It seems as though there’s a wide gulf between those who understand what it’s like to work in the service industry and those who don’t.
Some people see nothing wrong with hurling abuse at the closest employee when things don’t go their way, while others are clearly embarrassed by the fact that their loved one is treating someone who’s just trying to do their job this way.
But even among the first group of customers, there are some who cross the line. And while some employees, unfortunately, have little choice but to stomach this extreme behavior, the full video shows us that it doesn’t have to be that way.
Craig Brooks, 26, of Austin, Texas was finishing up his shift at a Holiday Inn Express when a special call came his way.
As he told Business Insider, the customer involved sounded aggravated from the start, but simply asked for a room.
The transaction itself was mundane enough with Brooks taking her credit card information and the guest telling him that she’d be along within 10 minutes.
However, Brooks didn’t hang up when he confirmed this, which allowed him to hear the woman calling him the N-word to someone else.
He said, “Excuse me?” with no apparent response until the woman showed up a few minutes later.
As Brooks said , “This is the first time I can remember I’ve been called a racial slur. I’m in Austin, and Austin is very liberal so you don’t have to deal with stuff like that… it amazes me that people still think like that and it’s 2019.”
When the woman arrived, Brooks informed her that she was no longer welcome at the hotel.
He then recorded a Snapchat video of himself speaking to this woman, who told him that her mother had just died.
Brooks said he understood that, but it didn’t change what she had said.
The woman said she was sorry, but Brooks found her apology difficult to believe considering she had only used the slur a few minutes prior.
As he put it, “You weren’t sorry when you said it on the phone.”
She would later tell him she’s had a horrible day, to which he replied, “And I had a horrible time when hearing that.”
Throughout the exchange, Brooks repeats what would go on to be his catchphrase, “It’s above me now.”
Brooks explained to Business Insider that this referred to the hotel’s zero tolerance policy to racism against its employees.
As he put it, “When I said ‘it’s above me’ that’s basically saying you can’t stay even if I wanted to let you stay, because it’s above me.”
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The woman’s daughter, who was already staying at the hotel, attempted to convince Brooks to let her mother in, but as he said, it was above him.
Whenever the mother expressed her need for a room, Brooks informed her that there was a Best Western next door that could suit her needs.
After all was said and done, that was where she ended up going.
In a follow-up tweet, Brooks said that the rest of the woman’s family was staying at the Holiday Inn Express as well.
They were easier to shrug off because although they also had what he described as “an attitude,” he wouldn’t have to experience it for long.
The video has since attracted over four million views and has been responsible for getting the phrases “it’s above me” and “Best Western” trending on Twitter.
Speaking about what he described as a “classy clapback,” Brooks said , “Being that I’m black in today’s society, we have to know how to deal with racism and combative white people, so we have to look at alternative ways to handle situations instead of being aggressive, because they already see us that way.”
h/t: Business Insider