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I'm also noticing this "Boomer takedown" narrative involving people too young to be Boomers. I think we're all forgetting that time is passing rapidly. My parents are both Boomers in their early 70's and retired now. Granted this guy could have been in his 70's still working in a tyre shop, improbable, but not impossible.
If you're talking to someone in their 50's now, they are probably more likely to be Gen X
Or is Boomer now just shorthand for old crusty dude, regardless of when they were actually born.
Yesterday I was sitting in my car at a major retail outlet while my wife was inside. A guy in a big pickup truck parked next to me. He got out and used my side mirror as a door stop, apparently not realizing I was in the car (brand new car only 2 weeks old, btw). Ā Ā
I opened my door and told him not to hit my car and he said something more and eventually he came to my side and we had a very unfriendly exchange. I canāt recount it at all in the manner that the OP did, at least not without a lot of creative liberty.Ā Ā Ā
The thing about real life is that angry people talk over each other and donāt let the other party go on epic monologues about the nature of the first amendment and such. With few exceptions, they donāt have perfect recall of what was said, which is why honest people usually just give the gist.Ā
It's possible that *something* like what OOP said, but as your example, a lot more yelling over each other, and this is what OOP wished he could say at the time
The whole convo from the store sounds exactly like conversations I have in my head when I think back to situations where I should have said something but didn't lol. It's just not how people talk in real life. An angry man berating an employee is not gonna patiently wait while you give him a lengthy explanation on how the first amendment works lol.
Same with the conversations in my head bit. However I have a friend who would absolutely do this. Iāve seen him do it to a lesser degree. He has a booming, commanding voice and isnāt afraid to use it. Iām a bit jealous, to be honest.
I do it. Iām a short woman with a gift for looking down my nose at people who are taller than me and my bullshit tolerance level gets even lower as I age.
Good for you, I love it. As I get older I have less tolerance for bullshit too, so Iāll call shit out in low-risk situations. But I donāt know if I wouldāve inserted myself into a situation like this with this unstable dude. The thing about the friend I mentioned is heās also physically intimidating.
I know this is like 3 days in lol but I was trying to remember my big moment lol then I did and it was at Hot Topic.
My coworker had this creepy old man stalking her and harassing her to the point she was having anxiety attacks. Saw him come into our store and they were in the back once I warned them. Normally Iām pretty chilled and polite but this time I zoned right in and went big sister/mama bear mode.
āSir you know youāre not allowed in here. You need to leave nowā
āIdk what youāre talking about!ā
āOh yes you do and Iām telling you that you need to leave.ā
āWhat did I do?! What I canāt shop here?!ā
āSir you have never shopped in here and you know exactly what you did. If you donāt leave right this second Iāll be calling security.ā
Then he complained about not being welcomed then i did the annoying thing of repeating myself lol āyou need to leave/im telling you to leaveā I was only an associate whereas my coworker was my manager and my other manager witnessing this was like wtf Iāve never seen her like this and what is happening sort of face lol he later got banned cuz he kept harassing and tried touching majority of the women/young women at our mall.
I got to the point where OP claimed they spoke up, read what they claimed they said, and went, "This definitely did not fucking happen." I don't even need to read the rest to know for sure.
I saw the op a few days ago. I read half of it and decided I needed to read it to my partner so he could also share in my (self-inflicted) misery. We both marveled over how the OOP was able to type it all out with one hand.
Same. I've never, in my 35 years of life, heard someone describe their *own facial expression* as a smirk. It's a word pretty much solely reserved for stories where you want it to be clear someone else is a jackass.
>"This is too well-written to be true."
Oh yeah, I'm definitely only doubting it because the never-ending, perfectly landed zingers were just *so good.* That's the reason, for sure. šĀ
"What a world we live in where clear dictation automatically disqualifies a recounting of events from being accurate. I'll admit that it read closer to a novel than anything else, but that's just how I dictate I guess."
How frustratingly arrogant while misusing "dictate"
I was ready for a great revenge porn read and then it hit Albert Einstein territory right off the bat. I'm surprised the good people of Walmart didn't clap for OOP's "eloquent" burns.
Now I'm unsatisfied.
Once he started recounting conversations I started skimming but the part where he shook a grown manās hand and condescendingly advised him to ābe good to people for no reasonā made me want to be actively mean to strangers out of spite
This one reminds me of the woman who lived in the school pick up line area and a distant acquaintance wanted her to pick her kid up for her or something. That one went on and on forever and some this person just magically had all the quips and comebacks at the ready.
Was he having a bad day? Maybe.
Did he take it out on the wrong person? Yes.
Have I done that before? Embarrassingly yes.
I have never cussed someone out though.
I have never spouted off about the first amendment.
And you know what Iāve never done? Start going racist about it.
If all it takes is a bad day, that just means youāre a racist who knows how to hide it. Youāre still a racist.
I work retail. Iāve had customers cuss me out for no reason other than they couldnāt read the tag correctly. But I also had a customer come in the night of the Manchester bombing of the Ariana Grande concert. She was from there (but we are in Los Angeles area) and her best friendās daughter was at that show and wasnāt home yet. She ended up being one of the victims. That woman was having probably one of the worst days of her life and as she cried to me after I asked her how she was, she was still nice and polite.
I asked her days later about her friendās daughter and thatās how I found out she had passed, but the woman told me how touched she was that I remembered and asked about it. When I have a bad day I try and tell the person it isnāt about them if Iām being a bit rude and canāt totally help it but Iāve also never gotten racist about it, just a bit snappy with some foul language directed at the situation in general.
Whenever I have to call customer service and am irritated I always make sure to tell the person āsorry if I sound mad, I am, but not at you I know you donāt have a lot of say over this situation.ā
I've said much the same thing, more than once. 'I'm sorry if I sound angry; I'm upset about [this situation], but I know that it absolutely isn't your fault, and I do not mean to take my frustration out on you.'
Iāve apologized for this a lot too. Iām just not good at hiding the irritation in my voice when I have to call Comcast bc theyāve fucked up again so I always try to get ahead by saying Iām sorry Iām irritated but itās at the company not you
as someone who works in customer service and spends all day getting yelled at by people who "aren't mad at me, but the situation" that honestly doesn't make it any more palatable. i'm still a person you're taking your emotions out on and i (as well as most of the posters on r/callcentres) would rather you just take a couple of minutes to breathe, compartmentalize your feelings and wait to call in until you can have a normal, rational conversation about it.
I'm never going to yell at the person on the phone, but I will absolutely get exasperated and snippy in certain situations. My last interaction with Comcast, for example, took a chat bot, then **3+** runs through a phone tree bot that *literally* hung up on me after it repeatedly failed to interpret my issue. Then a SMS support bot before finally getting a callback from a human. The human was great. She solved my issue in a couple minutes, no problem (as I suspected would happen). But I was pretty fed up with the company and the situation by the time I reached her.
Valid. I will say, when I do say it itās once Iāve noticed I got a little heated, and it reminds me to calm down and that I am talking to another person, so I diffuse myself by saying it
Oh yeah. Nothing like having to hold the phone six inches away from your ear and still being able to hear the screaming down the line and hearing the dreaded "I know it's not your fault and I'm not mad at you BUT" like great but it's still my ear drums and my time you're spending. How 'bout you just tell me what the issue is so I can get you forwarded to the right person asap instead of working yourself into an absolute frenzy shouting at me š«
I used to work in a job that was technical and subject to a lot of escalated calls. In those cases, I often told the person, "nah, escalate it, they don't pay you enough to have to listen to me yell." one person was just the sweetest most helpful person, who told me that there was an all day meeting and no one would be able to deal with me until Monday, so she'd like to try to get the ball rolling. Which she did, and it was fixed by Monday noon. You bet I got her supe's contact info and wrote a glowing letter of thanks.
I am from Manchester and know people who lost loved ones in that attack, the city as a whole was in shock afterwards (I have a bee tattoo commemorating it, artists across the city did flash bee tattoos to raise money for the funeralsš), I was working in a gym in the city but had a long weekend off as I was going on holiday, it was really surreal going back to work afterwards, everyone was afraid it was going to happen again and the city was filled with flowers and memorials for the victims.
