I withdrew from Appalachian State University at the beginning of my junior year. I’d fallen out of love with the mountains for a number of reasons, not to mention my mother was facing health issues. A doctor had given her orders to stay in bed until the day of her back surgery. So I moved back home, applied to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, became my mother’s “nurse” while my father worked and I took a full-time retail job.

I’ve worked several retail jobs over the years. To this day, I still find myself arranging clothes by size or straightening all of the hangers in the same direction whenever I’m shopping in any given store. But I initially developed these habits while working at Stein Mart.

One summer before college, I previously worked at Stein Mart in the Boutique, which is a section of the store that houses high-end merchandise for women. But on my second tour of duty at the store, I was assigned to a cash register. Occasionally, I was asked to man the sales floor while someone was on a break or off for the day.

An older white woman, probably in her 60s, was a full-time associate in the housewares section of the store. There you can find all sorts of items for the home – frames, collectibles, napkins, glasses, etc. I observed her to be a very proper and put-together lady. No hair or piece of clothing was ever out of place. She was always well-dressed, wearing makeup and had probably been wearing her hairstyle for many decades. She had an air about her that led me to wonder if she was wealthy or perhaps raised in an affluent family. Or maybe she just had superb taste.

One day I was asked to help her cover housewares for the evening. We passed the time straightening displays and helping customers. We hit a lull towards the end of the night, and she began relaying an incident with a customer from the previous day. Apparently the customer, a female, had insisted on leaving the store with her purchase and the box it had arrived in. Many of the items at the time were placed on the shelves or displays sans the packaging or box they’d been shipped in to the store. She explained how the customer had been difficult during the sales process.

She went on to tell me how she had to go to the stock room and sort through a sea of boxes in order to find the exact box for the customer’s item, which was delicate. She made the task sound very menial and time-consuming. Honestly, I understood the customer’s request since the item she wanted to purchase was breakable. But I kept quiet and listened to her story.

She located a box that evidently was less than pleasing to the customer – this annoyed my colleague and she explained the customer’s behavior and insistence to me by saying in a whisper, “She was black. And, well, you know how those people are.”

I thought, obviously this old woman does not know that I am black.

So I looked at her and said, “Yes, I do know,” and I walked away.

I have no idea if she figured out that she’d just made an off-color remark to a person of color or not. And at that point of the night, I just didn’t care. Immediately, I wished I said something more thought-provoking or poignant to her, something she wouldn’t forget. I was young and tired and I just didn’t have any more fight left in me that night. I’d been smiling to customers, bagging items and selling products, many that I didn’t even like, for eight hours.

Her comment irritated me more than it did anger me. I remember thinking, my day is not complete until someone has either asked me what my ethnic background is or made a disparaging remark about black people to me because they assume I am white.

All I wanted to do was punch out, go home and put my feet up.

And that’s exactly what I did.