Getting Robbed by the Stereotype

When a young black guy walks into a Midwestern coffee shop, and he goes to the empty side of the cafe and puts his head down on the counter, I assume the normal. He has had a rough day, he is tired or maybe he is in the sick phase of drinking too much too quickly. Hey, it happens. When that same twenty-something guy, after I greet him and my fellow barista asks him if she can get him anything, demands all the money and flashes a gun to get the point across, I think, “Well dammit, you fucking idiot.” And we hurriedly hand over the cash.

Getting robbed by the stereotype is scary and shitty. It is the first time something of the robbery-type has happened to me, so I suppose it would be just as scary-shitty had it been a small, wrinkled old lady who robbed us. But the weight of the stereotype and the feeling we both had when he walked in, “like something was wrong,” does not sit well on my shoulders. It makes me feel helpless about his situation, the position he put me and the other barista in and racial stereotype he has fulfilled.

What is being done to help people like the young robber? What can I do to help people who are also desperate for fast cash like the young robber? There are obviously bigger issues at play, a cycle of family-life and economic hardship that raises people in a mindset that says that life has its limits. Getting robbed by the stereotype is in a way a reflection of society’s failures and by extension my failures, because it is about a real problem and injustice. Education, government welfare programs and basic human kindness must go further in the right method. How?

The idea of keeping money in a register that opens and closes all day is a bit ridiculous. I have always thought that. But it is a system that relies on people who are honest, fearful of punishment or are not desperate enough to bother robbing businesses for a wad of cash that creates more problems than it keeps at bay, and it is a system that works. We are a little coffee shop, not a bank. Money is money that we have earned, and it does make me angry, the people that disrupt and steal from that agreed upon respect. It is not fair nor is it right, but for us in that moment, it was the right thing to do to hand over all the money in register.

Shortly after the robbery, I thought about the scene from the movie “Crash” (2004) in which one of the characters, who has been carjacked by two black men with guns, is angry about the fact that if she is scared when she sees two black men walking down the same street as herself, she becomes guilty of being racist.

I thought that maybe I would feel more like that character; I thought my instincts would be fearful and callous towards all things remotely related to the robber, my workplace and the work I do as a barista. I was nervous when I worked my first shift since the robbery, but it was uneventful. And I still really like being a barista, working with the staff I do and chatting with the customers who come in for a hot cup of coffee.

I think we were lucky that the robbery was so transactional and that the gun was never directly pointed at us, because maybe it is easier for us to brush it off as something that is just going to happen. Rather than being traumatized by the facts — he was a young, black man who had a gun — I am more aware of behaviors that perhaps warrant some caution. Getting robbed by the stereotype was a life lesson in being more aware of my surroundings and reacting thusly.

Working with the goal of preventing another robbery would be stupid. We cannot treat every customer that walks through the door like they are going to rob or hurt us because they very well could. We are about good coffee, good tea and friendly customer service. Continuing to do that keeps the dark realities from taking over. Safety measures have been made. We have talked about it. We are all more aware.

It is easy to feel justified about being overprotective, paranoid or discriminative when something bad happens. That fear has its points, because horrible things do happen, but it also tends to prevent the time it takes to recover from allowing us to see the bigger picture, forgive and talk about how we feel and what we think should happen next.