Gotta disagree. You don’t fuck with someone’s livelihood over what could have been a misunderstanding.
I don’t think you stayed around long enough to really determine if they were being racist or not. The first customer who got served ahead of you could easily be chalked up to the fact they thought you and your friend were together and that you were planning to eat their food and weren’t ordering yourself. The second customer could easily be explained as just having gotten the attention of staff better than you by walking up to where they were paying closest attention. Not all businesses or staff pay as close attention to lines, it’s not even necessarily a cultural thing about Asia versus the United States. As another poster mentioned, this is part for the course at a busy bar where there is no true “line” or “order”, instead whomever has cash in their hands and gets the bartender’s attention gets served first. The quiet people get served last.
The other Yelp reviews may mean they are behaving in a racist manner, but it could have been based on similar misunderstanding, and the Asian customers getting served first could be regulars who better know how to get served quickly. Anyway, I think proving claims like this under the Civil Rights Act requires a pretty firmly established “pattern of behavior”, and I doubt anything you described would be such a pattern to the degree required to be proven in court. So whether it’s theoretically a violation or not would be difficult to know, and impossible to litigate.
I doubt this instance is a large enough sample size to prove anything. Plus verbal testimony might turn into an our-word-vs-their-word situation.
All the OP would have to do is say something like, “The cashier ignored me even though I was obviously standing in line, waiting to be served. Not once did this happen, but twice. Everything else about the place was great, but this left a bad taste in my mouth.” He doesn’t have to bring up racism or discrimination. Bad service is bad service.
I notice all kinds of negative reviews for businesses. Most of them will be pretty trivial and can be waved away as an isolated occurrence. I really doubt the downfall of a business can be attributed to a single negative review. But if enough reviewers point out the same thing, then maybe it ain’t an isolated occurrence. Not only can future customers be forewarned, but management can figure out what’s happening (if they care enough).
It’s also been my experience that a place can get all kinds of negative reviews for bad service, but if the product they are selling is awesome, people don’t care. “OMG, the service at the bakery is horrible!! But their macarons are so delicious I will put up with the hassle!!”
Fair enough: Yelp reviews.
I removed mine because it has more of on it than I want to combine with what I have here.
Maybe it was racially motivated, which is a violation of the law, or just the same poor service I’ve routinely received at the many white yuppie cafés; which is not a legal violation but rather good old American abuse of anyone who’s not rich or fuckable. And no, my overall quality of life wasn’t diminished. That’s why they are called micro aggressions.
Perusing some of the reviews, it seems to me that there is at least some element of culture clash here. A lot of the reviews criticize the service—no smile, no greeting, no friendliness. My guess would be that this kind of thing runs contrary to the manners of Alpharetta, Georgia, but not necessarily to that of Korean immigrants.
I would think there’s plenty of room here for cultural misinterpretation.
It’s like what I’ve heard about Paris boutiques. Before I went to Paris, I heard all kinds of things about how rude and abrupt Parisians were, especially with regard to Americans or other foreign tourists.
It was suggested that Parisians don’t like the shabby way that Americans, in particular, dress, etc.
Well, while I was in Paris, I did not encounter one single service employee who treated me shabbily or abruptly. They served politely and with a smile, and never once hesitated to speak in English, if that was required.
I even went into what seemed to be a somewhat fashionable hat store. I saw a beret in the window that attracted my attention and I wanted to know how much it cost—I didn’t know whether it was within my budget.
So I stuck my head in and there were two employees chatting with each other at the checkout counter. I had a simple question and didn’t need to browse or anything, so as I stepped in, I have a big wave and “hello!” to the shopkeepers, and they greeted me with what I regarded as a reasonably friendly manner. I was dressed in my ordinary shabby American manner. I said something like “I was just wondering what the price of that beret is.” and they answered. I said “Thank you very much” and I left.
A couple of days later, I decided that I could afford the beret and I popped back in and said “Hello!” again. and the middle-aged lady running the shop said, “I remember you! You asked about that beret. And I said yes, indeed, I had decided to buy one.”
Later I found out that I had done the right thing by immediately greeting the shopkeepers when I entered the shop. Apparently, they consider it rude for you to go in and start browsing without acknowledging them.
In any case, long story short—you never know when there might be a culture clash in these situations.
