Three conversations about unpleasant (South Asian) customers.

Lately I’ve been observing to people that I worry I’m becoming racist against (South Asian) customers.

Like, if they behave normally with restaurant behavior and tipping, I find myself thinking stuff like, “Oh, they’re some of the good ones,” like I’m almost beginning to think that that means that they’re not really (South Asian).

Like, I was saying this to my one high school friend who is now a (divorced) (math) teacher, and he just started laughing, because he had asked me what was new, and that was my response, that I fear I’m becoming racist against (South Asians).

Then, he was like, “So what do they do?”, so I gave him a recent example, of the one (South Asian) (princess-girl) who was like, “Now. NOW.” with ice cream that she didn’t even touch for twenty minutes, all for a two-dollar tip, and his immediate response – and I am directly quoting here – was “Oh my God,” and he just didn’t know what to say, and there was a pause in the conversation.

I was also saying this to my one hometown friend who’s a (hairdresser), and she seemed a little disconcerted, but then she told me this story about how once it was a very busy day at the salon where she works and she had one appointment open on her schedule and she looks and suddenly it’s filled with an online booking, and when it gets to be that time, this guy comes in, and he’s (South Asian), and it’s the only (South Asian) customer that she’s ever had, and he was super demanding about what he wanted done where with his hair etc. etc. etc., and then it’s finally done, and, no tip.

So she didn’t say it, and she obviously didn’t want to be racist, but that was also her experience, and it was like she was telling me through that anecdote, implicitly, that she was open to like how there maybe could be some problem there.

I was also saying this to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and she was trying to comfort me that no, I’m not racist, and to do this she had this very unusual rationale, since she was like, “But they are like that everywhere in the world,” and to illustrate this, she told me this story she had just come across on Instagram or through someone she knows, where a barista in Australia had this incredibly insistent (South Asian) customer who wanted them to make a latte with no milk.

“You can’t do that!”, she was like. “A latte with no milk is an americano!”

But, the (South Asian) guy was super insistent, and it was just “a thing.”