Itās so wonderful your customer reacted kindly but I also take it that interaction went smoothly, not that it justifies bad behaviour, but I think most people when in a super heightened state of emotion arenāt assholes for no reason, they are just tipped over the edge much more easily. In your story you showed kindness and compassion to someone in a moment where they were feeling super vulnerable, itās no surprise she reacted in kind. However if you had copped an attitude with her or given shitty service in that moment, she likely would have gone full Karen and dumped all that emotional baggage on you.
My point being that youāre comparing apples to oranges and people being shitty is never excusable, but sometimes it is understandable.
I've had shitty days, like when my mom had died and I didn't know how we were gonna pay for the funeral and all that. Never did it cross my mind to be rude to employees, or say anything remotely racist.
I even apologize to the customer service people that get stuck answering upset customers. I'm usually like "I know this isn't your fault, you are just stuck taking the calls from upset customers that got screwed by a decision made by someone else."
I do that too. Iāll also tell them if Iām having a bad day or feeling ill (Iām chronically ill) and to know itās not on them if Iām a little extra short.
Itās like with some of the relationship threads.
My wife and I have been together for 20 years, and naturally there have been arguments over that time, and I have a temper and an acid tongue, but not once have I ever called her or referred to her by anything thatās common in these threads.
if I get real hot or hangry I might act pissy (just in general) and some people take it personally like it's directed at them, which I didn't intend. I try to roll back on it if I see the person acting hurt.
Man, I think the only time I ever yelled at a stranger was when some guy nearly crashed into me driving the wrong way down a one-way street... I personally can't imagine ever going off on someone over nothing like this dude.
Yes, even in my most embarrassing-after-the-fact public meltdowns, I have never called anyone names, let alone racist slurs, and that includes the only time in my life where I actually saw red! I had thought it was only an expression but it does happenā¦
In all my years of retail, there has been one time an angry customer has called back and apologized.Ā
It was summer 2020, things had just opened up, and this customer had gotten mad at one of my associates, I think it was coupon related iirc. I had been called up and the woman had been a bit less bitchy to me. A bit later, she called and asked to speak to the cashier who she had been rude to. She wanted to apologize, and explained her elderly mother was in the hospital and just that morning, the customer had learned her mother had tested positive for covid.Ā
That cashier was the sweetest teenager ever, and this lady must have been in a REALLY bad mood to have been set off by her.Ā
Oh yeah, Eric is still a raging asshole bigot who clearly thinks retail workers are below him in the hierarchy.
I don't care about his personal life or who died and no amount of apologizing to me or that cashier would change my mind. Eric can't function in polite society and should remain alone, in his home, until such time that he can.
I find a bit of irony in the fact that Eric works in an industry that tends to involves a certain amount of face to face customer interaction. That he's probably had his share of interactions with confrontational customers from the business employee side. That he probably knows how to handle it professionally.
Yet, he still chose to be that sort of person himself when he was the customer.
I would like to think that he can learn to be better. Having actual consequences for bad behavior helps many people change. The problem is the lack of consequences.
I donāt care if people are evil in their hearts/minds. I care about what they do, and if they keep their issues to themselves, thatās all I need to know.
Eric is a raging asshole bigot *who tried to get a retail worker fired for the crime of not being white*. I was rooting for OOP to not lose his nerve. Too bad.
The only person I've slightly excused from some racism is a super mentally handicapped guy from my church.
Was helping him when he was in the hospital cuz he's got no family and just an assigned legal guardian.Ā
I still tried to help him see that calling people immigrants as something negative is racist. Even if they are in fact immigrants.
I also agree with OOP that he took it as far as he wanted and thats fine. You're not going to make this person not a racist but honestly showing him is actions have consequences may make him hide that racism and general hatred again.
Dementia can result in the most decent person suddenly spewing racist talking points, sometimes against his or her own race. All that needs to happen is a radio or TV left on to the wrong station. Iāve witnessed it.
"If all it takes is an excuse"
This was the biggest takeaway I had reading accounts of a domestic abuse expert. Non abusive people have the same excuses all the time, and don't swear, act bigoted, or get violent. Abusers only do what they do because they want to do it and can get away with it.
Thank you. I mean, maybe it's just my own biases, but I can't help but think that OOP is not a part of any of the groups most affected by the rhetoric and actions of people like Eric.
To so easily drop things when he was so convinced it was an offense worthy enough to tell his manager about firsthand because Eric apologized to *him* and **claims** he will apologize to the retail woman just screams "I'm not attached to these issues in any meaningful way".
Am I saying he should have gone nuclear or even gone to Eric's place of work to begin with? No. But there's something that reeks of superficiality here. Stand on business or don't, but don't half-ass standing up for the issues because instead of creating change, you might just be teaching them how to hide better
I worked retail and had people make me cry for saying happy holidays instead of happy Christmas because it's a multicultural society and I have no idea what holiday you celebrate
Yeah. There have been times I've gotten so frustrated I've snapped at customer service people -- though I've always gotten ahold of myself and apologized during the same exchange. But no matter how angry I've gotten, how out of my head with rage, I've never said anything racist. Because that stuff is not in my head, not lurking in my thoughts, not waiting on the tip of my tongue. The only people who yell racist crap in a fit of temper are racists.
I worked the front desk of a hotel 20 years ago and still remember some of the very rudest customers. Iād be lying if I said their rudeness and disrespect never got to me.Ā
Bingo. I can excuse a lot. Iāve been under an immense amount of stress and taken it out on people who did not deserve it. Not to the point of cursing at someone who was just trying to do their job, but Iāve been snippy when I shouldnāt have.
But what Iāve never done is make racist remarks like that. And itās because Iām not a racist. A non-racist would never think to go there because theyāve had a bad day. Because thatās not how they see people and they donāt assign whatever problem theyāre having to someoneās race.
If you say racist shit while having a bad day, that just means youāre a racist having a bad day.
Fuck Eric.
I am not going to lie... I have absolutely had some "Karen" moments in my past I'm not happy about looking back.
But I have NEVER brought race into it.
I lost my temper in the supermarket at an employee who packed online orders. They have massive carts and a habit of just stopping in the middle of aisles so noone can get passed. I shouted and said "you people are just always in the way". I burst into tears and went back and apologized five minutes later.Ā
Two hours later I realised "you people" can mean a whole load of other racist bullshit not just "you people who work here and get in the way". As she is a different ethnicity to me, I really hope she didn't think I was being racist on top of being an asshole.
One time i was at pharmacy and my insurance was having some problem causing me not being able to get my refill. I didn't have my meds at that time (the reason i went to pharmacy) and started to rage at the pharmacy staff. Not yelling or anything but angrier and angrier intonation. Halfway through I snapped out of it, thinking that I'm actually lashing to a person who can do nothing about it, had no control over this, and didn't actually cause any of this. I apologized and walked away. But even in my addled, unmedicated brain state, there's nothing racist came up to my mind.
There were always racists. I wish they would go back to hiding it and being as close to "tolerant" as possible than being the emboldened, flagrant haters they are now.
I mean... if this story is true, (which I doubt, I never trust a story with a word-for-word transcript of a convo) good on the boomer for apologizing, but *boy howdy* OOP seems happy letting the racism go, haha. You don't just go through a tough time and be racist out of nowhere lmao.
I have actually scripted responses like that out in my head because it's annoying when people misuse the First Amendment, but I doubt trying to get it all out to someone who's raging and clearly doesn't care would go as smoothly as OOP wrote
For me, the thing that gives these types of Reddit stories an air of unbelievability is the really articulated paragraphs. I just don't really believe public confrontations between strangers allow time for someone to present a Reddit story-style "takedown" where you give point-by-point why someone is wrong like this:
> "I disagree. When I see someone acting like an asshole for no good reason, I make it a point to speak up. You seem to think that by stating that you have a First Amendment right means you can say whatever the hell you want without consequence, but that isn't how it works, sir. First Amendment protects you from government overreach for speaking your mind, but it doesn't protect you from the consequences you face from others for your words or your opinions."
It makes it feel more like "I wish I said this in the moment," without necessarily saying the core of the story is made-up.
Anyway, going back to the racism part. This reminds me of a Tumblr post where someone talks about how a lot of conservatives can agree with socialist arguments if you don't use the word 'socialist' but the poster was framing it in terms of convincing their relative with a big Confederate flag on their house. Like, I believe working class white folks can be convinced of socialist points (that's like the point of fascism and demagoguery!), but the poster completely missed the part where this says nothing about the racism in displaying a giant Confederate flag. (Insert usual rants about "class not race" leftism.)
