Chris

I made the mistake of reading the comments of a Lifehacker post about how to respond if your coworker tells a racist joke.  "It's just a joke, lighten up!", and variations thereof.

The first and obvious is, fuckers, it's racist, so shut your stupid face.  But following that... how are these jokes even funny?  Why would anyone want to tell such jokes?

Days like these, I don't understand the human race and don't particularly want to.

So I went to New Seasons before my therp appointment to get some cherries.  The fruit-aisle (as in, that not-tall and not-long aisle that consists of tilted flats of fruits/veggies, yanno) was oranges on one end, something on the other, and two flats' worth of cherries on a side.  In front of both was a woman in a motorised wheelchair.  I'm tall, though, so without getting in her way, I reached over to get some cherries from the upper bins.  No worries.

On the other side of the woman in the wheelchair was this woman who hailed me, and asked, "Do you enjoy making a fool of me?"

...pardon?

She goes on to ask if I'm enjoying myself, by making a fool of her and wasting her time - "stealing her time", as she puts it.  I am thoroughly baffled, by this point.  I try to get her to speak up, try to see if maybe there was a joke I was missing, or maybe I was way in her way...

No, no, she was on the other end, so unless I missed something like five minutes before, I wasn't in her way.

I at some point just did the "Ooooooookay" thing, finished with my cherries, and wandered off to the cashier, not acknowledging her at all.  Last thing I heard her say was much the same garbage to the lady in the wheelchair, who said, "Lady, I can't even hear you."

...

...

What?