Discrimination or possibly not?

Going through life as a white male I have not experienced discrimination in the way others will have. I would not say none due the the fact that it is all about perception. However anything I would say that has come close would spark debate from those who had more obvious experiences of discrimination.

I experienced an event the other evening which triggered a response within me that was noticeable. I will first describe the event with as little of my opinion as I can.

I was with a colleague at a premier inn. As the check in was taking some time and it was nearly 8pm while I checked in, I was booking and paying, I asked her to go and make sure we would get a table in the restaurant as it was a Friday night and could have been busy.

She is a white female and came back saying she had been told there was no need to book we could just walk in and get a table.

We left bags up to rooms and I called her at 8.09pm, she was on the floor below me, and I said to go straight down and I would meet her there. When I arrived shortly afterwards I was surprised to find her not there knowing she was coming from a floor closer than me. I stood at the "please wait to be seated" sign and the 2 waitresses showed me no interest. I wandered down the restaurant to see if my colleague was in a corned somewhere and as we were going to be doing some paperwork picked out a table I would like.

As I wandered back down the restaurant there was a man there who said "can I help you" - I said I was meeting a friend and she had not arrived yet - can we sit on that table over there?" - he said "no we are only doing bar service now".

I went to a table in the bar area - my colleague joined me asking why we were not in the restaurant and I said I had found the person a little rude who had told me there was only bar service. She said the man she had spoken to was lovely. We chose our food and stood at the bar for a time, eventually talking to the second member of the kitchen staff we saw pass, he said someone would be with you soon gesturing to the waitresses. We waved at the waitresses. They were talking at a till in the restaurant and while acknowledging our presence did not seem interested in coming to serve us. We waited longer. Several minutes passed.

Eventually the person I spoke to turned up and I waived at him. When he got to us my colleague said that he had told her we could have a table in the restaurant. He said "yes of course you can" so I asked him to clarify that he told me I could not have a table in the restaurant. "I did not know you were with this lady" he said. Therefore confused I said “can I asked why you said I couldn’t have a table when you told my friend she could”. His response was that he did not have the staff to service two tables as one of the waitresses was due to leave and he knew my friend was coming back.

We sat in the restaurant.

Thoughts

We all judge people on how they look and I was certainly in a Premier Inn carrying a laptop bag and unshaven. I am sure he prefers to put business travellers in the bar as has happened many times to me in the past. I have with 2 different companies in the last 30 years had Premier Inn business accounts and this sort of experience is why I gave the last account up as I did not want to default to using places just because I had the card, I own the company now. I am sure my image looked like I might have done a dine and dash and putting me in the bar has the advantage for them of making me pay up front.

We did sit in the restaurant with no further interaction with him however both waitresses were still working when we left after 9.30 which makes his reasoning questionable. And surely 8.15 ish on a Friday night the last night of term (start of Easter holidays) should be a time you want people in and having a good time?

Without talking first - I asked my colleague about her experience of witnessing the interaction and she mentioned a couple of reactions I found interesting.

• Firstly she said it was the first time she had seen me upset - I have known her over 15 years. When seated at the new table I asked her about the interaction - apparently when I went back to the original table in the bar to get my laptop the man said I was rude and he should not be spoken to in that way. So I asked her what she thought I had said and the words I used above were her memory of what I had said, which I happen to agree with. She also said I wasn’t rude, I seemed annoyed which she had not witnessed before.
• The second thing she did was to go down the Hanlon's Razor route of saying that the man must be having a bad day and English was not his first language.
• The third thing she said was telling. She said if I was black it would have been a problem.

I could have let the emotional experience ruin the night and my sleep - putting in a complaint for vindication and punishment. However I decided not to even get his name. People do have bad days and the Beefeater at Burgess Hill next to the Premier Inn could work out who was on shift on Fri 31st March 2023 if they cared. But this is more about 2 different things.

Stuff Happens

We all meet idiots or lovely people we do not gel with. People who rub you the wrong way and frankly I am one of those people - a friend says because of my work challenging the comfort zones of those I teach that I am marmite - people love me or hate me.
It is not the fact you had an event which causes the stress - it is what resources you have to work with the sensations that is a big factor in whether it is a problem of not.

Prejudice

I am quite interested that both if us agreed the mans annoyance was that he had been caught out in a lie and had reacted defensively. From my part I noticed annoyance however it was quickly dissipated as I thought of all the other people who may experience much more horrific and offensive experiences of discrimination. There are many people experiencing these things on a daily basis and I took it as a learning experience.

I meet people all the time who are idiots - however that is just an opinion and it is not connected to race, sex or the ability to speak English. I know plenty of British white males who annoy me.

Someone can take my opinion and let it upset them or they can choose not to. As that colleague regularly says - "don't accept criticism from someone you would not accept advice from!"