a racist at that? And now you’re confirming all those stereotypes about people from Vermont (i.e., that it’s a lily-white state). It’s racist for you to assume that you’d be more easily able to communicate with a white person, especially since you had no problem understanding and being understood by the Circuit City employees who were so kind as to deal with you.
Hadn’t you anticipated a number of “yes” responses when you started the thread?
I figured I get a bunch of yeses, and a bunch oh nos. That wasn’t quite the case.
It’s not a stereotype, it’s a fact, Vermont doesn’t have a lot of black people here.
It’s not just that there are few black people in Vermont; it’s also that you apparently have little to no exposure to them at all. How is it that your parents live in the “melting pot of the world” while you’re a very sheltered resident of the Green Mountain State?
I wanted to speak with someone who spoke correctly, what was I supposed to do, ask to speak with someone who knows to speak proper English? That would have been offensive!
So I’m racist because there aren’t very blacks living in Vermont??
Or how I have little to no exposure of them? Is that what makes me racist?
I’m going to bed, hopefully I’ll get an answer that I understand after I wake up tomorrow. Good night.
You know, your concerns might have been distasteful, yet somewhat understandable if you demonstrated a strong command of proper English in your posts. But incredibly, most people here can translate your error-filled posts into understandable English.
Doesn’t that strike you as a little… hypocritical? You’re operating under the belief that your shopping experience was compromised because the employee used a nonstandard, yet perfectly understandable construction in a sentence, and you are posting to a message board - with the benefit of spellcheck, and the ability to read and proofread your writing before you send it into cyberspace - and it’s full of mistakes! Omitted words, confusion about capitalization, run-on sentences…
I mean, re-read this:
I had to read this three or four times to make sense (I think) of what you were trying to say.
What’s your excuse for not having perfect grammar and logic in your posts? If you’re going to demand it of retail staff, I’m going to demand it of you on this messageboard. Or (not to beat the dead horse into the ground) can you have another poster type up your thoughts for you so they’re clearer and mistake-free?
And it’s bizarre that you see the barrier in communication as a race-based one. If you had stated that you couldn’t understand the employee’s diction, that would be one thing. What assurance do you have that a cau… oops, a Caucasian employee would communicate in a more exact manner?
(see, Caucasian is a term derived from a region in Asia, and should always be capitalized…)