I highly doubt, the stand you intend to take will matter much to your bigoted bike shop dudes. Most bigots are highly engrained.
Oh and Muslim is not an ethnicity, it’s a religion, followers of Islam. There can be muslims that are black, white, yellow, European, Middle Eastern, American, etc. Your bike repairers may be bigots but they are not racists, as you have described them.
Are there business review sites in the Netherlands? There’s tons of them here in the US, and I wouldn’t imagine that’s unique.
Find a few review websites and give a review of the business. In your case, you’d probably give them good ratings on expertise and prices and ding them on customer service by talking about how they treat women and those who are perceived as non-Dutch.
A site like that could also help you find a new place.
I recently had a discussion with my mechanic that might be helpful. I heard from a friend of mine about a really bad experience they had at that shop. I went to the mechanic and said “Here’s what my friend said. I don’t expect you to share anything confidential, but how do I know that this experience won’t happen to me?” The answer, in this case, was that the key source of the problem was an employee, who was fired.
I think you could do something similar. Go into the shop and say “My BIL told me he overhead this incident. What can you tell me about that?” If their response is that it’s all the fault of those darn troublesome Muslims, then you know it’s time to find a new shop. If they show understanding of the problem and some kind of contrition, it might be worth giving them another try.
Other than that… I really try hard to separate personal and professional issues. While I would love to have all of my business handled by wonderful, open-minded, upstanding citizens, the reality is that I need something and I need someone who can provide it. As long as I’m stuck picking from real people in a real market, I feel like it’s unrealistic to have terribly high expectations. I pick the best option and move along to find a battle I can win.
I wouldn’t take anyone’s story as absolute truth, relative or not. If you didn’t witness it, it didn’t happen. I’d suggest that until you DO actually see evidence with your own eyes, you should continue to patronize the business.
Yep. I’m super intolerant. But that’s just me, don’t you dare judge me for it or you’re a bigot. So there.
I like some of the suggestions. I like the idea of review sites. I’ve just looked, but none really seem to be used very much. I don’t think people really look at those for bicycle repair, there are just so many places. I think I will go in and see if they want to say something.
What would you guys do if I went in and they apologised or something? I mean, that doesn’t really help her and it probably doesn’t change anything about them. Then again, apologising is quite a big thing to do. Anyone ever done this before? (Since that’s kinda what I started the thread for: experiences that made you not want to patronise a place anymore…)
If they do good work for a reasonable price, then what’s the problem? Are you going to do a complete background/personality check for every person you have any contact with?
I’m as skeptical of random second-hand reports as anyone. But if it’s coming from someone I trust, they have no reason to lie or exaggerate and their story is 100% credible, it would be pretty stupid to reflexively ignore them.
I hate to get all political and shit in this thread, but this mentality is exactly what people talk about when they talk about “white privilege”. “I didn’t see it, so I don’t have to worry my pretty head over it!” That’s straight-up bullshit. And that’s why racism wil never go away. Someone can always tell themselves a “nice” story to make themselves feel comfortable about the world we live in.
If racism is actually important to you but you don’t want to be hasty, let the business owner know about the accusation and give him or her a chance to respond. But to just automatically give them the benefit of the doubt and continue to shop there until you witness something with your own eyes? Yeah, that’s just dumb. Unless you’re in the store every day, for hours at a time, you’re likely never going to be a first-hand witness. That doesn’t mean the claim is wrong, though.
It sounds to me like you’re a little intolerant of the OP’s intolerance of their intolerance. I wish I could say I were fine with that, so we could escape this loop.
Generally, because far more people bend over backwards to label something racist when it isn’t. After the billionth instance of “Boy cried wolf” where there was no racism, people start to be more skeptical of racism claims.
None of this necessarily applies to the particular incident being discussed in this thread. Just to alleged racism incidents in general.
We dealt with racism when shopping for furniture. The store had mostly hispanic staff and customers and we were there for about 20 minutes and completely ignored, even by staffers standing 10 feet from us with nothing else to do. People that came in after us were quickly greeted and offered assistance. The only time they acknowledged our presence was when I pulled out my phone and it looked like I was taking photos. One of the staff ran over and said to stop that and then walked away. On the way out the door I finally got a managers attention and told him we came in ready to spend about $3000 because we needed some things, but that not a penny would be going to them because of how we were treated. Now I don’t care what deals they may have, I’ll never set foot in there again.
I was new to a town and started getting my haircut at a local barbershop. My first couple times in there, I thought it was great. Then one day the small talk randomly shifted to jokes about The Blacks. I was like, you have got to be kidding me! I haven’t heard anyone be openly racist in decades, let alone with a complete stranger. Jesus! I never went back, and couldn’t help but think poorly of anyone I saw go in there.
I am a member of a quilt guild, and if you know much about quilters, we spend LOTS on fabrics and patterns. There is a quilt store about 45 minutes from my house, and when I and fellow quilters are driving by, we usually stop in and give them quite a bit of our money…
Until they disrespected a guild member, who is black, a few years ago. She picked out her purchases and stood in line at the cutting table and waited. Several white women walked up and were immediately waited on, and nobody spoke to our friend or assisted her. Eventually she put down her purchases and walked out of the store, humiliated. She sent a letter to the owner of the store to inform that she had planned to purchase several hundred dollars worth of quilting supplies there, but nobody would wait on her. She gave her name and address, so the owner could contact her to apologize or “make things right”.
When our guild sister shared this story with the rest of us, we decided that each time we drove by that store we would call the owner and let her know that we would NOT be stopping in or spending money there, until our guild sister had received an explanation and/or apology. We made a point of telling her how much we had just spent at a competitor, that might have gone to her store if she had been willing to treat all customers equally.
Our friend never received an apology, I never set foot back in the store, and the owner went out of business a year or two later.
It doesn’t matter what color the customer is, all money is GREEN to the business owner.
