WIBU to tell this man to back off shouting at the pharmacist assistant?

[SurferRona]

I was in a large pharmacists earlier to pick up antibiotics and a man being served by an assistant in front of me suddenly started shouting at her telling her to ‘say please, if you want me to pay’ that ‘you don’t just say that’ll be £21.01, you say please. Now say please and I’ll pay’, ‘I expect you to be courteous and say please to me, say please and I’ll pay’…. Properly angry. The woman was youngish and looked scared, and didn’t seem to know how to respond, or what to do. So I called across to him to back off, there was no need for that, couldn’t he see he was scaring her? He then turns on me telling me to keep out of it, nothing to do with me. I responded again saying it was to do with me as he was bullying a scared young woman, which was also racist (assistant looked to be of south Asian descent), there no need for it, and he was clearly just having a go at a young woman just trying to do her job. The male pharmacy manager then came over and the man quietened down. He then kept saying he wasn’t racist- but I thought it was as he wouldn’t have behaved like that to a white man serving him, and did quieten down once the male pharmacist came across. WIBU for intervening like that? My other half keeps telling me to keep my neb out of things like that, but I just kept thinking what if it were my daughter…. How else should I have dealt with it? If at all? I have no idea if I just made it worse for the young woman assistant☹️

So if she said that is x amount, is there anything else, where do you put the please?

He doesn't sound well and by the posts on here, I can't feel sympathy for anyone that fucking pathetic anymore. Jesus grow a backbone.

It’s not at all odd to jump to the conclusion he was racist and sexist.

if he had treated the older male assistant the same way that would have been different, but your instincts were spot on.

you’re a hero and get a huge clap and a thank you from me! Go forth and keep being principled, brave and brilliant 🙌

And where was the customers manners when he started berating and embarrassing the staff member in front of everyone?

Even if he thought she was rude not to say please (and as a customer service worker I don't think it's rude to state the total without saying please as often you'll say "That's £12.56, is that everything?" and the customer will then ask for other items so by the end you're just confirming their final total with a "So with XYZ that comes to £14.93" rather than specifically asking for payment) retaliatory rudeness in being rude back to her is not acceptable.

I don't disagree with you @melj1213

Well done you did the right thing what a horrible man.

I don't get the racist but though.

A full grown man saying sexual things to my 13 year old child (daughter)? Absolutely.

The man sounds like a tool, but I think your immediate accusations of 'racism' will have allowed him to mentally shrug it all off - I'm sure he'll relay events as 'and then this stupid woman started accusing me of racism, just because I asked the girl to say please.'

And yet you think it's bad manners not to say please, regardless of context?

@melj1213 yeah I'd say please regardless of what had occurred before.

You lost me when you said the guy was racist

You've detailed what he said. He said nothing racist

I meant to add, I find it odd she didnt say please. Cashiers (etc) always say please (in my experience) and we say thank you etc. Just simple manners.

I personally wouldnt have called out someone out on not saying it though.

You don't have to use racist terminology to be racist

I'm assuming you're British, brought up in the U.K. by parents who have English as their mother tongue. And perhaps you don't speak any other languages proficiently.

What feels completely natural, rolls off the tongue, to you may not for someone else who speaks perfectly fluent English but may be fluent in another one. It's not rude at all. She's not demanding cash with menaces, she's telling him what he owes.

Doesn't sound racist at all, that sounds like it comes from you and maybe your worries?
He was rude shouting at someone but not sure racist or sexist just rude. But in todays world there's a label for everything!
I would have stepped in and asked him to not shout but that's it, wouldn't have started calling him names etc.

Pity he wasn’t banned from the pharmacy for his behaviour.

he took it too far, but I can’t tell you how often I go to a counter, say hello smile and communicate my request politely, for them to barely look up and bark at me. Most recent occurrence was a click and collect at a convenience store, where I got ‘QR code’. I made a point of saying PLEASE and muttered rude man. I’d probably have done the same to her. The forcing her to do it was weird and controlling. Probably sexist and ageist and potentially a bit racist but the fact that she was rude is still true. Did she thank you for intervening? I’m betting she didn’t.

Did you honestly refer to yourself as a 'white saviour'

Some posters are talking nonsense and need to educate themselves

im a south Asian - but older, professional and very confident now. Racism often doesn’t involve actual slurs but micro aggressions and institutional racism. These days if someone tries it with me I don’t take it at all!

does sexism/misogyny require a man to literally say to a woman: I am better than you because I am a man? NO

yet we assume he is sexist without any other evidence

the same is true of Racism. Yet for some reason people dismiss that without any evidence either way - which is scary

the whole issue poc face is institutionalised racism and micro aggression - j don’t need to be called an obscene word or to be told to leave the country to suffer racism

the fact that he shut up when the man approached doesn’t mean he is not racist - even if the man was a south Asian man he presents more of a threat than the young girl

a racist man probably wouldn’t insult Mike Tyson to his face! (Or Barack Obama for other reasons) - doesn’t stop him thinking how he thinks

Also I’ve had some people try to speak slowly to me before and then get shocked when I speak with a middle class London accent . I’m born in London and my skin colour literally doesn’t change anything about me

yet you wouod be surprised to see how that’s the first thing some people still see

I'd have done the exact same, OP - the world needs more people like those of us who would!

I suspect her being a young woman my have played a greater part in his shouting. Race may or may not have been a factor, but her sex will almost certainly have been the main one.
I suspect he would many have been shouting had it been a man, regardless of race.

It was nice for you to stand up for her, but I don’t agree with you calling him racist. That is a very powerful insult to throw around. He was a bully certainly but you have no evidence to know if it was to do with her race. If anything I find your stance on this quite racist- in your head she’s of south Asian descent so this must be valid reason enough for the cause of his nastiness? As if it’s something inferior to begin with? Valid racism certainly tackle but this was not. Or if it was you have no certain way of knowing.

@Clymene You’re making a lot of assumptions there 🤣. That’s the trouble really, loads of assumptions being made all over this thread.

Your last paragraph is true but I wouldn’t correct anyone and I wouldn’t really care about their bad manners.

But why do you assume her sex played a factor but not her race - when you have no actual evidence of either