A Story For Today

[billroper]

I was late getting into work today, because of the entertainment with fuzzbucket_cat yesterday. The newspaper vending machines are out the back door, so I walked through the building and out the back door, where I found an Islamic-looking and sounding fellow talking on a cellphone. He gestured at one of the locked facility doors on the back of the building that was labeled something like "Fire System Door" and said, "Can you open this for me?"

Why me? Damned if I know. Apparently, if I was silly enough to walk out the back door, I was apparently someone who should have a key to this locked door. I told him, "Sorry, I don't have a key," and proceeded to snag my newspaper as he wandered in another door to the building and then back out, all while still talking on his cellphone.

Well, this was all moderately stupid, so I stuck my head into the building office and told them that there was some damned fool in back of the building who wanted the Fire System Door unlocked. They said they'd take care of it and I headed upstairs to work.

On my way out, I stopped and chatted with the building security guard who had been in the building office getting ready to go on shift when I had let them know what was up. It turns out that the fellow was one of the tenants who was having a problem with his cable TV connection. Along with all the fire alarm wiring, all of the cable and Internet wiring also runs through that room. However, tenants don't get into that room -- only contractors from the companies that are actually responsible for maintaining the wiring.

Just for the record, I would have stuck my head into the building office for this level of stupidity, regardless of the ethnicity involved or the particular date it occurred.

Comments

[phuphuphnik.livejournal.com]

It is funny, to me that one can do what they would normally do, but feel guilty (wrong feeling, perhaps) about it when it is a particular ethnicity.

I get that little twinge when I find myself eyeing a young person of African descent at the store. I just remind myself that it is not because he is black, but because he is acting suspicius. (or however it is spelled..)

[madfilkentist]

That was the right thing for you to do. But depending on the level of service he was getting through normal channels (no pun intended), his decision to go into the wiring closet himself may not have been so unreasonable.

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

At several places where I've worked, there have been spates of people loitering near doors and then sneaking in behind other people who are, apparently, too polite to shut the security doors in their faces.

Said people then walk off with handbags and cashboxes.

This was happening before 9/11 and seems to have been perpetrated by black, white, asian, young and middle-aged people (according to the security cams I've seen).

Better safe than sorry, whether it's a wallet or a bomb.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

where I found an Islamic-looking and sounding fellow talking on a cellphone.

*wryly* Given that Islam is a religion - and people of all ethnicities can adopt a religion - I'm surprised no one has called you on this description yet.

But that's just me being annoying. *grin* I agree that you were right to report the guy whatever he looked like.

[billroper]

Well, yes, that's true. :)

A fellow who appeared to be of middle-eastern extraction...

[catalana.livejournal.com]

I always think the phrase "of such-and-such extraction" sounds painful. Like someone got a big pair of tweezers (or maybe pliers) and pried the person out from where they came.

I bet Wile E. Coyote could get me a pair of them from ACME.

(Yes, it's been a long day. What was your first clue? *grin*)

[billroper]

You too, huh? *sigh*

[min0taur.livejournal.com]

"Just for the record, I would have stuck my head into the building office for this level of stupidity, regardless of the ethnicity involved or the particular date it occurred."

Knowing you, I have complete faith in that statement. What saddens me is that so many people would not have stepped up to that level of insight -- or the clear acknowledgment that ethnic characteristics and historical occasion were inevitable factors.

I am reminded of a favorite passage from Orwell, writing about prejudices some sixty years ago: "...You cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can, at least, admit that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes." I know I have them; I believe we all do. Thanks for finding a balanced way to process them, and for modeling the behavior.