“Can You Read?”
How you react to this question can say a lot about your self-awareness
I was at a department store with my dad in New York City, waiting with him at the register as he checked out his clothes. The cashier attending to us was a young man, probably in his early 20s, looking somewhat bored. I checked my watch and saw that it was five minutes before closing time, and could understand how eager he must be to finish his shift.
After he finished scanning my dad’s clothes he asked, “Would you like to sign up for a membership? You would automatically receive 10% off this purchase and 5% off all future purchases.”
My dad looked at me, and I shrugged. “You shop here pretty often, so why not?”
The cashier nodded, “Just let me know your name and email address, and I can apply the discount.”
Now, what happened next was where it got interesting.
My dad is not so great at pronouncing things in English, and even being in a big and diverse city like New York, sometimes people have trouble understanding what he’s saying. He also has a pretty long and complicated email address, which he doesn’t like spelling out loud.
Thinking that he was being clever, instead of reading and spelling out his email address for the cashier, my dad handed him his business card and pointed to the email address printed on the front side. “My email address. Can you read?”
I wasn’t really paying close attention to what was happening, but I noticed that the cashier got quiet. He looked down at the card, and then looked at my dad. The bored expression from earlier abruptly became… shocked? The air got really tense all of the sudden, and I was confused. Did something just happen?
The cashier raised his eyebrows at my dad, “Excuse me?”
“Oh! I’m old and I have bad eyes. I sometimes can’t read it. But you are young! You should be okay.”
We all laughed in relief, and the cashier began typing in the email address on my dad’s card.
Luckily my dad had noticed what I had missed, and a potentially serious misunderstanding had ended quickly and peacefully. You see, the young man was African American, and he thought we were…
