Silent Racism ...?

So, there I was ... driving through the Northside (i.e. of Mpls), looking for the GDMFCSSoBs otherwise known as Com-f***ing-cast. Have I mentioned recently that I loathe and despise them? You don’t need to imagine. This should do it quite nicely. The *(*&*%&^ called, expressing their confused concern that someone had put in an order to install service in Apt. 110 (our former residence). This was 3 weeks after we had moved out. and 9 weeks after giving them notification when our service should be terminated. I didn’t even pretend to be confused. I started straight out:

“This is totally unacceptable. I have lost count! First, it takes 6 weeks of unending garbage to convince you to leave my service On. Now, I leave, and 3 weeks later, I find out this time, you’ve never turned it OFF! How can you guys stay in business like this?” oh. i’m sorry. we’ll get it taken care of. “Do your records say I owe you anything? Tell me that you aren’t charging me for the past 3 weeks!” no. no. we’ll take care of it. um, do you have the computer connection box? “The little grey thing with the lights on it?” yes. “Yes, we do. Do you want it back?” yes. But we’ll still screw you by making you drive all over the damn city looking for us. Because we can't possibly be bothered to be able to give you directions to it. We can't even be bothered to tell you which place is closest to you. Because we sure as shit can’t possibly be bothered to have the next Comcast truck swing by your house and pick it up. You know there’s only 14 of them in the 3 million people area, which is why we only make appointments for 4-hour blocks to make you waste your whole day waiting on us, just to facilitate our power trip, reveling in the joys of an unregulated monopoly.

Back in Northside ...

I desperately need to get rid of this damn box. And then I need to go drive around looking for a Walgreen’s to get my prescription refilled. Which at this point is critical. I think I’m on the right track to the elusive Comcast office, when I see a Walgreens. Screeeeeech. Swift right turn into their parking lot. Yes, they can refill it. It will only take 10-15 min. Great. I can put off Comcast for another 20 min. I wander off to the cosmetics aisle, blithely unaware that this store doesn’t get on the PA to announce “Prescription is ready for Tobias”. I’m looking for lipstick. It’s a small store, so I’m not so surprised at the fact they don’t have a monster-sized selection, like the one in the ‘burbs has. However, I am a bit taken aback when I realize that there is not one single container of face powder/foundation that even vaguely matches my skin tone. Not even if I spent the entire Summer outdoors. I stood there, blankly looking between L’Oreal and Revlon. Nada. This must be what it’s like for little black girls who want a Barbie doll that looks like them.

I’m contemplating the cosmetics. A swift glance around the store certainly verifies the selection, since I’m also the only white person in the store. I’m contemplating the fact that I’ve never been anywhere where I am so concretely a racial minority, other than the city buses.

I’m contemplating the reality that I simply expected that they would have cosmetics for me. Why wouldn’t they, after all? They just didn't need my business, or figured that I would simply go somewhere else to get what I wanted. I'm certainly not offended, just startled into someone else's reality.

So, 30+ minutes later, prescription in hand, I am an hour late getting to a location to study, since I also go stuck on 94 due to the fact that 35W is closed between 494 and the Not-Quite-Rebuilt bridge and the 35W/62 interchange might as well be closed. Half of Minneapolis seems to be under construction this Summer. People are complaining, which makes me scratch my head. Not in the No White People Cosmetics way, but simply the amusement of stupidity. They spend the other 9 months of the year bitchin’ and moanin’ about the quality of the roads and the epic size of the pot holes. Now that the DoT is actually doing this, they’re cranky.