To have shouted at a stranger at the pool?

[Fullmooncomfort]

I’m still mulling this over so needed some opinions from you wise owls. The fact I’m still thinking about it makes me think I probably did the wrong thing 😖

scenario: busy pool today with Dd8 and her friend, we had just into a family cubicle to change after a nice swim. Changing rooms were busy and in high demand which is normal for weekend family swim time. We’d been in there for a couple of mins (so just at the stage I’m half dressed with dripping wet hair and the girls are wrapped up in towels slowly starting to dry off). The door to the cubicle gets banged on really loudly so I ignored it assuming someone had the wrong cubicle. However when it happened again really loudly I said “it’s occupied, won’t be too long” and the person on the other side started shouting about a jacket and rattling the door. The knocking and rattling of
the door continued and got louder and this girls started to get upset so I opened it a crack to say I think you’ve got the wrong cubicle, and a very red faced angry woman started shouting at me saying I’d taken her cubicle and stolen her daughter’s jacket 🤷‍♀️I had to speak loudly as she was literally just ranting and I said I think you have the wrong cubicle, it’s me and 2 girls and we are changing so please step away and you are welcome to come in when we are done but there’s nothing it in apart from our stuff.
She then put her hand on the door and continued to shout about a jacket, saying she needed to come in and check as I had clearly moved her clothes out of it and stolen the cubicle and jacket. I finally lost my temper and shouted back (I know that was wrong but it was awful, the girls were upset and she had her hand on the door so I couldn’t shut and lock it) and she started really yelling at me. I didn’t know what to do so asked loudly if security was around (lots of wide eyed parents standing who did nothing but not a lifeguard in sight as they were poolside and no security as they of course would normally have no reason to patrol a kids changing area)
She then screamed that I was racist and she was calling security on me for theft 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️and walked off, so I went back in to reassure the girls, having locked the door.
Next thing I know a lifeguard of about 17 who looked confused knocked on the door and said a lady had come to complain that her daughter’s expensive jacket had been stolen and I had been racist towards her. I felt really upset (I think just shock) and managed to wobble out the above story and that I was finishing getting the girls ready and we would come out and she could check it for this jacket (that clearly wasn’t in there). Then a security guard arrived so it was chaotic at this point, it all got repeated and she said she would try and find the women. She came back after a few minutes to say she’d spoken to her and told her she should have been polite and waited for us to exit before going in to check if the coat was in there, but that she had denied raising her voice and said that I had been deliberately goading and obstructive and racist. I got quite upset and said I certainly wasn’t racist or goading and while I did stop her entering the cubicle it was only because the girls were naked and we had just started getting changed. She sort of shrugged and nodded and walked off and I gathered up my things and we left. I feel awful for having lost my temper and shouted at her and for security, which scared the girls more, but I simply lost my rag after repeated attempts to ask her to wait while
we finished changing, and then she was so aggressive. I’ve had to explain to the girls what racist means and how It was nothing to do with race, but I’m mortified my DD and her friend saw me raise my voice and shout at her to move away from the civil cubicle. WWYHD in that situation? My gut tells me I handled it badly but it was all so sudden and intense and I think my fear turned into anger ☹️

I feel the way you have written this, you were totally unreasonable. How come she 'screamed', yet you merely 'shouted' after you said you lost your rag. Your flowery descriptions would be more suited to a horror novel. You know you handled it very badly, you should be very embarrassed.

Oh give over ffs

You were more restrained than I would have been, I'd have slammed her hand in the door when she tried to barge in.

It really pisses me off annoys me when people hog cubicles, it is ignorant and selfish. I too would be upset about her behaviour and especially of her claim of you being racist, as from what you say, it doesn’t seem like you were.

To be honest it would serve her right if she has lost her daughter’s coat, it would teach her a lesson, not to leave things where they can easily be taken. In the time she was in the pool, that cubicle could have been used multiple times for other people to change in, so what right does she have to treat it as her own personal cubicle? She should have put her things in a locker, like the majority of others do!

I explained already that they’d heard of it in school alongside other discriminatory terms but in a theoretical way, they have never witnessed it or encountered in IRL so were confused why the woman was calling me racist because I hadn’t been racist, which led to a car chat about it in more detail.

She was making out she was just stood there and white women would shout at her. Turns out she's in a job where she works in customer service / dealing with parents. Those jobs mean sadly getting shouted at. Nothing to do with race what so ever.

All those saying op was wrong and should reflect on her behaviour, what would you have done?
Opened the door immediately, apologising for using the cubicle?
Immediately vacated it on her demand allowing her to search the cubicle.
Said nothing while she shouted at you?

Well she was screaming and I did only shout/ raise my voice 🤷‍♀️
not sure what was flowery about my description of events and I don’t think it’s horror story level what happened, just a scare for the kids mainly and me a little bit.

@Fullmooncomfort you should probably take the first few pages of your thread as the sane response. Beyond that I think nutters with agendas emerge to twist your words and push all sorts of insane agendas.

It doesn't sound as if you did anything wrong at all, but I am amazed that you needed to explain what racism was to two 8 year olds. I'd have thought it would have been a topic for discussion at school, along with every other type of 'ism' and 'phobia' long before now.

Ah sorry, totally read out of context there!

What are you taking about I wasn't talking about the op I was talking about another poster.

She shouldn't have been rude but people spending hours conditioning their hair in swimming pool showers when there is a queue is bang out of order.

Sorry had just noticed I've read that totally wrong!

Yeah I know, I'm sorry to say but this doesn't work both ways. The same people who want everyone to check their own unconscious bias aren't willing to check whether they're continually looking for racism where it doesn't exist.

No problem sorry I would delete but don't know how!

Not especially interesting, no. It even has a name, ‘bystander effect’.
A case in point- a few years ago I was on a packed bus with my young DS. A man went from 0-100 aggressive because I was, in his opinion, too close to his child’s empty buggy. I had nowhere else to stand, it was shoulder to shoulder. He started to physically threaten me. Not one, single, person on the packed bus said anything, even though they’d witnessed a man threaten to assault a mother with her child doing nothing but getting the bus home, either during the altercation or afterward when he’d got off. Not a dicky bird.
I find it surprisingly common for those who leap to accusations of unconcious bias to often be working off the back of their own, unacknowledged, unconscious biases.

It seems as if the staff there are either not trained to deal with unreasonable behaviour, or don't feel if they intervene they will be supported. As if they had they could have been helpful.

Blame the schools for that one ... where teachers are required to insist children use a variety of different verbs descriptions for like behaviour so it's not repetitive 😂

confused! Are we now blaming my primary school 40 years ago for teaching me my verbs wrongly? how on Earth has this post led to this 🤦‍♀️

It doesn't sound like OP did anything wrong but, as ever, there are two sides to every story.

I am alway weary of discarding claims of discriminatory behaviour as the "race card" as in the same way that we ask that women be believed when they report experiencing sexual harassment or assault, surely we should believe minority ethnicities when they report experience of prejudice due to their appearance?

I’m sorry you had this experience ☹️
I Agree with this-
people looked on with wide eyes but clearly didn’t want to get involved, I guess because most had little (soaking wet and already therefore upset kids) with them, but would have been nice for someone to step in to help me before the security guard came down having I guess been radioed by a lifeguard 🤷‍♀️

Had the OP done that, then the child could have been on her own with this rude woman hammering on the door to the cubicle she was in.