Vote For Pedro

A Sewer & A Racial Slur

As many of you know, I am an apartment manager. Last week we were having trouble with the sewer line that is connected to the building I live in, along with the two next to it. I called out the man from the sewer maintenance company and he was a sewer man so already you know that life was not ideal for him.

He was not one to voluntarily say any more words than absolutely necessary. There was no "Hi, how are you doing?" mostly it was, "Where is the problem?". I told him which buildings were having trouble and he began to walk away without saying whether he understood what I said or even acknowledge that I had said anything.

After looking around for a bit he banged on my back door (the one that has a sign reading "Please use the front door. Thank you."). He asked me if the people were home in the building next to me. I looked and saw that their lights were all out and commented, "Well, since all of their lights are out, they are probably not home. Did you knock?" and guess what!? He hadn't knocked. I informed him that he has a much better chance of finding out if someone is home by knocking. He needed to plug something in and for some reason didn't think that the electricity from my apartment was going to be good enough for him so he wanted into the other place.

Finally he opened the line and came back to tell me he was done and retrieve the rest of his extension cord from my place. He told me that there was a leak in the line and roots from a tree had found it. He also told me that there were a bunch of tampons that were blocking the line. By the way, I REALLY don't want to know how sewer guys find out what was blocking the line. In regard to the tampons he said, and I quote "Well you know these panchos- they'll flush anything". Can you believe that he actually said "panchos"!?! I then made some comment about how it doesn't matter what race they are, no one should be flushing anything except toilet paper and human waste. He looked at me and asked, "Why? You're not Mexican are you?" to which I responded, "Yes as a matter of fact, I am". Which, for those of you that don't know, is (mostly) true. My grandmother was Mexican.

He was quick to stop talking to me and quick to leave after that.

I've been called a lot of things but this was a first. Does it still count even though he didn't know at the time that I am Mexican?

posted by Mrs. Andrea Wood @ 11/16/2005 02:16:00 PM