Last week I was in a supermarket, reaching for a packet of tea bags. Some random bloke walked up to me and asked: “Mate, where do you keep your cold and flu tablets?”
I don’t work here, mate. I’m a customer” I said, holding up the red basket that carried my shopping. Seemingly unimpressed with my answer, old mate stormed off.
In my experience, this reaches far beyond a simple case of being mistaken for shop staff—which, on its merits, wouldn’t bother me. The issue for me was twofold: that the first thing he understood about me was that I was brown. The second was an assumption that because I was brown, I was necessarily stacking shelves