Wrong. It begs the question. It assumes that an incidence of illegal racial bigotry had taken place and that the only question was whether it should be countered. That assumes facts not in evidence. Let me Wiki that for you.
Nitpick: He’s not assuming facts not in evidence. It’s assuming that the facts presented support a particular legal conclusion.
Question begging is assuming the conclusion in order to support the reasoning. In this case, The reasoning might be faulty, but it’s not quite question begging.
It’s exactly question begging. he assumes that illegal racial bigotry occurred. Of course illegal racial bigotry is a bad thing and should be countered, but did it happen?
A place with 23 reviews only has four 1-2 star reviews? That place must be amazing according to Yelp.
If I recall my Atlanta geography right (I live in Roswell), the area that bakery is located is immigrant central, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was less cultural assimilation than if it was located on say, Windward Parkway.
I would agree that seeking to deliberately torpedo a place of business with an exaggerated or patently false Yelp review is not cool.
OTOH, someone who has had a negative experience (like the OP) should not feel precluded from sharing the honest details of their experience.
He didn’t beg the question, he explicity asked THAT question.
Who is the ‘He’ you’re referring to? There’s something very fucked up with the quoting in this entire exchange.
Fixed some coding. Be careful with the coding if you quote another post. Some of you are mistakenly attributing some quotes to the wrong people.
Is it possible the people served ahead of you were known to the cashier? I’ve certainly had that happen PLENTY.
Cashier hasn’t served me yet, friend of cashier walks in, “OH RACHEAL HEY” and she gets served first. Rude as shit, maybe not systematic racial discrimination.
Both of these things, very much.
I wonder (on no evidence, just speculation) if it might have been linguistic. Maybe the cashier was serving people who spoke her native language first, and possibly someone who spoke English better was in the back doing something and would be back in just a minute.
At any rate, when I get skipped over, I say something; I don’t wait until a lot of people have been served ahead of me, then leave in a huff and write a bad Yelp review. After the first person got served ahead of me, I would have said “Excuse me, I’m ready to order.”
I don’t mean to pick on the OP, but getting mad over something that may or may not have been deliberate, and going somewhere else to stew about it, while contemplating revenge seems really petty. This should have been dealt with in the moment. YMMV, and all that.
Remind me to stay out of Georgia. I have probably lived in Indiana more years than I was in NYC, but I have never gotten used to the cashiers who think they have to make small talk with you. Just get the transaction done. Cripes. There are two discount mega-stores here, and I go to the one with self-checkouts, even though it’s slightly more expensive, just to avoid chatting with the cashiers. And I don’t mean they smile and say “How are you?” I mean they ask personal questions, ask what grade my son is in, whether I like the brand of whatever I’m buying, because they’ve been thinking of trying it, how the weather is (which is OK if it’s storming or something, but every. freaking. time.) I just want to pay and be on my way, not make friends.
Thank you.
No. First, that’s not what happened, second, that’s not what “Begging the question” is. Did you read your own link?
That’s not how the phrase “begging the question” is used. If the OP had said “She served people before me, and she was Asian, therefore, the people she served before me must have been Asian, and that’s why she served them first,” that would be question begging. But the OP didn’t phrase it that way. The way it was phrased, the conclusion does not follow from the evidence “non sequitur,” or maybe is the error of false causation, “post hoc ergo propter hoc,” but it isn’t predicated on itself, which is what is necessary for “question begging,” or “petitio principii.”
Thing is, I’m pretty sure Bill Door was responding to Qin Shi Huangdi who had assumed that the illegal racism had occured, and was proceeding based on that assumption. That fallacy still isn’t begging the question, but it isn’t what you’re talking about either.
I just made up that example to illustrate what actual question begging looks like.
I’m glad I looked up “macaron,” and found out it’s an Italian meringue, and not a misspelling of “macaroon,” :smack: before I said something stoopid.
He wasn’t assuming it. He was responding to** Hector_St_Clare**, who was making argument based on the assumption that racism did actually happen. His argument was, essentially, “If it was actually racism, it doesn’t matter if the person’s life was significantly impaired.”
And, frankly, I agree with him. The idea that you let wrongs go because they are small is stupid. The idea that the only response is to call the police is ridiculous, a false dilemma HSC is creating. While one does need to weigh the consequences, there are plenty of responses that do not have any particularly negative ones.
Just because calling the police or hiring a lawyer would be overkill doesn’t mean that there aren’t other appropriate responses.