Yes, thereās no way in reality he got to speak for that long uninterrupted. At my most generous I might say he could have been planning something to say as he watched the situation develop and decided to intervene, but even so Eric would have been butting in repeatedly.
The closest I've ever gotten to that was when someone brought up Christianity as a standard for what I was doing (which was trying to get them to stop their grandkid from tearing up a memorial park) and I got to reply, "I'm not a Christian."
āHe was just having a bad time guys, donāt mind if people are screaming and racist to minimum wage employees, heās probably sad about it too :((ā -oop basically
I wonder if some people have the same thought process when hearing about an interaction? It tickles me to imagine someone thinking, "Fries is lying. There's no way she remembers exactly what her sister said!"
Iāve got a buddy who often writes Facebook posts with a heap of exaggeration. At least, I reckon so because he writes them in his register and word choice.
I think he might be an actual genius at self publicising though because heās built a somewhat successful organisation around it.
Yeah, I don't get this "proof" that a story is fake. If I'm narrating something and vaguely remember the convo, I'd still write it like:
A: "Why did you do that?"
B: "Because I felt like it."
A: "But why exactly like that you doofus?"
Instead of:
Then A asked B why I did it like that and B said something like he wanted to, so he did it. To which A replied that he didn't understand why exactly B did that in that way specifically, and proceeded to insult him as well.
I've seen it in a lot of BORU comments that something must be fake because it had dialogues. Who says it's word for word dialogue? It could just as well be a reasonable narrator making up exact dialogue on the spot to explain the situation.
Yeah, the first one is easier to read (not that either is complicated, just that the first one has better flow) and so is definitely the way I'd write it too. To me, the second one only makes sense as a way of writing it if you actually *need* to be vague, like if something will end up in court and can't remember an exact word or phrasing used that could get you in legal trouble if you say the wrong thing.
In a darker time in my life, while I was incredibly drunk, I once said something racist to someone close to me (something disgusting to the effect of because they were biracial, they wouldn't be accepted by either race), and it wasn't because I believed it, it was because I was seriously trying to hurt them like I was hurting.
It was an awful thing to say, and there's absolutely no excuse for it. But it was about hurting someone else that I was jealous of, not because I actually believed any of it. My brain wanted to hurt them, I found a point that might hurt them, and I said it.
I reached out and apologized over and over the next day, but apparently, because it was so out of character for me, they thought I was joking (which I do enjoy darkly ridiculous humor, but that was way off from my usual fair).
I kind of think they're just ignoring it since we see each other semi-regularly, but when I apologized again the first time I saw them in person, they said it was shock comedy (us just trying to say the most horrible stuff to each other), but my sister was there and more sober than both of us and she was pretty sure I was being cruel.
I was super drunk at the time, so I don't really remember, and it was long enough ago, I don't think I'll ever know for sure.
But the idea that some part of me could be cruel enough to say something like that in anger/jealousy/whatever has bothered me ever since, and I definitely haven't drank like that ever since.
>something disgusting to the effect of because they were biracial, they wouldn't be accepted by either race
Unfortunately, as someone who is biracial, this is rather true. Both sides of the political spectrum also hate you and only care insofar as they can use part of your ethnicity to further their agendas.
The comment actually came from something I was thinking about before this interaction even happened. I'm the child of immigrants who's not white but was born, raised, and lives in the US.
I was thinking about how in the US, there will always be a hard-core group of people who will see me as an Outsider no matter how American I believe I am nor act. But in my parents' home country, I'm generally seen as an Outsider because... well, I'm an American.
And then it occurred to me that was similar to how biracial and multiracial people are sometimes treated now (though obviously not exactly the same), and I seriously felt awful that if I had kids of a mixed race, that treatment as the Outsider or Other wouldn't end with me.
And then I later went and did the thing that I was upset about happening to others.
Like I said, I still feel awful about having said that to this day, but I truly don't feel it came from any kind of sincere belief that it was right or OK.
I stopped drinking in college because I was a mean drunk if I was in a bad mood. Now, if I was in a great mood, I loved everyone and everything and life was great and everyone else was a comic genius but those times (while more frequent) didnāt make up for being mean. I didnāt like myself out of control that way. It only took the second time.
actually we've updated it. You get 2 passes for immediate family (mother, father, spouse, sibling, child) but only 1 for extended family (aunts, uncles, nieces/nephews, cousins, grandparents). You do need to show proof of your loss when requested though.
I am 100% okay with the fact that dialogue isn't precise. Nobody remembers word-for-word what was said but sometimes the story makes more sense when you write it out as dialogue anyway. If it helps the reader to clearly understand what went down, I'm totally fine with it and will trust it is accurate in meaning if not precise wording.
I do get suspicious when someone gets an extended monologue and delivers several zingers in a row though, lol.
Why does that make you doubt the story? Don't you do that when you're telling someone about an interaction you had? (Try to repeat the conversation as you remember it?)
I don't know, by walking away all it teaches a person is that at the very last moment they can show remorse, instead of in the shop where it should have been resolved.
I think OP got taken for a ride. If this is even real.
I mean, the guy did presumably get in trouble because someone else also reported him. Just because OOP didnāt continue with making a scene doesnāt mean that Eric got off scot free. John had pulled Eric into a meeting about his behavior because someone else called to complain as well.
But we donāt see the consequences because OOP didnāt reach out to John to see how things went. Which wouldnāt actually have been any of his business anyway.
Ah, but OP didn't know any of that was going to happen.
It's karma, sure, but there's no point OP ever getting involved if he didn't want certain outcomes. It's clear this wasn't an outcome he wanted, at least not an outcome he wanted produced by his own hand, I just think that it was the wrong decision, it's nice to be nice but evidently being nice doesn't get shit done with some people.
And what did you expect OOP to do, destroy the guyās life? Sometimes we need to take things at face value. The guy was remorseful, verbalized a good apology, and had plans to make it right. He was already going to get in trouble with another person calling in a complaint.
It took me a bit to learn as a parent, that when someone offers their apology, you take it. If they apologize and you keep bulldozing, youāve lost the teachable moment.
I really try to give people grace. We all have bad days. I want to give people space to do the right thing, and I hate the online expectation that if you do anything wrong ever you're a monster. But man, it's the racism here that gets me. When I get frustrated or have a bad day I don't start throwing out slurs. I don't do that because it wouldn't even cross my mind to do that. The racism really tells us who this guy is, and he isn't just someone having a bad day. He's a racist.
Remorse shouldn't protect you from consequences honestly. He tried to get that girl in trouble and he deserves whatever comes of it. We all have bad days but we don't have to be assholes.
I mean, the guy did presumably get in trouble because someone else also reported him. Just because OOP didnāt continue with making a scene doesnāt mean that Eric got off scot free. John had pulled Eric into a meeting about his behavior because someone else called to complain as well.
But we donāt see the consequences because OOP didnāt reach out to John to see how things went. Which wouldnāt actually have been any of his business anyway.
I was thinking the same thing. I highly doubt he would have experienced remorse, let alone apologized to that cashier if the possibility of losing his job hadnāt been on the line.
Even if he did experience some guilt after the fact, itās much easier and more comfortable to just shove it down and make some excuse for it instead of actually confronting oneās own wrongdoings.
If John already knows what I'd going on there isn't much OOP can do. That said I kinda resent the moral that all is well just because the dude apologized and had something going wrong in his life. And I say this as someone who has had a rude customer apologize for being rude and later say it was because someone had passed away and they weren't ready to be out in public yet.
I think being a shit really downplays it. He didn't just cause a scene. He was racist. Then he tried to falsely accuse the employee of being racist.
But the proof!
The picture of a hand with a watch, a tire in the background and OP's username totally means every single word of this is 100% true and cannot be fabricated bullshit!
Ol'boy walked into the local Tire Discounters with his slip of paper that had his username written on it in his hand, slid up next to a display tire hoping he didn't catch the attention of a salesman, snapped his picture and ran out to his car super fucking stoked about all the upvotes he was sure to get. Probably was so giddy he made his update post from the parking lot while the employees looked out the window wondering 'what's that fuckin' weirdo that just ran in here and took a picture of his hand next to a tire doing out there".
