I too am surprised they got the reference - Is it perhaps possible that they misunderstood Sand Off as being something akin to Fuck Off?
At least they had the grit to walk out.
Wax the Car
Sand the Floor
Paint the Fence
Paint the house
End of first lesson
Inches towards the door, then breaks into a run…
Also, it sounds like bubastis was a clerk at the store, which compounds the offensiveness. Perhaps he’s trying to be fired?
The same way there can be people in the world who didn’t understand when someone came dashing through our office yesterday announcing, "The new phone books are here! “The new phone books are here!”
Poor dears weren’t even born yet when that movie came out.
Ooooh, a Navin Johnson reference! Those are rare.
These cans are defective!
i don’t get it
In an early Steve Martin movie, The Jerk, Martin’s character (Navin Johnson) becomes extremely excited when the new phone books come out, because he is for the first time ever listed in it.
Of course he is immediately targeted by a killer who chose him at random out of the phone book.
I thought I was the only one who actually said that quote out loud.
I say it whenever I get a new phone book, and don’t forget the “I’m somebody!”
Perpetuating a stereotype is not necessarily racism. Bigoted, perhaps.
To a customer, in a store where you hope to remain employed, it’s just plain stupid.
It’s the cans! He hates these cans!
Gotta remember the rest of it…
Never saw Karate Kid, and I’m old-ish. Maybe they weren’t offended. Maybe they were just being inscrutable.
Oh, wait, that’s the Chinese…
Ok, Bubastis I’m gonna take the heat off you with my post. Your infraction was insensitive but not nearly as bad as what I am about to relate.
First, I have no excuse for this and I can only say that it was bespoken in irony and what I had hoped would pass as humor.
Just to set the scene, my local pub is a crusty little place, in a very small town. It’s the kind of place where you sit down with farmers, blue collar workers, and all types of rough around the edges country folks and drink 75¢ Busch draught and shoot the bull while “I Love this Bar” plays in the background (over and over and over… :smack: ).
There is a beautiful biracial (Korean/Caucasian) bartender that works there. She looks like an Asian version of Cindy Crawford right down to the beauty mark near her lip. She is great! Funny, sarcastic, and smart as hell and I’ve always had a bit of a crush on her. We joke and shoot the shit occasionally, and one night we were talking and somehow the subject turns to Korean food. I start explaining my longtime interest in Asian culture, language, food, religion, and philosophy…regaling her with stories of my involvement in Karate, a semester of Chinese at a local University, how I make a great BBQ Pork with Chinese Greens, my self-study of Japanese, how I consider myself a Taoist/Buddhist, etc. So what do I do? As the big cherry on the sundae, I look her right in the eye and say enthusiastically, “Yea, I guess you could say I’m a Chink-O-Phile!”
She didn’t really see the irony nor the humor, needless to say.
I was going to bring this up in Penchan’s thread from a while back, but I’m truly embarrassed by this particular Jack-assery, and this thread seems more congruous, as it was intentional and said in irony (I like to play with language and slaughter sacred cows.). Not really racism, or is it?
I thought I was the only one who did that.
At least, by the reaction I always get. :o
Ok, to clarify, I’m not racist in the slightest. These guys came to the store as we were closing for lunch, and I stayed behind to serve them, so I’m not trying to get fired (even though I’m quitting soon) and, as some of you may know, I’m not stupid 
But in my mind, there is a filter, which seperates Things you should say, from Things you should not say. This filter has been broken for some time.
I dont know, maybe I thought they’d laugh. It was a bad call on my behalf. But I didnt mean to be offensive, no more than Larry when he made that “Affirmative Action” crack.
So apologies, Japan.
I used to have a similar problem, to the point where one of the adjectives even my friends would use was “tactless.” I’ve since learned the value of biting my tongue, sometimes literally.