No employee should have to tolerate any form of prejudice while on the job. One woman recently gave a racist customer a dose of reality to send that reminder.
Josie Ajak is a Sudanese woman in her twenties who works as a manager at Gloria Jean’s coffee shop in Cairns, Australia. She received an unwelcome surprise of sorts when one of her customers demanded to be served by a White employee. “[The woman said] ‘Get me a white lady,’” Ajak told BuzzFeed.
“[I told her] ‘that’s fine’, with a smile, and she moved aside, waiting for a white person.” Unbeknownst to the woman, Ajak actually had no intention of fulfilling her racially charged request. “I told my staff that she is racist and that we won’t be serving her, while I continued serving other customers with a smile,” the bright-eyed young woman added.
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One of Ajak’s co-workers shared the troubling incident on social media, celebrating the manager and encouraging other customers to show her some love on their next visit to the coffee shop. The post resulted in over 1,000 comments of support and kind words for Ajak.
“I am so humbled,” she told BuzzFeed. “There have been phone calls to my store from all over Australia, from regular white Australians just calling to say ‘hi’, show their support, [and] say they’re proud of me.” In light of all the positive responses to her story, she later posted a thank you message on her Facebook page, highlighting the unfortunate existence of racism and encouraging others to treat people as they would like to be treated.