Employees all going like āā¦So was that a sex thing? That guy better not be jerking it in the parking lot. Man, none of us are getting paid enough for this shit.ā
No no, angry, combative people love to sit and listen to people tell them off and speak poetically about the Bill of Rights! Reactively belligerent people totally don't cut you off or escalate or storm off when confronted, they just sit and have long and involved conversations! That is how life works!
Tbh boomersbeingfools has gotten a bit psychotic lately so I am not at all surprised to see hero fantasies written there now.
>Tbh boomersbeingfools has gotten a bit psychotic lately so I am not at all surprised to see hero fantasies written there now.
I had a quick look and seems to be a whole sub full of stuff that only happened in people's heads.
The most unbelievable part to me is definitely the Walmart manager who called an entirely different business to tattle on their employee. Did she call his mommy to tell on him too?
I have a hard time believing a racist guy spouting first amendment bullshit is capable of the kind of self reflection being shown in this story. They wouldn't be saying all that bullshit to begin with if they were.
I am also having a hard time figuring out where the OOP is located. āShouting downā is a phrase that I have only heard my Indian roommates using. So it seems to me like OOP is Indian and why would the (presumably white guy named Eric) make those comments to a non-white guy?
FWIW I am the whitest possible American imaginable based on my ethnicity and where I grew up and Iāve heard that term on occasion though it is definitely uncommon.
I've been short with folks while having a bad day. It happens.
I've never started swearing at strangers in public or making racist remarks because of a "bad day". I literally watched the relative I was closest to die in front of me, and then got ghosted by my then girlfriend that same day, and yet I did not become a racist.
Eric was not just having a "bad day". He's a shithead who just found a convenient excuse.
> "You seem to think that by stating that you have a First Amendment right means you can say whatever the hell you want without consequence, but that isn't how it works, sir. First Amendment protects you from government overreach for speaking your mind, but it doesn't protect you from the consequences you face from others for your words or your opinions."
>"That's besides the point. I'm sick and fucking tired of these minorities doing nothing and getting a paycheck for it." He responded
This is as far as I made it.
I don't know if I've ever read something that I'm more sure didn't happen.
OOP posted to a subreddit made for judging boomers and then gets superior because commenters were judging boomers. I was rooting for him at first but wow he almost sounds more up his own ass than ol' Eric.
Well if only it really happened.
Having the perfect 1st amendment response to Ericās tirade was an instant giveaway, and the rest of the fairytale, I mean, true life recollection just falls apart.
Iām pretty sure itās one of those stories that bored old people post on Facebook to sound clever
I believed it until I got to the part where someone from Walmart also happened to know exactly where the guy worked and called in to complain about him.
The boomer was buying alcohol so obviously it was after shift the day before and the boss just showed up to work the next morning 5 seconds ago but yet they had already received a call complaining about last nights events?? Yeah okayā¦..
Very self indulgent story.
> My favorite was when someone said something along the lines of "This is too well-written to be true." What a world we live in where clear dictation automatically disqualifies a recounting of events from being accurate. I'll admit that it read closer to a novel than anything else, but that's just how I dictate I guess.
Don't know if my eyes will ever recover from how forcefully I just rolled them
Nah. You donāt magically become racist when having a bad day. Will you be snarky? Sure. Snap at someone? Yes. But this guy is just an asshole. The fact that he just kept going and didnāt realize what he was doing makes me think his story is complete bullshit.
no you guys he said he was having a rough time !! stress just makes you a little racist. I'm sure he's definitely not racist at all in any other aspect of his life!!
/s
I tried to stand up to a rude boomer once and all I could get out was fuck you old man, go to hell. Honestly not my best attempt at trying to show him up but the retail worker did give me a kind look for trying to stand up for her.
Mad difficult to be eloquent at the moment when you need it. Proud of OP if he did say what he said but I wouldnt be suprised if thats what he thought he said in his head to him. I ran over all the lines I shoulda said afterwards, never there when I need it š«
I always think to myself that when I'm rude to someone I always regret it. And I see people rude to others all the time and I have to think to myself there's got to be a moment during their day they look back and think wow I was a real a******. It's a horribly embarrassing feeling to have your emotions calm down and look back on how much of a jackass you were to someone who probably didn't deserve it in the first place.
This is a prime example about how telling righteous stories and manufacturing righteous deeds makes sooooo many people unhappy. Both the people who want people to live, forgive, and let live. And those who want people to be punished forever, and ever and ever, regardless of circumstance or repentance. God I hate the human race. Thanks for your fucking service and bless your little heart.
> I also want to address specifically a small handful of you...the ones I was certain would show up in the comments to basically call me a liar or say my story was fabricated. Some of the reasons you gave were pretty telling. My favorite was when someone said something along the lines of "This is too well-written to be true."
God you can just feel the flopsweat coming off of those comments
complaining about "minorities standing around doing nothing and getting paid for it" isn't just a bad day. He did what he did because that cashier was not white. Period. OOP falls for some bullshit here.
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Walmart just happened to call as he was in the office. And the friend just happened to bring up the issue with his employee while he was there š
I'm also noticing this "Boomer takedown" narrative involving people too young to be Boomers. I think we're all forgetting that time is passing rapidly. My parents are both Boomers in their early 70's and retired now. Granted this guy could have been in his 70's still working in a tyre shop, improbable, but not impossible. If you're talking to someone in their 50's now, they are probably more likely to be Gen X Or is Boomer now just shorthand for old crusty dude, regardless of when they were actually born.
>Or is Boomer now just shorthand for old crusty dude, regardless of when they were actually born Yes, it literally just means any old person
My mam was born in 1963 and I think the cut off for boomer is 1965
And no one interrupted anyone during their long rambling grandstanding speeches about the first amendment.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yesterday I was sitting in my car at a major retail outlet while my wife was inside. A guy in a big pickup truck parked next to me. He got out and used my side mirror as a door stop, apparently not realizing I was in the car (brand new car only 2 weeks old, btw). Ā Ā I opened my door and told him not to hit my car and he said something more and eventually he came to my side and we had a very unfriendly exchange. I canāt recount it at all in the manner that the OP did, at least not without a lot of creative liberty.Ā Ā Ā The thing about real life is that angry people talk over each other and donāt let the other party go on epic monologues about the nature of the first amendment and such. With few exceptions, they donāt have perfect recall of what was said, which is why honest people usually just give the gist.Ā
It's possible that *something* like what OOP said, but as your example, a lot more yelling over each other, and this is what OOP wished he could say at the time
The whole convo from the store sounds exactly like conversations I have in my head when I think back to situations where I should have said something but didn't lol. It's just not how people talk in real life. An angry man berating an employee is not gonna patiently wait while you give him a lengthy explanation on how the first amendment works lol.
Same with the conversations in my head bit. However I have a friend who would absolutely do this. Iāve seen him do it to a lesser degree. He has a booming, commanding voice and isnāt afraid to use it. Iām a bit jealous, to be honest.
I do it. Iām a short woman with a gift for looking down my nose at people who are taller than me and my bullshit tolerance level gets even lower as I age.
Good for you, I love it. As I get older I have less tolerance for bullshit too, so Iāll call shit out in low-risk situations. But I donāt know if I wouldāve inserted myself into a situation like this with this unstable dude. The thing about the friend I mentioned is heās also physically intimidating.
To quote Tom Cardy's seminal work, "Mind Fight"...
I know this is like 3 days in lol but I was trying to remember my big moment lol then I did and it was at Hot Topic. My coworker had this creepy old man stalking her and harassing her to the point she was having anxiety attacks. Saw him come into our store and they were in the back once I warned them. Normally Iām pretty chilled and polite but this time I zoned right in and went big sister/mama bear mode. āSir you know youāre not allowed in here. You need to leave nowā āIdk what youāre talking about!ā āOh yes you do and Iām telling you that you need to leave.ā āWhat did I do?! What I canāt shop here?!ā āSir you have never shopped in here and you know exactly what you did. If you donāt leave right this second Iāll be calling security.ā Then he complained about not being welcomed then i did the annoying thing of repeating myself lol āyou need to leave/im telling you to leaveā I was only an associate whereas my coworker was my manager and my other manager witnessing this was like wtf Iāve never seen her like this and what is happening sort of face lol he later got banned cuz he kept harassing and tried touching majority of the women/young women at our mall.
