WTF?

[pecunium]

Recently, at work, something odd happened.

Guy came in, and started to ask me questions about knives. So far all is normal. Selling knives is a lot of what I do. We talk about this and that, and he starts being discoursive. He then asks me one of those questions I've had, now and again, though not here; at SLT.

"What do you think of women using knives?"


"I don't have any problem with it."

He went on, saying from things he'd seen them doing in the kitchen it gave him the willies. I said he ought to see the things I see men doing with knives. Then I tried to point out that it was more a matter of preconceptions than anything else. I told him I'd been in the army for 167 years, and I taught firearms handling, as well as knife skills. This was to lead into telling him that I far prefer to have female students (in firearms) than I do male ones (in knives it doesn't have the same gender skew, though there are traits I think I see more in women than in men. There are other traits I think I see in men more. some good, some bad, in both sexes).

That did, so I thoght, derail the conversation, but it was being a bit strange, and I wanted to done with it. He started asking me questions about guns, and I started actually moving him out of the store. On the way he started asking me about my thoughts on "open carry". My thoughts on the carryng of firearms are pretty simple. Most people shouldn't do it because they don't think it through carefully enough (for more detailed ideas of my thinking you can read the post/comments in places like Making Light (where the subject has come up, more than once).

I tried to say this, gently, but I was starting to get an odd vibe. I actually started pushing him out of the store (my boss actually noticed this). At the door he kept going, and then it happened, he explained why he was looking into things like "open carry" (which right he didn't know we had in Calif. never mind that as configured it's a mess... asking for trouble and conferring no real benefit to anyone who isn't willing to spend lots of time getting a number of drills down to pure muscle memory. Even if that's done the requirements still make you much more target than anything else... all of which I mentioned to him).

It's because of the political situation now, and the "trouble we have coming with the blacks and the browns".

I was croggled. He'd just given me what can only be described as the tea-bagger's secret handshake. I wasn't certain until he added, "You know I used to be a liberal."

The next say, he was back. Asked if I had a card, and then (when I said I didn't really. Which was true, in context. I don't have a card for my work, and I had no intent of sharing my personal one with him). That, it seemed was ok. He had one to give me, with a slightly conspiratorial leaning in as he said, "I might have some work for you."

Comments

[janetl.livejournal.com]

It's so hard to imagine this in an upscale cookware store in the city. Ick.

[coffeeem.livejournal.com]

Only working-class rural people are crazy?

I'm sorry--I know you didn't mean that. But too darn many of us carry that assumption around: that racism and vigilanteism are characteristics of the rural poor. Well-off people in urban and suburban environments are at least as likely to be racist or politically extremist--possibly more likely, because of the insulating qualities of wealth. And they're better able to do damage with their convictions than poor people, who don't have access to political clout and/or expensive weapons.

Okay, I'm off the soapbox now. As you were! Carry on! *g*

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, yes. I know of people with those attitudes that do shop in upscale cookware stores, in NYC, at least. Lots of extremists there, on each side. I'm even related to some.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. I have put my foot in it. Sorry. Of course there are prejudiced jerks in every walk of life. I do think that saying this sort of stuff out loud to strangers is more unlikely in an urban, upscale environment. Not fashionable.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

We all put our feet in it sometimes. I think, actually, it's more common in urban environment. "Rural/small town" (for want of a better way to say, non-urban)jerks are more likely to be quiet about things like that to people they don't know.

In the city people are far more willing to hit up strangers in the hope they will be sympathetic.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

it's the suave way they wipe the foam from their lips with a bit of perfectly-pressed white linen that scares me...

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

I've had this sort of conversation on my bus, in service. In one of them, the moron actually mentioned brown and yellow, at which point I stopped the bus and informed him that it was his stop. I pointed to my hand and said "This is yellow! Now get off before I call the police." Which he did.

I'd say when I was driving, I'd get something like this not quite once a year. Most I just cut off with "I'm sorry, I need you to sit down and stop talking at me so I can drive this bus safely"...or something like that.

I drove in generally good neighborhoods in San Francisco, and I am half Shanghainese.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Not to me. Moneyed Persons are among the worst. They're just not usually quite so open about it where they think People Who Matter might hear them. As a fat middle-aged woman, I don't count as a Person Who Matters.