Many years ago, I worked at a small town Walmart. A lady came to the service desk one day and said that her mother had just died and the manager told her she could return several items her mother had bought. She began to remove the items from a Walmart bag and I started to ring up the return. Half way through, I came to a bottle of lotion that wouldn’t scan. Sure enough, a price tax from a local dollar store was right on the front of the bottle.
I politely said, “Ma’am, I can’t take this. It isn’t Walmart merchandise.”
Well…that made her angry. She started to mumble that I was only telling her that because I was white and didn’t like her and didn’t care that she’d just lost her mother.
After repeating the exchange several times, she finally raised her voice and told me I wouldn’t take the return because she was black and she wanted a supervisor. It just so happens, my supervisor was also black…and she wouldn’t take the lotion either.
The woman stuffed her lotion back in her bag, took her return money and shuffled away, still mumbling about how prejudiced I was….