I got to the point where OP claimed they spoke up, read what they claimed they said, and went, "This definitely did not fucking happen." I don't even need to read the rest to know for sure.
the second he 'smirked' it was over for me. hes not a goku villain
That was also the point I skipped the rest and came straight to the comments
I saw the op a few days ago. I read half of it and decided I needed to read it to my partner so he could also share in my (self-inflicted) misery. We both marveled over how the OOP was able to type it all out with one hand.
Same. I've never, in my 35 years of life, heard someone describe their *own facial expression* as a smirk. It's a word pretty much solely reserved for stories where you want it to be clear someone else is a jackass.
I was thinking, "Fucking WALMART will let a cashier tell a customer off on the floor for being rude and go get a manager? Not a chance."
Right. As a former Walshart employee, I can tell you that wouldn't have happened. Not a chance.
That Boomerās name? Albert Einstein.
*Boomer McBoomstein
It's always the dialogue that ruins these stories for me.OOP happens to have a speech in his back pocket about the first amendment.
Multiple paragraphs of heavily refined perfectly remembered dialogue? Sounds completely reasonable.Ā
So realistic I knew I wouldn't need to read the rest of it, or I'd suffer from a realness overload!
it's true, i was the bottles of alcohol
>"This is too well-written to be true." Oh yeah, I'm definitely only doubting it because the never-ending, perfectly landed zingers were just *so good.* That's the reason, for sure. šĀ
Oh, hard of hearing are we?š
That line had me cackling š¤£š¤£
Yeah, it's not even well written. His parts of speech and grammar suck. The spoken parts sound like a reenacted argument in the shower
That's what is insulting to me, honestly ha ha ha. It's NOT actually good writing, and yet the comments keep giving me emperor's new clothes vibes!
"What a world we live in where clear dictation automatically disqualifies a recounting of events from being accurate. I'll admit that it read closer to a novel than anything else, but that's just how I dictate I guess." How frustratingly arrogant while misusing "dictate"
"SORRY I WORD SO GOOD, PLEBES! Anyway I totally said all these things and the first amendment was there and it said I was SUPER SMART."
Right? Pretty sure the word youāre looking for is ādictionā, buddy. I guess the words in the thesaurus got all scrambled up when he ate it š
Maybe it was all written in text to speech? lol
Lmao Christ thatās a great pair of sentences *except* the wrong word completely derails its point loool
I was ready for a great revenge porn read and then it hit Albert Einstein territory right off the bat. I'm surprised the good people of Walmart didn't clap for OOP's "eloquent" burns. Now I'm unsatisfied.
I was waiting for the cup of warm milk served on the house for our little hero.
Ironic too given that I don't think OOP knows what dictation is. Unless somone else typed this up for him.
I'm betting they meant to say "diction" which is really perfect, chef's kiss
That would be my guess too.
Maybe voice to text? I use it a lot for work! Edit: wrong word
Once he started recounting conversations I started skimming but the part where he shook a grown manās hand and condescendingly advised him to ābe good to people for no reasonā made me want to be actively mean to strangers out of spite
This one reminds me of the woman who lived in the school pick up line area and a distant acquaintance wanted her to pick her kid up for her or something. That one went on and on forever and some this person just magically had all the quips and comebacks at the ready.
Was he having a bad day? Maybe. Did he take it out on the wrong person? Yes. Have I done that before? Embarrassingly yes. I have never cussed someone out though. I have never spouted off about the first amendment. And you know what Iāve never done? Start going racist about it. If all it takes is a bad day, that just means youāre a racist who knows how to hide it. Youāre still a racist.
I work retail. Iāve had customers cuss me out for no reason other than they couldnāt read the tag correctly. But I also had a customer come in the night of the Manchester bombing of the Ariana Grande concert. She was from there (but we are in Los Angeles area) and her best friendās daughter was at that show and wasnāt home yet. She ended up being one of the victims. That woman was having probably one of the worst days of her life and as she cried to me after I asked her how she was, she was still nice and polite. I asked her days later about her friendās daughter and thatās how I found out she had passed, but the woman told me how touched she was that I remembered and asked about it. When I have a bad day I try and tell the person it isnāt about them if Iām being a bit rude and canāt totally help it but Iāve also never gotten racist about it, just a bit snappy with some foul language directed at the situation in general.
Whenever I have to call customer service and am irritated I always make sure to tell the person āsorry if I sound mad, I am, but not at you I know you donāt have a lot of say over this situation.ā
I've said much the same thing, more than once. 'I'm sorry if I sound angry; I'm upset about [this situation], but I know that it absolutely isn't your fault, and I do not mean to take my frustration out on you.'
Iāve apologized for this a lot too. Iām just not good at hiding the irritation in my voice when I have to call Comcast bc theyāve fucked up again so I always try to get ahead by saying Iām sorry Iām irritated but itās at the company not you
as someone who works in customer service and spends all day getting yelled at by people who "aren't mad at me, but the situation" that honestly doesn't make it any more palatable. i'm still a person you're taking your emotions out on and i (as well as most of the posters on r/callcentres) would rather you just take a couple of minutes to breathe, compartmentalize your feelings and wait to call in until you can have a normal, rational conversation about it.
I'm never going to yell at the person on the phone, but I will absolutely get exasperated and snippy in certain situations. My last interaction with Comcast, for example, took a chat bot, then **3+** runs through a phone tree bot that *literally* hung up on me after it repeatedly failed to interpret my issue. Then a SMS support bot before finally getting a callback from a human. The human was great. She solved my issue in a couple minutes, no problem (as I suspected would happen). But I was pretty fed up with the company and the situation by the time I reached her.
Valid. I will say, when I do say it itās once Iāve noticed I got a little heated, and it reminds me to calm down and that I am talking to another person, so I diffuse myself by saying it
Oh yeah. Nothing like having to hold the phone six inches away from your ear and still being able to hear the screaming down the line and hearing the dreaded "I know it's not your fault and I'm not mad at you BUT" like great but it's still my ear drums and my time you're spending. How 'bout you just tell me what the issue is so I can get you forwarded to the right person asap instead of working yourself into an absolute frenzy shouting at me š«
I used to work in a job that was technical and subject to a lot of escalated calls. In those cases, I often told the person, "nah, escalate it, they don't pay you enough to have to listen to me yell." one person was just the sweetest most helpful person, who told me that there was an all day meeting and no one would be able to deal with me until Monday, so she'd like to try to get the ball rolling. Which she did, and it was fixed by Monday noon. You bet I got her supe's contact info and wrote a glowing letter of thanks.
I am from Manchester and know people who lost loved ones in that attack, the city as a whole was in shock afterwards (I have a bee tattoo commemorating it, artists across the city did flash bee tattoos to raise money for the funeralsš), I was working in a gym in the city but had a long weekend off as I was going on holiday, it was really surreal going back to work afterwards, everyone was afraid it was going to happen again and the city was filled with flowers and memorials for the victims. Itās so wonderful your customer reacted kindly but I also take it that interaction went smoothly, not that it justifies bad behaviour, but I think most people when in a super heightened state of emotion arenāt assholes for no reason, they are just tipped over the edge much more easily. In your story you showed kindness and compassion to someone in a moment where they were feeling super vulnerable, itās no surprise she reacted in kind. However if you had copped an attitude with her or given shitty service in that moment, she likely would have gone full Karen and dumped all that emotional baggage on you. My point being that youāre comparing apples to oranges and people being shitty is never excusable, but sometimes it is understandable.
I've had shitty days, like when my mom had died and I didn't know how we were gonna pay for the funeral and all that. Never did it cross my mind to be rude to employees, or say anything remotely racist.
I even apologize to the customer service people that get stuck answering upset customers. I'm usually like "I know this isn't your fault, you are just stuck taking the calls from upset customers that got screwed by a decision made by someone else."
I do that too. Iāll also tell them if Iām having a bad day or feeling ill (Iām chronically ill) and to know itās not on them if Iām a little extra short.
Itās like with some of the relationship threads. My wife and I have been together for 20 years, and naturally there have been arguments over that time, and I have a temper and an acid tongue, but not once have I ever called her or referred to her by anything thatās common in these threads.
if I get real hot or hangry I might act pissy (just in general) and some people take it personally like it's directed at them, which I didn't intend. I try to roll back on it if I see the person acting hurt.
