I don’t want to derail either, but I am very confused about what the ‘slavery days’ comment means. I don’t get the connection.
mmm
That was my first thought, so came in to ask if the OP wiped his/her chin after each bite. 
While I think that your solution of doing nothing is much better, odds are they would have been too slow moving to dodge a half-eaten Danish whipped at the back of their heads.
Which, of course, begs the question: How hard is it to get creme filling out of blue hair…?
I a word.
If the dim recollections floating vaguely to the surface of my brain are correct, I believe **grude **is white and his wife is African. So presumably he’s in the role of slave owner bedding his slaves, according to the asshat at the store.
For what it’s worth, my mother-in-law is in her 60s and is generally a nice, helpful, kind person. But a couple weeks ago she told me she has to wait till she visits us (700 miles from her home) to see an eye doctor, because the only ones her insurance covers in Boston are Chinese and Vietnamese. I asked if none of them speak English, but no, it’s just that they’re of a lesser race, apparently.
I think people of a certain age, from certain backgrounds, just had casual racism as part of their upbringing, and sadly seem incapable of revising their opinions. To be fair, I doubt she would say such a thing to an Asian person, never mind going out of her way to announce her opinion in an oblique but offensive way. But older people are definitely more than capable of being prejudiced assholes!
Shouldn’t that be “speak to your agent about the danishes you are getting?”
Yeah, “I’ve lost my appetite” is pretty obviously offensive. The right thing to do is either just leave, or use a simple ruse like looking at your watch and saying “oops, we can’t stay”.
Not to derail further, but when I went to my wife’s college graduation, her elder aunt was with us. We sat in the auditorium, and a grandmother-aged white woman sat in the bleachers in front of us, with a beautifully coffee-colored child. Auntie, who is a firecracker but usually kind and supportive, cracked out in a clear voice “That’s just wrong, to do that to a child. There are enough hurdles in the world without adding ones like that!” I was mortified. Fortunately, the grandmother didn’t react, though I’m sure it took an effort on her part.
I wish I’d said “Yes, and shame on us if we add to that burden!” but I didn’t think of it soon enough.
To the OP’s point: even people who are usually nice can have a mean streak. Heck, I’m pretty damn nice. I get along with just about anyone; there may be people who dislike me, but I can’t think of many people I can’t stand. Yet on occasion, nasty thoughts will occur to me. Usually I have the sense not to utter them, choosing to be who I choose to be, rather than letting “me” be defined by what occurs to me.
Some people just don’t have a very effective trigger guard. It’s not a pretty sight. It would be nice if they could see how ugly it is, how much more it puts us off our appetite than merely seeing someone who has some attribute that makes them unattractive to us. If they could see it, perhaps they’d get better.
But I doubt that pointing it out would help much. Really better to be the duck and let the water roll off, though it’s certainly not easy.
Easy to say, harder to do. We’re social animals. Still, it’s true that people only have the power over us that we give them. It’s a difficult lesson to learn, but one that’s worth the effort. And, like other hard lessons, it’s one that needs to be maintained, unlike riding a bike.
The issue is not what the person eating the Danish looks like, but why anyone would act this way. If I walked into a donut shop and a Jabba the Hutt lookalike complete with nasty stench was stuffing its face with crullers, I might leave without ordering because the smell genuinely took away my appetite, but even then, I’d pretend it was for some other reason entirely, because hurting random people’s feelings feels bad. For some people though, apparently it doesn’t.
This is not meant to imply that the OP in any way resembles a Hutt or smells and that this was what provoked the reaction. The reactors were probably bigoted buffoons.
I’m with Spoons here. Rude isn’t necessarily hateful.
For all we know the ladies in question were hoping for a quiet private conversation over coffee. They enter the “tiny place” and have their plans thwarted by the presence of another dinner, they react rudely and then leave.
I’m not in the US so maybe the cultural context is different. The OP, however, doesn’t give us any indications as to what specifically the ladies where being hateful towards.
No, you should not have agreed with her about the fact that this child existed!
The proper response on your part would have been to hustle the old lady out by any means necessary, as you would anyone else spewing vomit on people. If it was truly uncharacteristic behavior, a full medical workup was in order, as it could very well be dementia.
This is hair splitting. The OP clearly feels as though this rudeness was the result of hate-at-first-sight and as a result of this interpretation, felt hurt over it. Most people in her shoes would feel the same way. So what value is there in fretting over what adjective to label this exchange? What constitutes “hateful” is so subjective it’s like arguing over whether to call someone beautiful or just pretty.
My tendency is to roll my eyes at people who are quick to negate the experiences of others, but I’m wondering if the OP has become so self-conscious about how others perceive her that she is overpersonalizing the negative reactions that others exhibit. I have no doubt the world contains mean-spirited people who say hurtful things without batting an eye, but even on a good day, it’s very easy to mistake garden variety social obliviousness for blatant rudeness. This is why people get shot in clubs every day: someone feels disrespected because a human did a stupid human thing like step on their shoes or look at them funny.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if the lady was remarking on what the shop’s ambiance was doing to her appetite and cluelessly let her eyes rest on the OP as she was saying it, not realizing her statement could be misconstrued by a person who keeps feeling judged and looked down upon.
