These are just a few of the ridiculous things that have been said to me at work recently:
Delivery Guy: Irish or Jewish?
Delivery Guy: Irish or Jewish?
Brooke: Excuse me?
Delivery Guy: Irish or Jewish?
Brooke: Me?
Delivery Guy: Yeah
Brooke: Both actually… (walks away while DG babbles on about how I look “just like” this teacher he once had)
A person blatantly asking about my ethnicity isn’t really anything new, but I’ve still never really gotten used to it. I just can’t figure out what’s so interesting about the way that I look that they feel the need to ask me about it in such a boorish manner. I will give him credit though, in that he is the first person to ever ask me if I was Irish AND Jewish in the same breath. However, it’s also possible that he knows that the owners of the bakery are Jewish, and as I’m obviously not Hispanic like most of the other workers, they may have just assumed that I’m related to the owners. Either way, its still pretty amusing.
Office Worker: (yelling) Are you pregnant???
Brooke: Very actually
Office Worker: Really?
Brooke: Yeah, I’m 7 months now
Office Worker: I had no idea!
Driver: (to another worker) Oh, you've got to let her go first...ladies first. Plus she's white! White women always go first, ha ha!
Brooke: (stunned silence)
This happened one day when I was trying to push a cart full of stuff out toward the outdoor freezer. In order to get there, you have to go out of this garage-style door in the back of the bakery. Usually there's no one there, but apparently there was a party going on and there was a logjam to get through the door. One of the drivers was there and started babbling on and on about how they all had to stand aside to let me through because, not only am I a woman, but because I'm white. He seemed to be joking (he certainly was laughing a lot), and just making fun but I'll tell ya, it sure did make me nervous!