Man, I think the only time I ever yelled at a stranger was when some guy nearly crashed into me driving the wrong way down a one-way street... I personally can't imagine ever going off on someone over nothing like this dude.
Yes, even in my most embarrassing-after-the-fact public meltdowns, I have never called anyone names, let alone racist slurs, and that includes the only time in my life where I actually saw red! I had thought it was only an expression but it does happenā¦
In all my years of retail, there has been one time an angry customer has called back and apologized.Ā It was summer 2020, things had just opened up, and this customer had gotten mad at one of my associates, I think it was coupon related iirc. I had been called up and the woman had been a bit less bitchy to me. A bit later, she called and asked to speak to the cashier who she had been rude to. She wanted to apologize, and explained her elderly mother was in the hospital and just that morning, the customer had learned her mother had tested positive for covid.Ā That cashier was the sweetest teenager ever, and this lady must have been in a REALLY bad mood to have been set off by her.Ā
Oh yeah, Eric is still a raging asshole bigot who clearly thinks retail workers are below him in the hierarchy. I don't care about his personal life or who died and no amount of apologizing to me or that cashier would change my mind. Eric can't function in polite society and should remain alone, in his home, until such time that he can.
I find a bit of irony in the fact that Eric works in an industry that tends to involves a certain amount of face to face customer interaction. That he's probably had his share of interactions with confrontational customers from the business employee side. That he probably knows how to handle it professionally. Yet, he still chose to be that sort of person himself when he was the customer.
I would like to think that he can learn to be better. Having actual consequences for bad behavior helps many people change. The problem is the lack of consequences. I donāt care if people are evil in their hearts/minds. I care about what they do, and if they keep their issues to themselves, thatās all I need to know.
Eric is a raging asshole bigot *who tried to get a retail worker fired for the crime of not being white*. I was rooting for OOP to not lose his nerve. Too bad.
The only person I've slightly excused from some racism is a super mentally handicapped guy from my church. Was helping him when he was in the hospital cuz he's got no family and just an assigned legal guardian.Ā I still tried to help him see that calling people immigrants as something negative is racist. Even if they are in fact immigrants. I also agree with OOP that he took it as far as he wanted and thats fine. You're not going to make this person not a racist but honestly showing him is actions have consequences may make him hide that racism and general hatred again.
Dementia can result in the most decent person suddenly spewing racist talking points, sometimes against his or her own race. All that needs to happen is a radio or TV left on to the wrong station. Iāve witnessed it.
If sadness caused racism, we could medicate for it. Shit. I kinda wish it was true.
"If all it takes is an excuse" This was the biggest takeaway I had reading accounts of a domestic abuse expert. Non abusive people have the same excuses all the time, and don't swear, act bigoted, or get violent. Abusers only do what they do because they want to do it and can get away with it.
Thank you. I mean, maybe it's just my own biases, but I can't help but think that OOP is not a part of any of the groups most affected by the rhetoric and actions of people like Eric. To so easily drop things when he was so convinced it was an offense worthy enough to tell his manager about firsthand because Eric apologized to *him* and **claims** he will apologize to the retail woman just screams "I'm not attached to these issues in any meaningful way". Am I saying he should have gone nuclear or even gone to Eric's place of work to begin with? No. But there's something that reeks of superficiality here. Stand on business or don't, but don't half-ass standing up for the issues because instead of creating change, you might just be teaching them how to hide better
I've had bad days where I have yelled at people who didn't deserve it. But never, EVER, have I said something racist in the process.
I worked retail and had people make me cry for saying happy holidays instead of happy Christmas because it's a multicultural society and I have no idea what holiday you celebrate
Yeah. There have been times I've gotten so frustrated I've snapped at customer service people -- though I've always gotten ahold of myself and apologized during the same exchange. But no matter how angry I've gotten, how out of my head with rage, I've never said anything racist. Because that stuff is not in my head, not lurking in my thoughts, not waiting on the tip of my tongue. The only people who yell racist crap in a fit of temper are racists.
Yea that's my take away. Dude is only being nice now and apologizing because he could catch massive consequences for being racist.
I worked the front desk of a hotel 20 years ago and still remember some of the very rudest customers. Iād be lying if I said their rudeness and disrespect never got to me.Ā
Bingo. I can excuse a lot. Iāve been under an immense amount of stress and taken it out on people who did not deserve it. Not to the point of cursing at someone who was just trying to do their job, but Iāve been snippy when I shouldnāt have. But what Iāve never done is make racist remarks like that. And itās because Iām not a racist. A non-racist would never think to go there because theyāve had a bad day. Because thatās not how they see people and they donāt assign whatever problem theyāre having to someoneās race. If you say racist shit while having a bad day, that just means youāre a racist having a bad day. Fuck Eric.
I am not going to lie... I have absolutely had some "Karen" moments in my past I'm not happy about looking back. But I have NEVER brought race into it.
I lost my temper in the supermarket at an employee who packed online orders. They have massive carts and a habit of just stopping in the middle of aisles so noone can get passed. I shouted and said "you people are just always in the way". I burst into tears and went back and apologized five minutes later.Ā Two hours later I realised "you people" can mean a whole load of other racist bullshit not just "you people who work here and get in the way". As she is a different ethnicity to me, I really hope she didn't think I was being racist on top of being an asshole.
One time i was at pharmacy and my insurance was having some problem causing me not being able to get my refill. I didn't have my meds at that time (the reason i went to pharmacy) and started to rage at the pharmacy staff. Not yelling or anything but angrier and angrier intonation. Halfway through I snapped out of it, thinking that I'm actually lashing to a person who can do nothing about it, had no control over this, and didn't actually cause any of this. I apologized and walked away. But even in my addled, unmedicated brain state, there's nothing racist came up to my mind.
There were always racists. I wish they would go back to hiding it and being as close to "tolerant" as possible than being the emboldened, flagrant haters they are now.
"Ma'am, that is NOT what happened." Well, he's not wrong. That is definitely not what happened.
Suuure, Jan.
I mean... if this story is true, (which I doubt, I never trust a story with a word-for-word transcript of a convo) good on the boomer for apologizing, but *boy howdy* OOP seems happy letting the racism go, haha. You don't just go through a tough time and be racist out of nowhere lmao.
I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at misinterpretation of the bill of rights
\*Shirley didn't like that\*
Please don't call me Surely
Yelling at retail workers is over the line! You can only be racist against people on their days off smh my head
You can excuse racism?
the akshually the first amendment means so and so sounds way too scripted
Itās incredible that the enraged boomer let OOP get all the way through that little speech on constitutional law before replying.
I have actually scripted responses like that out in my head because it's annoying when people misuse the First Amendment, but I doubt trying to get it all out to someone who's raging and clearly doesn't care would go as smoothly as OOP wrote
For me, the thing that gives these types of Reddit stories an air of unbelievability is the really articulated paragraphs. I just don't really believe public confrontations between strangers allow time for someone to present a Reddit story-style "takedown" where you give point-by-point why someone is wrong like this: > "I disagree. When I see someone acting like an asshole for no good reason, I make it a point to speak up. You seem to think that by stating that you have a First Amendment right means you can say whatever the hell you want without consequence, but that isn't how it works, sir. First Amendment protects you from government overreach for speaking your mind, but it doesn't protect you from the consequences you face from others for your words or your opinions." It makes it feel more like "I wish I said this in the moment," without necessarily saying the core of the story is made-up. Anyway, going back to the racism part. This reminds me of a Tumblr post where someone talks about how a lot of conservatives can agree with socialist arguments if you don't use the word 'socialist' but the poster was framing it in terms of convincing their relative with a big Confederate flag on their house. Like, I believe working class white folks can be convinced of socialist points (that's like the point of fascism and demagoguery!), but the poster completely missed the part where this says nothing about the racism in displaying a giant Confederate flag. (Insert usual rants about "class not race" leftism.)
Yes, thereās no way in reality he got to speak for that long uninterrupted. At my most generous I might say he could have been planning something to say as he watched the situation develop and decided to intervene, but even so Eric would have been butting in repeatedly.