But regardless of if my theory is right or wrong, I’m sorry that this experience might have ruined your day, brujaja. No one deserves to feel like crap.
Really? Being rude and being hateful are mere gradations in social interaction? So if I shove past some slow person going through a door and I glare at them I’m hateful simply because they think I’m being hateful as opposed to thoughtless?
Honestly there’s nothing in the OP that indicates why the lady would be hateful to her. Is the OP black in a white neighbourhood or white in a back one (I’m assuming this is in the US)? Was she dressed in some cultural attire that might be the source of bigotry? Was the OP actually feasting on a Dane and had some on their chin? Who knows? All we know is the OP felt singled out, which is unpleasant but hardly earth shaking.
It sounds like there’s more to the OP’s background than I know but as an outsider, this sounds like much ado about nothing.
I was totally with you until the last line. What about crappy people? What about baby-rapers and thrill-killers?
What about Hitler?
You know, in general conversation most people tend to feel like they don’t have to place caveats on their statements just to flag potential exceptions to the outliers in life.
I take issue with quibbling over adjectives, as if the adjective determines whether someone is justified in feeling offended. If I’m walking down the street and someone elbows their way past me and then shoots me a mean look with teeth slightly bared, the negative feelings this action arouses in me is justified whether or not this person was motivated by hate or some other anti-social condition. If I’m recounting this incident and describe it as “hatefulness” and someone comes along and tries to rebrand it as something else, then I’m going to wonder why in Jeebus’s name they can’t just go with the damn flow and not turn to the discussion into a semantic debate.
Notice I don’t even accept as truth that the ladies were reacting to the OP. I think it’s possible they were just being thoughtless. But it seems as if you (or Spoons) is saying that even if they were voicing something negative about the OP, it’s unfair to characterize this as hateful. Just “rude”. If this impression is wrong (which is 100% possible), I apologize.
People mock us millennials for constantly having headphones in but I do it partly so I can blissfully ignore shit like this. Eating alone used to be miserable. Now it’s the best part of my day.
I know the OP is talking about a donut shop and not a bakery, but I believe the two are close enough that my example will be valid. I haven’t been in a donut shop in…lordy…maybe 25 years. I picked up a couple dozen donuts for some office meeting thing and got out as quickly as possible. The store had a permeating smell of donut glaze.
I was last in a bakery about 20 years ago. When I opened the door and walked in, I got hit with quite literally a WALL of sweet. This wasn’t just regular “sweet,” though. It was so thick and so strong it had almost a physical presence, like it was a sentient being. It knocked the wind out of me and took my breath away for a minute. I was immediately nauseated, too. I don’t think I’ve ever smelled anything that strong before. And, yes, it took my appetite away completely. (I had gone into the bakery to get a birthday cake for a loved one. I decided to make them one myself instead. I haven’t been back into a bakery since then - even the thought of that SMELL still makes me a little ill.) Had there been any other customers in the store at the time, I would probably have stared at them with a horrified or disgusted look on my face just like those other women did to you, but not to criticize the other customers. It would have been more along the lines of “Do you SMELL that? Does it bother you too? Do you feel like you can’t breathe? Do you think the bakery ladies get high off this stuff?” I wouldn’t have said that out loud. Like another poster said, it would have been to ally us together with just a look.
So, they could have been doing that. Or maybe the first lady in the store let out a seriously rank fart that made the unfortunate lady behind her lose her appetite. Or, when they walked into the shop, they could have seen the donut lady with her finger up her nose and been horrified at the thought that you could have been eating a booger-flavored donut (now with 10% more booger!). Or perhaps the bloody axe on the table next to you could have done it. 
Although, if those two women were just being crappy to you because of some physical characteristic of yours, just remember, that if they have a problem with how you look, then it’s THEIR problem, not yours. Not yours to worry about, not yours to fix, not yours to even acknowledge. THEIR problem. So just offer to buy them a prune danish. 
In all seriousness, brujaja, stuff happens. Life happens. People are wonderful, crazy, generous, selfish, hateful, loving, prejudiced, racist, faithful, kind, and so much more. And good things happen to us and crappy things happen to us. It’s really not so much the actual things happening to us that matter. It’s what we tell ourselves about the things that happened to us that matters. Want their approval? Then change yourself to look like them, talk like them, think like them. Want to be happy just as you are? Then seek only your own approval. And that way, if you find you don’t like something about yourself, you can change it to make yourself happy.
Well in the first place you haven’t established that it was *hateful *. I don’t have to accept that it was unless you provide more context. Everyone is rude at some point, either from fatigue, being clueless, stress and yes on occasions bigotry. It’s a low level social friction that people simply need to deal with. Hate on the other hand is not. It’s a deep emotional dislike directed at specific targets.
I think we’re more or less in agreement that the OP is over reacting but until the OP provides more context around “hateful” I’m under no obligation to accept that the ladies in question were actually acting in a hateful manner.
Because I consider that besides the point. That is my point.
It’s like you read her post and didn’t understand a word of it.