And there's one who might teach you everything

When are you just tired of all the bullshit that goes with a job? Especially a shitty little part time job.

Friday I’m working at the movie theater, and my major job is to stop the little kids from sneaking into “Jackass 2 – Electric Boogaloo.” At 10 pm, the theater let’s the ticket takers go home, so I am assigned to tear everyone’s tickets who has bought one but hasn’t gone into one of the two sides to go to a movie and therefore had their tickets torn. For a accounting purposes, we have to keep the torn half of the ticket; we keep all tickets for each showing of each movie together (staple/rubber band/paper clip) for 3 years. I don’t know why, but again, they don’t pay me to think; they pay me to do what they tell me to do, and I’m OK with that – actually, it is what I insist on this job.

There I am, asking people if their tickets have been torn, and many of the kids there have already seen the movie, so they have to leave the lobby or buy a new ticket. After tearing about 15 tickets and herding about 30 other kids out the door, I go to a man sitting at a table by himself. He is a 60 year old black man. I ask if his ticket is torn, and he looks startled at me, like I have 3 eyeballs all starting directly into his soul, and says “What?” I ask him if his ticket is torn. And he says “I don’t know what you mean.” I have a torn ticket in my hand, so I ask him again “Is your ticket torn.” He looks at me again without saying anything. I say “Your ticket – is it torn?” While I use the international symbol for ticket tearing, air-ripping my hands in opposite directions.

“Why are you asking me this?” he questions, looking at me quite suspiciously.

“Sir,” I say, “we have moved the ticket takers out and have to make sure everyone in the lobby has had their tickets torn.”

“I don’t know where my ticket is, my wife had it and might have left it in the theater.”

Just as he says this, his friend comes up to me, a tall white man, again in his 60’s, and, while showing me his TORN TICKET, asks “Why are you asking this?”

I resist the urge to point to my shirt which clearly shows I WORK AT THIS FUCKING THEATER, and say “The ticket takers have gone home and we have to make sure they the tickets are torn prior to anyone going into the movie.”

“Oh, OK,” he says, and he shows by his expression that he clearly understands what I just said to him.

This isn’t enough for his friend. “I’m the only person in this place that you ask if their ticket is torn?” And then I find out what this is all about, as he loudly says “I am a 60 year old black man sitting here, and I’m the only one you ask to see their ticket!”

“Sir,” I say, not even testily according to my manager who was 10 feet away, “I asked every person in this lobby before I asked you. I am sorry that you didn’t notice me asking everyone else if their tickets were torn, but I did.”

And this little fuck stain of a human looks at me and says “You didn’t ask my WHITE friend!”

“Sir, I would have asked him next, but after I asked you, he walked up to my and showed me his ticket.”

His friend walks up to this man and, as helping him up his feet from the chair as their wives/dates have come out of the bathroom, and says “Barney, no problem here, they just wanted to make sure that your ticket was torn.”

Barney says “But why, as the only 60 year old black man, do they have to pick on me to show his ticket.”

And as they walk away, I hear the friend saying “See how they have that young man who tore our ticket there anymore, they just want to make sure…”

I asked my manager if I’d said anything wrong, and she didn’t think I had.

I don’t understand how now, within the space of 3 week, I have twice now been accused of being a racist. I don’t think in my previous 37 years I’d been called a racist. I don’t think I am a racist. I just don’t know what all this bullshit is.