What you said was a little stronger than that:
[my bold]
It seems pretty poor to be assigning sinister motivations when we can’t dismiss any possibility out of hand. The no-sitting policy may have been counterintuitive and/or poorly signed. She may have poor eyesight. She may have been having a hypoglycemic attack. She may have been Cthulhu in human form.
And the reason we can’t assess any of these possibilities is because OP didn’t talk to her to find out.
She was Black, that’s all @Jasmine needed to know.
No.
That is not a thing that “African-Americans have.” That is a thing that conservatives, racists, and white supremacists accuse African Americans and other people of color of doing.
This is a personal insult and is completely inappropriate outside of the pit.
A solution to this situation would have been to enlist a white man who would cooperate with you, and have him sit in the one of the chairs. Then you could amble over and ask them both not to sit in the chairs.
We know that there was a woman who was:
And based on this information, it’s a valid concern that this women is going to play “the race card”? What part of this other than she’s Black would lead one to this conclusion?
Does the name “Rosa Parks” ring any bells?
OP, I understand what you are going through.
I was working PT at a chain bookstore in Downtown San Jose, and very smelly, very dirty homeless men would come in. The FT manager had seen another manager get written up for asking one of them to leave, so she was afraid to (not to mention at least one had reacted with anger and minor violence). So I bit the bullet for her, since my main reason for the job was the large discount to feed my book addiction. I simply asked the person- politely- to leave. They did.
So yeah, bad things can happen if complaints are filed, and why take the risk? Especially as it seems there was no really good reason why the chairs should not be used ( such as they were props that would collapse, they had wet paint, etc). My WAG is that the company did not want their brand new display chairs to be used so much they could not be resold. Reasonable, but not well planned, IMHO.
Of course, you will know next time to have a chair or two for people to use, and marker tape across the other chairs themselves.
You are comparing this to Rosa Parks?
Do you think this
compares? If I recall correctly, the “enraging headlines” back then attacked Rosa Parks.
That is exactly what happened to Rosa Parks.
Yes, it’s exactly the same. Rosa Parks was sent on a mission to violate a garden furniture company’s preference that you don’t sit on their display furniture. The world of garden furniture retailing was never the same after her bold defiant action.
…because it is the law that black women can’t sit on display chairs, so she did it deliberately to prove a point, right @DrDeth?
Just the same, my ass.
Rosa Parks: as part of a broader social movement against systemic racism, sat in a seat that only White people were allowed to sit in, and the person in charge got her arrested.
This woman: For no reason we know, sat in a seat that nobody was allowed to sit in, and White people weren’t sitting in, and the person in charge ran away.
I def see the parallels. Both involve people sitting down.
Both female as well.
Warning issued for arguing moderation in the thread.
Please drop this hijack. As others have noted, this event has nothing at all in common with Rosa Park’s intentional civil disobedience to draw attention to the injustice of seats being reserved for white people.
Also, since the OP is asking for advice, I’m moving this to IMHO.
I’m not the only one who remembers this story, right? The person inappropriately sitting being Black is new, but we’ve heard this story before. There’s demo furniture at a convention that MUST NOT BE SAT ON for…reasons. The OP never tells the reasons and becomes increasingly belligerent about people asking why there’s furniture at the booth if it can’t be sat on and suggesting the OP either get other furniture that can be sat upon or omit the furniture from the display instead of talking about the bad people who insisted on sitting on the forbidden furniture. I think it ended up in the pit.
I, too, vaguely remember that story before. I thought the other details were different, though. Like, this sounds like a different story about some poorly-run company that sets out enticing furniture and doesn’t let people sit on it.
Was it this one?
Yes! Thanks.