Prejudice (2009)

A Short Story from the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

A true tale from a kebab shop

I was serving a regular customer; a person who is showing me a lot of respect. The boss of the kebab shop doesn’t like it when I talk to the customers because he thinks I am his slave and that I should behave like a robot. He came over and he told me, “Serve him quick and don’t talk to him; he’s gay”, but he spoke in his language so the man wouldn’t understand.

The gentleman, he felt something is wrong and he said to me, “Is everything all right?” The Boss answered, “Yes Mike, everything is all right.” The man, he said, “I’m not Mike, I’m Howard.” I explained him that the boss means “mate” but he can’t pronounce it. Howard smiled and said, “thank you” to him and he left a two-pound tip for me then went out, but he left his umbrella. My Boss took the tip and told me, “I’ll buy a bulb for your room.” I said, “This is my money. That man he always leave a tip.” But the Boss is a hard man who treat his workers like slaves, so I say to him, “If you want to take it why don’t you buy toilet paper? I have a bulb in my room.” Then to patronize me he said, “Maybe you like to join Mr Howard tonight” with winking his eye.

At this point two people came in, each holding a bottle of beer. They were big chubby men with bald heads and they were so drunk that they couldn’t control their movements. They are shouting, “Fucking foreigners” to each other so my Boss said to me, “Be very nice with them. If they said, ‘Fuck you’, your answer will be ‘thank you very much, do you like anything else?'” I told him, “I can’t do that and I can’t serve them”, so he said, “When they have ordered, you do the order – I’ll speak with them.”

The men came up to the counter and one of them said, “Why did you come here, fucking donkey shagger?” The boss in his pronunciation, said, “Calm down, mike.” The man replied, “Fuck off, I’m not Mike, I’m Nick” and the other one he says, “They come here to shag young girls and marry them to get citizenship.”

The Boss, who thinks he is a great important man, couldn’t get rid of two bullyboys. He said, “No mike, I’m a religious person; it is not in my culture to shag girls.” This makes the second man very angry and he shouted, “He’s not Mike you c***.” And then he says to the Boss, “So you’re Muslim?” and he replies that he is. This drunk man then said, “I thought you lot weren’t supposed to eat pork, why are you selling it then?” The Boss says back to him, “That’s business.”

Now the first man is more angry even than the other one and he threw his bottle and it breaks into pieces; spread over the shop, and he said, “You got a problem, Mohammed?” The Boss said to him, “I am not Mohammed, I am Mustapha, my friend”. The first drunk man shouted, “He’s not your friend, he’s my friend.” The boss, he replied to him, “Ok, mate.” But he said “mike” again because he cannot pronounce, “mate”. This man, he was very drunk, he said to him, “My name’s not fucking Mike. Fuck you!” The boss he say, “Thank you very much, what you like?”

The second man say, “That’s what he calls his donkey when he’s shagging it!” Then he was holding onto the counter and he was pretended to be having sex that way; like Mustapha and his donkey, called Mike. He was saying, “Oh Mike, oh Mike”. At this moment Howard comes back for his umbrella. He realised there is something wrong and he becomes a mediator between my Boss and them when he explained to them when he saying to you “Mike” he is means “mate”.

Before the two boys leave the kebab shop one of them says to the Boss raising his voice, “The customer’s always right Mike!” The boss said, “Yes, yes, yes”. Howard advised him he should call the police. The Boss says “many times event like that happened to me – when I call police they come too late and when they come they accuse me instead of them.” I said, “And we are all fucking illegal immigrants and by their police law we are the crime-makers.”

Howard said, “I understand now. Good luck for you.” and he left the shop. I say to the boss, “Now can you see?”

I. I.