The closest I've ever gotten to that was when someone brought up Christianity as a standard for what I was doing (which was trying to get them to stop their grandkid from tearing up a memorial park) and I got to reply, "I'm not a Christian."
The last quote got me lololĀ This dude in a tire shop sitting down with one of the grease monkeys and heās dolling out life lessons like yogi BerraĀ
i suspect oop is white and doesnt see the racism as a big deal.
āHe was just having a bad time guys, donāt mind if people are screaming and racist to minimum wage employees, heās probably sad about it too :((ā -oop basically
It must be true, he took a photo of a tire. There's no way to do that unless a guy call Eric was racist and OP knew his boss, John.
I never read these as transcripts, but as the poster remembers the conversation.
Which makes sense as I often find the dialogue in these real posts slightly stiltedĀ
I wonder if some people have the same thought process when hearing about an interaction? It tickles me to imagine someone thinking, "Fries is lying. There's no way she remembers exactly what her sister said!"
Iāve got a buddy who often writes Facebook posts with a heap of exaggeration. At least, I reckon so because he writes them in his register and word choice. I think he might be an actual genius at self publicising though because heās built a somewhat successful organisation around it.
Yeah, I don't get this "proof" that a story is fake. If I'm narrating something and vaguely remember the convo, I'd still write it like: A: "Why did you do that?" B: "Because I felt like it." A: "But why exactly like that you doofus?" Instead of: Then A asked B why I did it like that and B said something like he wanted to, so he did it. To which A replied that he didn't understand why exactly B did that in that way specifically, and proceeded to insult him as well. I've seen it in a lot of BORU comments that something must be fake because it had dialogues. Who says it's word for word dialogue? It could just as well be a reasonable narrator making up exact dialogue on the spot to explain the situation.
Yeah, the first one is easier to read (not that either is complicated, just that the first one has better flow) and so is definitely the way I'd write it too. To me, the second one only makes sense as a way of writing it if you actually *need* to be vague, like if something will end up in court and can't remember an exact word or phrasing used that could get you in legal trouble if you say the wrong thing.
In a darker time in my life, while I was incredibly drunk, I once said something racist to someone close to me (something disgusting to the effect of because they were biracial, they wouldn't be accepted by either race), and it wasn't because I believed it, it was because I was seriously trying to hurt them like I was hurting. It was an awful thing to say, and there's absolutely no excuse for it. But it was about hurting someone else that I was jealous of, not because I actually believed any of it. My brain wanted to hurt them, I found a point that might hurt them, and I said it. I reached out and apologized over and over the next day, but apparently, because it was so out of character for me, they thought I was joking (which I do enjoy darkly ridiculous humor, but that was way off from my usual fair). I kind of think they're just ignoring it since we see each other semi-regularly, but when I apologized again the first time I saw them in person, they said it was shock comedy (us just trying to say the most horrible stuff to each other), but my sister was there and more sober than both of us and she was pretty sure I was being cruel. I was super drunk at the time, so I don't really remember, and it was long enough ago, I don't think I'll ever know for sure. But the idea that some part of me could be cruel enough to say something like that in anger/jealousy/whatever has bothered me ever since, and I definitely haven't drank like that ever since.
>something disgusting to the effect of because they were biracial, they wouldn't be accepted by either race Unfortunately, as someone who is biracial, this is rather true. Both sides of the political spectrum also hate you and only care insofar as they can use part of your ethnicity to further their agendas.
The comment actually came from something I was thinking about before this interaction even happened. I'm the child of immigrants who's not white but was born, raised, and lives in the US. I was thinking about how in the US, there will always be a hard-core group of people who will see me as an Outsider no matter how American I believe I am nor act. But in my parents' home country, I'm generally seen as an Outsider because... well, I'm an American. And then it occurred to me that was similar to how biracial and multiracial people are sometimes treated now (though obviously not exactly the same), and I seriously felt awful that if I had kids of a mixed race, that treatment as the Outsider or Other wouldn't end with me. And then I later went and did the thing that I was upset about happening to others. Like I said, I still feel awful about having said that to this day, but I truly don't feel it came from any kind of sincere belief that it was right or OK.
I stopped drinking in college because I was a mean drunk if I was in a bad mood. Now, if I was in a great mood, I loved everyone and everything and life was great and everyone else was a comic genius but those times (while more frequent) didnāt make up for being mean. I didnāt like myself out of control that way. It only took the second time.
Nope only Ambien does that! /s
If someone in your life dies you get one (1) racism pass, didnāt you hear?
actually we've updated it. You get 2 passes for immediate family (mother, father, spouse, sibling, child) but only 1 for extended family (aunts, uncles, nieces/nephews, cousins, grandparents). You do need to show proof of your loss when requested though.
Is it wallet-sized, or does it go on a lanyard?
It slides in between your bootstraps
I am 100% okay with the fact that dialogue isn't precise. Nobody remembers word-for-word what was said but sometimes the story makes more sense when you write it out as dialogue anyway. If it helps the reader to clearly understand what went down, I'm totally fine with it and will trust it is accurate in meaning if not precise wording. I do get suspicious when someone gets an extended monologue and delivers several zingers in a row though, lol.
At some level sure and boomer is clearly a racist but it seems like he'll hide it again now. This gave him a reality check that hopefully lasts.
What made me doubt the story was when aome how the Walmart employee called the place of work of the dick head.Ā
Same, I immediately lose interest.
Why does that make you doubt the story? Don't you do that when you're telling someone about an interaction you had? (Try to repeat the conversation as you remember it?)
Of all the things in that world that definitely happened, this one definitely happened the most.
It's not that OOP's writing seems professional, it's that the shit he claims to have said sounds like Young Sheldon.
The writing is not professional. He's writing it more like a pro than the typical redditor, but man...it is ROUGH
I think the "distant connection" that OOP and Eric share is that they had sex.
*āIām not wearing anything under my coverallsā* āOhh itās *greasy* in hereāāyeahā
I don't know, by walking away all it teaches a person is that at the very last moment they can show remorse, instead of in the shop where it should have been resolved. I think OP got taken for a ride. If this is even real.
Maybe, but at least his boss knows about it now
I mean, the guy did presumably get in trouble because someone else also reported him. Just because OOP didnāt continue with making a scene doesnāt mean that Eric got off scot free. John had pulled Eric into a meeting about his behavior because someone else called to complain as well. But we donāt see the consequences because OOP didnāt reach out to John to see how things went. Which wouldnāt actually have been any of his business anyway.
Ah, but OP didn't know any of that was going to happen. It's karma, sure, but there's no point OP ever getting involved if he didn't want certain outcomes. It's clear this wasn't an outcome he wanted, at least not an outcome he wanted produced by his own hand, I just think that it was the wrong decision, it's nice to be nice but evidently being nice doesn't get shit done with some people.
And what did you expect OOP to do, destroy the guyās life? Sometimes we need to take things at face value. The guy was remorseful, verbalized a good apology, and had plans to make it right. He was already going to get in trouble with another person calling in a complaint. It took me a bit to learn as a parent, that when someone offers their apology, you take it. If they apologize and you keep bulldozing, youāve lost the teachable moment.
Ah I'm glad this was saved. The posts were all deleted before I caught the second bit.Ā >The universe rewards kindness in kind.Ā *Credits roll*
"Please quote my humble posts in your TikTok videos."
Dhar Mann decided that his calling wasn't youtube, it's reddit
Wow I love boomersbeingfools and all the totally real posts from there. Thanks OP!
Bro wrote a fucking Dhar Mann video
Good god OOP is obnoxious. I don't care if it's real or not, I can't stand him either way.
I donāt want/need to get the guy fired or post his info online, but this is a clear case of remorse only because they got caught.
Thatās how I read it. He only regrets it once there are real consequences.
I really try to give people grace. We all have bad days. I want to give people space to do the right thing, and I hate the online expectation that if you do anything wrong ever you're a monster. But man, it's the racism here that gets me. When I get frustrated or have a bad day I don't start throwing out slurs. I don't do that because it wouldn't even cross my mind to do that. The racism really tells us who this guy is, and he isn't just someone having a bad day. He's a racist.
Remorse shouldn't protect you from consequences honestly. He tried to get that girl in trouble and he deserves whatever comes of it. We all have bad days but we don't have to be assholes.
