Almost in a bar fight and called a Racist!

[Stagger_Lee]

Your wife needs to find another job. She will face worse than this in bars and with her stuck up attitude one of you will end up in tears and trouble. Not accepting apologies - who do you people think you are? He has done nothing other than slightly offend her in a bar.

[Fishwhenican]

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Well if you don't have the local PD's number, what are you supposed to do?

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Directory assistance would be a good start. Or Page One of the phone book.

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I don't imagine that 911 is so overwhelmed with calls that they can't handle a simple dispatch.

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That's what everybody thinks. That's why 911 operators are buried under an avalanche of calls that cover everything from, "Burger King won't make my burger right!", to "How long should I cook my turkey?" and "I need help getting the ice off my windshield."

I just know that some day, I'm going to have a loved one in mortal danger, and I'm going to get a busy signal because somebody got lost and called 911 to get directions.

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This is frontier Montana not a big city. Out town has 350 people in it and that covers about a lot of square miles. The whole county is larger than some states back east ad has less than 1000 people in it. It is perfectly acceptable to call 911 in this situation. I might agree with you if it was in a larger city but that is just not the case here.

[katyseagull]

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Your wife needs to find another job. She will face worse than this in bars and with her stuck up attitude one of you will end up in tears and trouble. Not accepting apologies - who do you people think you are? He has done nothing other than slightly offend her in a bar.

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I can sort of see his wife's point about not wanting to deal with this annoying guy at her bank. I mean she's at a bank trying to do her job. It's inappropriate for some dude who just spent the night in the tank to waltz in and approach her while she's working. He was at fault to be causing such a ruckus in the first place. As a woman I would find this very unwelcome at my workplace and I would most likely be extremely annoyed.

Sounds to me like a typical obnoxious drunk who got belligerent. Standard for a bar. If I were her I would probably have said "This isn't exactly the appropriate time to discuss this but ok, apology accepted."

[Fishwhenican]

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I kind of was too. I could see her saying, can I talk to you on my break, I'm at work now. But it's hard to apologize, and even if you don't quite believe it, if the apology seems sincere, it can be a good idea to respect the attempt. I don't think you have to totally forgive someone to accept their apology.

I could see myself saying "f*ck off" at first, then a week later going, "You know what, I was still pretty pissed when you came to apologize last week. It's not easy to turn around your feelings overnight. So I pushed you away because I just didn't want to hear from you. I'm still not feeling great about what happened. But I realize everyone can make a mistake, and that it takes guts to try to apologize for one. So I respect that you tried. A lot of people wouldn't have had the guts to try. And I accept your apology. Why don't we just start over and give each other a fair chance, okay?"

I've done pretty much that a time or two. Seems to go over okay, and only the truly meanest SOB's would like to hold a grudge forever. That the dude tried to apologize already shows that he's not one of those. So maybe when your wife's emotions settle down a bit, she can treat the matter as not yet settled and talk to the guy again when she sees him next.

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I actually talked to her quite a bit about this very thing last night. Personally I do not think it makes anything better by not being able to accept an apology. She did say that if he had come to her in the bar she would have talked to him and now would likely tell him that what he did was way out of line and hurtful but eventually accept the apology. Her day job was not the place to be doing all of this.

I also understand how she can not want to accept this guys apology. This guy may mean what he says, he may not. I would not be out of the question for his family to have told him he would be doing that apology and he had no intention of doing it on his own. From what I have heard about him since this incident and what I already know of his family (they are pretty good people) I suspect they actually put him up to it.

[Fishwhenican]

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Maybe there is a pretty long list of stereotypes for native americans or whatever, but I don't know of any.

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You have no idea how long the list is around here. My family and I are very aware of this and make a concerted effort to not buy into the stereotypes. We have also talked on more than one occasion to our children about treating all people with respect and not to buy into racial stereotypes and to treat people on a case by case basis. This is one of the reasons that this guy pulling the race card was particularly hurtful.

[Fishwhenican]

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Well, about 10:00pm or so this guy walks in and from the moment he hit the door is a rude a-hole. Just rubbing people the wrong way and trying to be a big man hotshot. He was immediatly rude to my wife while he was first ordering drinks and I talked to him a little while later while he was up at the bar about being nice to her and that she was my wife.

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Doesn't matter that she's your wife. She's working. How about letting her handle it? I swear, spouses and b/fs or g/fs shouldn't be allowed at work.

Unless he gets physical, stay out of it.

b

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When I first talked to this guy I did not go to him. He came up to the bar and was talking to me, badmouthing my wife and going after my ancestory. If he hadn't talked to me I wouldn't have talked to him at all.

99.9% of the time I do stay out of things and let my wife handle them. She is perfectly capable. I really got involved because I was tired of this idiot pulling the race card and someone somewhere needed to tell him that he was wrong. He was being treated the way he was because he was being a rude, arrogent peckerhead. At this point it wouldn't have mattered if he was doing this to my wife or anyone else.

