Hello. Black partner here and today I had a very negative experience with a group of 4 white women cops (mix of on-duty and off-duty). By the end of the experience, I was HOT and almost went off in the next customer because of pent up frustration and repression of anger.

Here’s what happened:

So I’m at work and this group of four white lady cops come in. After they order, I’m making their drinks minding my business smiling behind me being uncomfortable (I’m uncomfortable because as a Black man I do not feel safe and secure around cops). We’re having a tiny rush at this moment so I ask them to not crowd the handoff plane and to stand back per social distancing. They say okay but didn’t move really but off to the side. It’s RICH that the rules enforcers can’t actually read and follow the rules.

While I was making their drinks I know they were talking about me because I could hear them saying “well what was his name” and I just felt like they were ridiculing me because when I handed them their drinks they’re like pressing me to talk to them when they can obviously see I’m not trying to have a conversation with them. I wasn’t making eye content when I called out their drink but I was being polite calling out their names and drink names and everything else and then one of them forcefully said “thank you” repeatedly and forcefully trying to get me to respond. I end up having to tell the last one that I have to calibrate the shots for her decaf americano because they were pulling at 7 seconds and it would be a minute and that tiny moment was fine.

And then I hear them saying that this partner of mine and I look alike and then they shout “Are you two guys brothers?” This is when I started to BOIL because it is an aggression used commonly by white people that says all black people look alike. Mind you I don’t think we look anything alike, because we don’t. He’s brown and Latino. I’m black. Yes we can be with a few shades of each other and a couple of curl patterns separating us and not be related.
So I want to shut this down now because they are all smiley and giggly like they don’t know what they’re doing and say, “ No. we’re not brother. We don’t look that similar, and no we don’t get that at all.” They continue to say we do and try to have this discourse.

When I finish their last drink, I quickly tell them to have a good day and walk away to end this wonderful customer connection.

By this time I’m HEATED.

Now on to the next, I’m making this next drink for this Black girl and she’s a watcher as in she watches from afar to make sure it’s made to her standards not Starbucks standards. Because we had a little rush I guess she had to wait like 3 or 5 minutes probably and she had asked another barista when we drink was coming, so we had found out she ordered it wrong and wanted lemonade in her MDFR with light ice. I make it how she wants with the liquids to the light ice point and she’s watching closely and she says “that’s not it, that’s not light ice” while I’m making it and I tell her I used less than a tall scoop to scoop the ice into the drink and she’s trying to argue. Regularly I would “make the moment right” and just give her more MD and lemonade but like I said earlier I’m just so bothered by the cops and now I’m about to take it off on this partially innocent Black girl when it really isn’t her fault but she was there. So to prevent me from doing or saying something I should have, I literally throw the shake full of drink into the sink (4 feet away, made a big splash very dramatic), told the other people on bar and register I needed a minute and walked off the bar to go sit in the bathroom for 15 minutes.

And now I had those 15 minutes and an additional five hours at home where I’m composing this so I’m obviously still affected, to think about writing an incident report.

Because these micro-aggressions from the cops should not have happened and I didn’t deserve to have to tolerate it. I don’t believe in micro-aggressions, because in reality they are all macro and all aggressive on the receiver of comments. And then me about to go of on the Black girl bystander and I’m the only black person at my store and I didn’t feel supported in the moment and felt so fucking alone that I had to walk away.

So I really feel like I had to justify asking if I should write an incident report, because idk I didn’t want to seem like I’m playing a victim. These are the events, this is what happened, they knew what they were doing and saying, and if they didn’t it’s not an excuse.