Awkward Encounter

Do you ever feel like sometimes situations only ever happen to you? I swear, there's times that the most awkward encounter can happen to me and I'm like, really, why me? 

Working in customer service means that there's plenty of opportunities for awkward encounters and even more so when you're anxious because once you're in them, there's no getting out of them appropriately. Last night, a man from Sudan and I began our conversation with me asking him what brought him to Dublin. Well, without realizing it at the time, he was obviously already on edge about his country of residence because he took immediate offence to my question. Things went downhill quickly.

He replied, "Do you ask everyone this question?" and without hesitating I said, "Yes, we host people from all over the world" and he said, "Well can't you see how that could be offensive?" and I freaked because I immediately realized because he was from Sudan he probably thought I was asking what his plans were to interrogate him in reference to being from a terrorist / war torn country. At that point I knew what I should've said but it just came out, "Well if you take it that way I suppose"....Not good.

He immediately went into how he was a doctor and he was here for an exam etc. and I sat there dumbfounded because I knew I had opened a can of worms I should've left closed. It was basically the most uncomfortable / awkward thing that happened to me in the past 3 months lol You know, I'm the furthest thing from racist but it seems I manage to have a foot in mouth moment more often than I care to experience. You know, I was initially pissed off after our altercation but then I started to ponder the situation and I started to feel bad for him to some degree.

He must have been involved in several of these altercations because of his country of origin with people assuming or making reference to terrorism or looking at him scarily when they find out where he's from. Can you imagine having to deal with that every single time someone finds out where you're from? BUT, I think it's also unfair to use this as a defense mechanism and make people feel like crap for doing their jobs. I was left so uncomfortable by our conversation you know, I wouldn't have made that connection had he not immediately jumped down my throat. 

Anyways, the moral of the story here is that the world is in a very sad state. People coming from countries that are synonymous with negativity are constantly on the defense and people like me who naively ask questions without putting much thought into them are on the receiving end of accused racism lol It's so sad to think that this is the state of our planet. You know, I look to the migrant crisis in the U.S right now, immigrants from all over the world fleeing war torn countries etc. and the way people feel about them, it's just awful. \

I really do hope I see some kind of world peace by the time I die for crying out loud because wow, times are tough.

HAPPY VEG