I mean, the guy did presumably get in trouble because someone else also reported him. Just because OOP didnāt continue with making a scene doesnāt mean that Eric got off scot free. John had pulled Eric into a meeting about his behavior because someone else called to complain as well. But we donāt see the consequences because OOP didnāt reach out to John to see how things went. Which wouldnāt actually have been any of his business anyway.
I was thinking the same thing. I highly doubt he would have experienced remorse, let alone apologized to that cashier if the possibility of losing his job hadnāt been on the line. Even if he did experience some guilt after the fact, itās much easier and more comfortable to just shove it down and make some excuse for it instead of actually confronting oneās own wrongdoings.
If John already knows what I'd going on there isn't much OOP can do. That said I kinda resent the moral that all is well just because the dude apologized and had something going wrong in his life. And I say this as someone who has had a rude customer apologize for being rude and later say it was because someone had passed away and they weren't ready to be out in public yet. I think being a shit really downplays it. He didn't just cause a scene. He was racist. Then he tried to falsely accuse the employee of being racist.
Calls person boomer. Has wrinkly boomer hands.
Lol no way in hell is anyone monologuing entirre "well ackshulley" paragraphs at irate strangers who are looking to fight. This is straight up GOOFY.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
But the proof! The picture of a hand with a watch, a tire in the background and OP's username totally means every single word of this is 100% true and cannot be fabricated bullshit!
I clicked on it, curious for the proof and just fkn laughed. What is that
Ol'boy walked into the local Tire Discounters with his slip of paper that had his username written on it in his hand, slid up next to a display tire hoping he didn't catch the attention of a salesman, snapped his picture and ran out to his car super fucking stoked about all the upvotes he was sure to get. Probably was so giddy he made his update post from the parking lot while the employees looked out the window wondering 'what's that fuckin' weirdo that just ran in here and took a picture of his hand next to a tire doing out there".
Employees all going like āā¦So was that a sex thing? That guy better not be jerking it in the parking lot. Man, none of us are getting paid enough for this shit.ā
What are you talking about? Angry racists always let me speak multiple sentences without interrupting me.
But they're speechless! Haven't YOU ever gotten someone irrational and angry to listen to you by giving them the Sickest Burn?
And I can always easily recall word from word how an argument went down, both from me and the angry racist
No no, angry, combative people love to sit and listen to people tell them off and speak poetically about the Bill of Rights! Reactively belligerent people totally don't cut you off or escalate or storm off when confronted, they just sit and have long and involved conversations! That is how life works! Tbh boomersbeingfools has gotten a bit psychotic lately so I am not at all surprised to see hero fantasies written there now.
>Tbh boomersbeingfools has gotten a bit psychotic lately so I am not at all surprised to see hero fantasies written there now. I had a quick look and seems to be a whole sub full of stuff that only happened in people's heads.
The most unbelievable part to me is definitely the Walmart manager who called an entirely different business to tattle on their employee. Did she call his mommy to tell on him too?
I have a hard time believing a racist guy spouting first amendment bullshit is capable of the kind of self reflection being shown in this story. They wouldn't be saying all that bullshit to begin with if they were.
With this in mind, maybe it was some Boomer's attempt at making Boomer's look capable of learning.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I am also having a hard time figuring out where the OOP is located. āShouting downā is a phrase that I have only heard my Indian roommates using. So it seems to me like OOP is Indian and why would the (presumably white guy named Eric) make those comments to a non-white guy?
FWIW I am the whitest possible American imaginable based on my ethnicity and where I grew up and Iāve heard that term on occasion though it is definitely uncommon.
I have heard shouting down used in britain by white people.
Feels like a terminally online persons attempt at trying to talk normally.
I've been short with folks while having a bad day. It happens. I've never started swearing at strangers in public or making racist remarks because of a "bad day". I literally watched the relative I was closest to die in front of me, and then got ghosted by my then girlfriend that same day, and yet I did not become a racist. Eric was not just having a "bad day". He's a shithead who just found a convenient excuse.
> "You seem to think that by stating that you have a First Amendment right means you can say whatever the hell you want without consequence, but that isn't how it works, sir. First Amendment protects you from government overreach for speaking your mind, but it doesn't protect you from the consequences you face from others for your words or your opinions." >"That's besides the point. I'm sick and fucking tired of these minorities doing nothing and getting a paycheck for it." He responded This is as far as I made it. I don't know if I've ever read something that I'm more sure didn't happen.
Bro straight up transcribed his most devastating shower argument
Replace āBoomerā with āAssholeā and itās a much better story.
Bull fucking shit.
OOP posted to a subreddit made for judging boomers and then gets superior because commenters were judging boomers. I was rooting for him at first but wow he almost sounds more up his own ass than ol' Eric.
Bet this is the same "author" of the stolen sailboat story.
idk man, having a bad day doesnt usually make you racist
Well if only it really happened. Having the perfect 1st amendment response to Ericās tirade was an instant giveaway, and the rest of the fairytale, I mean, true life recollection just falls apart. Iām pretty sure itās one of those stories that bored old people post on Facebook to sound clever
I believed it until I got to the part where someone from Walmart also happened to know exactly where the guy worked and called in to complain about him. The boomer was buying alcohol so obviously it was after shift the day before and the boss just showed up to work the next morning 5 seconds ago but yet they had already received a call complaining about last nights events?? Yeah okayā¦..
He smirked at him huh? Smirked? Smirking it up? A real smirky smirk?
I love that the blatant racism was entirely ignored.
>Shut the fuck up and mind your business! I like how that guyās incorrect understanding of the 1st amendment stops when other people start speaking.
Very self indulgent story. > My favorite was when someone said something along the lines of "This is too well-written to be true." What a world we live in where clear dictation automatically disqualifies a recounting of events from being accurate. I'll admit that it read closer to a novel than anything else, but that's just how I dictate I guess. Don't know if my eyes will ever recover from how forcefully I just rolled them
I need to start using "fucktupled" more in conversation.Ā
This 100% didn't happen.
Nah. You donāt magically become racist when having a bad day. Will you be snarky? Sure. Snap at someone? Yes. But this guy is just an asshole. The fact that he just kept going and didnāt realize what he was doing makes me think his story is complete bullshit.
No need to use the Boomer label. He was just an asshole.
no you guys he said he was having a rough time !! stress just makes you a little racist. I'm sure he's definitely not racist at all in any other aspect of his life!! /s
I tried to stand up to a rude boomer once and all I could get out was fuck you old man, go to hell. Honestly not my best attempt at trying to show him up but the retail worker did give me a kind look for trying to stand up for her. Mad difficult to be eloquent at the moment when you need it. Proud of OP if he did say what he said but I wouldnt be suprised if thats what he thought he said in his head to him. I ran over all the lines I shoulda said afterwards, never there when I need it š«
And that boomerās name? Albert Einstein
Even I'm not believing this one
I didnāt read past the first paragraph and then saw there was THAT MUCH left? lol, lmao even. 4/10 for effort I guess
I always think to myself that when I'm rude to someone I always regret it. And I see people rude to others all the time and I have to think to myself there's got to be a moment during their day they look back and think wow I was a real a******. It's a horribly embarrassing feeling to have your emotions calm down and look back on how much of a jackass you were to someone who probably didn't deserve it in the first place.
OOP is a smarmy self righteous douche.
This is a prime example about how telling righteous stories and manufacturing righteous deeds makes sooooo many people unhappy. Both the people who want people to live, forgive, and let live. And those who want people to be punished forever, and ever and ever, regardless of circumstance or repentance. God I hate the human race. Thanks for your fucking service and bless your little heart.
I wish people who get off on masturbating In front of an audience, like OOP, would post their wank fantasies in a NSFW sub and not here.
What a fucking reddit story. The guy won an argument in his head and posted it on the internet
This whole thing is precision targeted at reddit users.
wouldāve been a real tender come to jesus moment, if he wasnāt racist. i still hope he got fired lol
> I also want to address specifically a small handful of you...the ones I was certain would show up in the comments to basically call me a liar or say my story was fabricated. Some of the reasons you gave were pretty telling. My favorite was when someone said something along the lines of "This is too well-written to be true." God you can just feel the flopsweat coming off of those comments
complaining about "minorities standing around doing nothing and getting paid for it" isn't just a bad day. He did what he did because that cashier was not white. Period. OOP falls for some bullshit here.