[Fishwhenican]

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Your wife needs to find another job. She will face worse than this in bars and with her stuck up attitude one of you will end up in tears and trouble. Not accepting apologies - who do you people think you are? He has done nothing other than slightly offend her in a bar.

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No offense intended but you have no idea what you are talking about.

You do not know my wife or me and to assume that my wife is "stuck up" and all this guy did was "slightly offend her in a bar" is horribly short sighted and a big part of the problem with racism.

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who do you people think you are?

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I think we are good decent hard working people who treat people exactly the way they deserve to be treated based on who they are and not what they are.

[Fishwhenican]

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Your wife needs to find another job. She will face worse than this in bars and with her stuck up attitude one of you will end up in tears and trouble. Not accepting apologies - who do you people think you are? He has done nothing other than slightly offend her in a bar.

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No offense intended but you have no idea what you are talking about.

You do not know my wife or me and to assume that my wife is "stuck up" and all this guy did was "slightly offend her in a bar" is horribly short sighted and a big part of the problem with racism.

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who do you people think you are?

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I think we are good decent hard working people who treat people exactly the way they deserve to be treated based on who they are and not what they are.

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I also want to add that behavior like this guy displayed should not be tolerated anywhere by anyone. Doesn't matter if it is in a bar or the grocery store. What he did was wrong. He was insulting and disrespectful to another person and he acted in a racist manner towards others. If the situation were reversed and I walked into a bar with 3/4 of the people in there being white and the bartender being Native American and started spouting off about white power and how the bartender was racist towards me, I would deserve to be thrown out.

Behavior like this guy displayed does nothing to help things get better for his people.

[Blarg]

Finding out the right emergency contact number is elementary for people who work in bars and restaurants and hotels, etc.. They should be told it on their first day on the job.

[Blarg]

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I kind of was too. I could see her saying, can I talk to you on my break, I'm at work now. But it's hard to apologize, and even if you don't quite believe it, if the apology seems sincere, it can be a good idea to respect the attempt. I don't think you have to totally forgive someone to accept their apology.

I could see myself saying "f*ck off" at first, then a week later going, "You know what, I was still pretty pissed when you came to apologize last week. It's not easy to turn around your feelings overnight. So I pushed you away because I just didn't want to hear from you. I'm still not feeling great about what happened. But I realize everyone can make a mistake, and that it takes guts to try to apologize for one. So I respect that you tried. A lot of people wouldn't have had the guts to try. And I accept your apology. Why don't we just start over and give each other a fair chance, okay?"

I've done pretty much that a time or two. Seems to go over okay, and only the truly meanest SOB's would like to hold a grudge forever. That the dude tried to apologize already shows that he's not one of those. So maybe when your wife's emotions settle down a bit, she can treat the matter as not yet settled and talk to the guy again when she sees him next.

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I actually talked to her quite a bit about this very thing last night. Personally I do not think it makes anything better by not being able to accept an apology. She did say that if he had come to her in the bar she would have talked to him and now would likely tell him that what he did was way out of line and hurtful but eventually accept the apology. Her day job was not the place to be doing all of this.

I also understand how she can not want to accept this guys apology. This guy may mean what he says, he may not. I would not be out of the question for his family to have told him he would be doing that apology and he had no intention of doing it on his own. From what I have heard about him since this incident and what I already know of his family (they are pretty good people) I suspect they actually put him up to it.

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I don't think his family putting him up to it matters.

Either way, he's the one doing the apologizing, going out and publicly humbling himself. He could tell his family to take a hike, too. But instead he shows up. Score one in the good guy column for him.

It's like with your wife; even if she doesn't 100% believe his apology, she should accept it anyway. The dude, even if he doesn't 100% feel at fault, should apologize anyway. Making and accepting the apology is good for both people, because it gives them a chance to get over things instead of letting them sit and fester and have their resentments just harden and become permanent. Probably, if an apology is accepted, with a little time -- if he doesn't already! -- the guy will feel his apology 100%, and your wife will forgive him enough to not regret accepting his apology.

Being mad at each other can feel satisfying and a bit righteous, but carrying permanent grudges, especially when the other person is trying to make amends, is pointless and perverse. If we were talking real crime or something here, it could be different. But in the end, this is pretty petty stuff.

So anyway, whether either party is 100% on the apology, faking it till you make it is healthier for both of them.

Also, FWIW, this kind of thing is good life training in general. Getting past obstacles like these makes for a more experienced, better person. The next bad minor thing that comes up, if she handles this one well, will be a lot easier. Maybe she'll even be nicer to you one day when you two, or she and one of the kids, have an argument that seems hard to back off from or get into apologies about. Seriously, everything like this is an opportunity to add to your emotional arsenal and store of wisdom, so it would be a shame to waste it. That kinda thing comes in really handy when you need it.