Skip to main content

TIFU with accidental Islamophobia

My work does a donation program where several different charitable organizations pick up from us. Recently we've been trying to get more organized about which of the smaller orgs pick up what on which days, since they generally don't introduce themselves anymore (this program has been in place for a long time). One of the orgs is a group we just refer to as "The Terraces".

An older, vaguely Middle-Eastern looking guy came in and told me he was here to pick up. I asked which organization he was from, and he gave me a kind of non-answer, which I assumed was due to a language barrier, as he had a very heavy accent and somewhat broken English. I was halfway certain that this was one of The Terraces' pickup days, so I asked him "Are you from the The Terraces". He instantly looked a bit startled and offended, and replied "No! I am Israeli!". I corrected, and said "No, no, which organization are you from?". He understood what I was saying that time, and gave me the name of his org (not The Terraces), and then went about picking up the donation, but clearly was not happy with me.

It took a few minutes for me to realize what had happened. This guy 100% thought I had asked him "Are you from the terrorists?" and now thinks I am either a bigot who assumes all Middle-Eastern people are terrorists, or was being rabidly anti-Israel. I just wanted to know who you're picking up for, dude!

tl;dr: A guy thought I was accusing him of being a terrorist when I just needed to know who he worked for.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TIFU - Don’t do what I did

On Sunday morning Aug. 24th, I awoke to discover a large blind spot in my right eye, which turned out to be what is called wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It has resulted in a very significant, permanent loss of vision in that eye. Although I maintain good peripheral vision, whatever I focus on at best is very blurry, and mostly disappears. I can barely make out the large E at the top of the eye chart. If this happens to my left eye I’ll be unable to read or drive. It turns out that I missed the opportunity that I had to prevent this from becoming a serious problem because I failed to report what appeared to be minor changes in my vision. In the weeks prior to August I had noticed that what I knew to be straight lines appeared to my right eye to have a little waviness. I also noticed that the color of my front lawn, which I could see through the window from my recliner,  was subdued, looked almost gray, in my right eye. So I scheduled an eye exam, which revealed the p...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by getting suspended for 2 days by my front office in school.

I (13M) am an African American student at Jeannette junior high who had got suspended for 2 days here. I was in math class minding my business until my teacher had told me to go to the main office, which posed no problem to me. As i went down there, the people of the front office had stopped me and made me get a new ID (yes, we have id's.) so i had asked them if i could maybe do a different alternative and call my mother to let her bring the Id here, even then, the Id isn't that important. So, although i was talking to them in a calm manner and not showing any signs of rebellion, they had threatened to call the police on me without thinking twice before calling my parents. This is where i started getting angry, and even then now the black peers agree that could have been a racially motivated action. They then told me to sit in the office conference room because of that, leading into more anger. They had then called my mother who had came over to the school didn't even let ...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by putting my already skinny jeans in the dryer on high heat.

TL;DR: Was stupid and didn't realize I put my clothes on extra high heat in the dryer. Had to rock skintight skinny jeans all day with tighty whities (only clean pair I had since I procrastinate doing laundry like crazy). I guess the constant wedgies and squishing are punishment for my stupidity. Honestly don’t know who else to blame but myself for this. I’m a scatterbrained guy so I literally put the highest setting on a load with most of my clothes, and my skinny jeans that I was planning to wear today. You can probably already see where this is going, but somehow I didn’t. For context, these jeans were already pushing the limits of what could reasonably be called wearable. They fit, technically, but only in the sense that I could get them on with enough determination and a bit of strategic breathing. Sitting down in them was more of a commitment than a casual action. Still, they looked good, and I had convinced myself that discomfort was just part of the aesthetic. So this m...
Post a Comment
Read more